Ice Road Truckers
Tuesday, 8th July 2008 by Alex Turnbull
Driving across the frozen Amur River between Russian and China we can see a couple of trucks - driven by the fearless and legendary Ice Road Truckers!
Although it seems ludicrous, building "Ice Roads" over lakes, rivers or seas, is at times preferable to carving a road on land, as you can get long continuous straights on the ice, which hilly tree-covered land just doesn't offer. However in this case it appears to be the only existing way across the river.
Driving across frozen water in a 2 tonne truck is of course slightly dangerous. Depending on the country, the ice only needs to be about 20cm thick for authorities to allow trucks onto the surface, and speeds may be limited to a painfully slow 16mph. Luckily our particular truckers don't have far to go, unlike the men who drive the 568 kilometre Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road each year.
Ice road truckers were made famous by the TV show of the same name, and the green light has apparently been given to make a fictional film based on the series in 2008. I've not seen the TV show, but I hear it's much more exciting than boring footage of lonely truckers driving at 16mph across vast empty frozen lakes.
Read more about ice roads at Wikipedia.
Thanks to pooms.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Ice driving is also popular in Mongolia. For example, there are many carving trails across Marrat lake – I posted it in my blog – http://bigsmallplanet.blogspot.com/2008/04/driving-in-mongolia.html
Scroll a little ways to the left of the Amur River picture and you suddenly shift to a summertime view.
Maybe it’s safer to cross this way than to go through customs at the Russia/China border.
Further west, some strange circular forms can be seen on the ground. Any ideas on what they are?
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=49.645569,117.39707&z=15
Here is a stretch of the Ice Road from the 2008 Season of Ice Road Truckers. Some of cast from the last season is taking loads of gas fields at the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately, I don’t see any trucks on this portion. View Placemark
@ john…those circular things are east and west all along BOTH sides of the border. My guess is military watch towers or some other military installations. The circles would be formed from areas cleared for fencing, barbed wire, mines, and/or other deterrents. At some locations you can see trench lines and “U” shaped mounds probably for use by machine guns or artillery. https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=49.600413,117.729755&z=18 https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=h&hl=en&ll=49.654773,117.291761&z=18
oops…on that first link you will have to zoom in one notch to see the road.
ALEX YOU WERE LOST AND MISSED YOUR TURN OFF IN THE ARTIC, WHEN I HAD TO LEAVE, WHEN THE SHOW ENDS THEY DO NOT GIVE YOUR LOAD TOTALS, WHAT HAPPENED? CAN YOU FILL ME IN SOMEONE