Originally Posted By: abycat
Originally Posted By: dlundblad
Originally Posted By: abycat
I have known drew for years. used to live beside him. rick I have known for years as well. hugh I know a bit but have washed his truck a few times. I drank beers with the producers a couple times. They said lisa didn't even have a license. They used a sub driver and camera tricks to make it look like she drove the whole routes.
Very interesting.
I always considered the show, like most "reality" TV, to be a bit of a joke.
I am sure the folks you know are great people, but the lady not having a license just confirms my theory.
yeah drew was actually a piece of [censored]. Not a good man. almost burnt his side of our old duplex down. He only made it two seasons. rick was hard into drugs. bit yeah it really was fake reality tv. For the most part. I have drove on ice roads and they are no big deal. The ice is like 12' deep. I took a half ton and did doughnuts on a nice ice road flat spot. was a stupid kid but they over dramatize everything.
Twelve feet deep?
Better check this out!
https://www.uhaul.com/SuperGraphics/171/...n-The-Ice-Roads
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Journey On The Ice Roads
Can you imagine driving a 40-ton (38 metric ton) truck over a lake – not on a bridge, but over just a layer of ice? People do just that in some of the coldest, iciest parts of the world. But the ice they drive on is special ice – safely engineered to hold vehicles carrying heavy loads. To learn more about the history of the roads, where they are located, how they are built, who uses them and why, travel along the ice roads with us now.
North by Northwest
Where Are The Ice Roads?
Traveling over temporary roads made of ice is often necessary in remote areas where there are few permanent roads or no roads at all. They are located in parts of the world where there is plenty of ice and no shortage of cold weather to keep the ice from melting for long periods of time. The Northwest Territories of Canada in North America is located in a polar zone which makes it a perfect place to build ice roads.
The Canadian tundra is one location where there are not many permanent roads. Very few people live in these areas. The land is covered with large lakes in the warmer months. These lakes are covered with ice in the colder months. It would be very expensive to build permanent roads and bridges in these remote areas. Even if they were built, it would be almost impossible to keep them clear of snow and passable in the winter. So, in these northern areas, people cleverly travel over the ice that covers the land much of the year instead of building costly roads which could be used only rarely.
One of the main cities in the Northwest Territories is Yellowknife. Yellowknife is the starting point for many of the ice roads that are built every winter to the outer areas of the Northwest Territories. Wait a minute...built every winter? If you wonder why they must be built every winter you must first know that the ice roads melt away every spring!
Cold As Ice
How Are The Ice Roads Built?
The ice roads are also called winter roads. That's because they simply do not exist during the warmer months of the year. Here's how the building process starts: around mid-November every winter, the temperature drops, the lakes freeze over, the marshy areas turn solid and the land surface is frozen.
The ice roads are built over the lakes and the land between the lakes. Land between lakes is known as portage. Around late December, the ice on a lake is 12” (30 centimeters) thick. At this point, snowplows clear the snow off the ice to make the ice turn thicker, faster. You might think the snow helps the ice get thicker, but the opposite is true. Snow covering the ice layer acts as an insulator. If the snow is plowed off, the ice is directly exposed to subfreezing air. In this area, temperatures drop to lows such as 40° below zero! (The –40° temperature is the only point at which the Farenheit and Celsius scales register the same.)
After the ice is plowed across a lake, the ice gets much thicker than the surrounding lake ice, forming the start of an ice road. During construction, ice thickness is measured every day. One way it is measured is by drilling holes through the ice to measure its depth. Another way to measure its thickness, is by using high-tech ground-penetrating radar to profile (or “read”) the ice sheet. Often maintenance crews use augers to drill through the ice to obtain water to use to improve the thickening process.
Once the ice thickens to 27”- 28” (.7 meters) over the entire road, trucks with very light loads are allowed to cross. Once the ice reaches 41”- 42” (1 meter) thick along the entire road, it is thick enough for a Super B tanker fully loaded with up to 50,000 liters of fuel to drive across. (A Super B is a tractor hauling two tanks of fuel and weighing approximately 42 tons or 38 metric tons.) At this point, ice roads are officially open for the winter season. Depending on the region and seasonal temperatures, ice roads can last anywhere from a few weeks to several months.
Looks like 3 to 3 1/2 feet is the go to thickness.