Driving up in the arctic has a few extra considerations that driving in most temperate places don't.

I'm not just talking ice and snow on the roads here.

Those of you from places with decently cold winters are probably familiar with block heaters and are in the habit of shutting off your windshield wipers before your vehicle, so if they're frozen to the windshield when you start the engine in the morning the little motors don't burn themselves out trying to move stuck wipers.

In the spring at merely -10 or so (not counting the chilling effect of the wind), we'll shut off the truck when we go in for lunch, without plugging in the block heater. Other than that, it's either plugged in at its nighttime parking spot, being driven, or sitting in front of our plant with the fast idle on while we work. (Actually, we just found out that the plug on our block heater's cord was broken. No wonder it was taking several tries to get it started. At least it's spring and it did start!)

Snow on the roads is an issue, but only when it's in drifts that come up higher than the truck's headlights. When there's a drift maybe a couple of feet high, we plow through. The general attitude as expressed to me by my co-worker is, "if you're gonna get stuck in a drift, get stuck real good so when site services comes to dig you out they can see that you tried...". When the drifts are over the headlights, though, we just turn back and radio the driver of the grader to ask when he thinks he'll get to our road.

"à l'écoute"

Outside "town", dispatch keeps track of the movements of all vehicles. The road that we're on is fairly busy, by northern standards; we'll meet between three and ten vehicles going the other way on our 15 minute drive to the plant, depending on the time of day. (I haven't been on night shift yet.) Every vehicle must radio in to dispatch when they leave and when they arrive at their destination, with the truck number, the driver's name, the number of passengers, and the start and end points of the trip. This being Quebec, the radio is a mix of English and French, and dispatch will accept calls in either language. They may or may not reply in the same language you call in with...

On a clear day, calling dispatch feels like a formality, but the weather can change quickly here - either in time or in space. There can be great visibility at the complex and horrible visibility at our plant, or vice versa. Dispatch tracks all vehicles so that if they break down, help can be sent promptly, especially in bad weather. On some of the routes (none that I've been on yet) the drivers must call in regularly during their trip too, and if they don't dispatch starts calling them to make sure they're still ok and the truck hasn't broken down.

The road we're on leads past an existing secondary mine site and another one that's under development, so for us, chances are good that somebody will happen to drive by before dispatch notices there's a problem.

Monsters on the road

The roads are very wide, but they sure feel small when a 50 ton haul truck comes lumbering toward you. Or a backhoe, or crane, or ...

The general rule of the road is that if it's bigger, it has the right of way, and a pickup truck is the smallest vehicle around. As the roads are wide enough for two haul trucks to pass by each other comfortably, this isn't usually an issue, except at the one-lane bridge and when they're pulling a hill. Sometimes it's easier to just park, rather than idling along behind them at a walking pace - especially when it's the grader backing up and you're not sure which side of the road it's going to work on next.

Pickup trucks seem to be in the majority, but there is a lot of equipment moving around. I even drove a forklift down the road from our plant to the mine site we borrowed it from, when we were done with it. They feel like they move quickly when they're in the yard moving things around - on the road, well, I could walk faster.

All the options!

All vehicles up here have to have a 'kit' installed before they can be shipped up. I don't know the whole list of items they add, but it's fairly comprehensive and costs about $5000. It includes, from bottom to top, special snow tires, skid plates to protect the underside of the truck when you try to climb snowdrifts, a 2-way radio, a backup beeper, a fast idle switch, about a dozen extra lights, including one blue revolving flashing light, and probably dozens of smaller things that I can't think of right now.

The vehicle we're driving right now is a pile of junk. It pulls to the right quite a bit. I'm told its frame has been broken and fixed a couple of times, and it's probably crooked. Air was getting into the fuel line somehow, and sometimes the fuel pump would choke on air and the truck would randomly quit. The plug head fell off the block heater cord.

We're waiting for our own truck, because this one is borrowed. Hopefully it'll be on the June boat (can't drive them up, no roads; can't fly them up, too big...) and hopefully the $BIGMININGCO department we borrowed it from doesn't ask for it back before then.