So you want to be an Ice Road Trucker?

My brother is a trucker. He recently told me he would like to be an Ice Road trucker. Travel up to Canada to Yellow Knife and drive on the great ice road delivering goods to the Canadian diamond mines. Thing is, I've been driving on an ice road the last week. That is right! We had a blizzard last Thursday, and it has snowed about every day since. Here in Japan, they don't plow, they don't salt the roads. They just let the cars pack the snow down where it melts slightly during the day, then freezes back up at night. I've been driving around on roads that have SIX inches of ice on them. That is, I am driving on a surface that is six inches above the paved road. It is insane. It is even more insane to walk around in and around snow that is up past your knees, too. We've had 83 inches of snow since Thanksgiving. We only had 50 inches all winter last year. They are running out of places to pile the snow when they plow on base and the parking lots off base. They've started to truck the snow out to the fields. And on base the snow piles are about two stories tall.