Ice Road Trucking with Alex Debogorski

In the Far North, and I’m talking north of the Arctic Circle north, everything seems exaggerated—the colors are bolder, the sky is bigger, the summer sun never sets. The winter is bigger too. It’s always dark. A brutal, cold dark. You hold onto -40˚ as long as you can because when it drops to -50˚, -60˚, the world changes. Metal can snap like a twig. Petroleum oil freezes into a solid mass.

In those temperatures, a simple thing like sweating while putting chains on your tires is your ticket to hypothermia. If you jackknife over a cliff while going around a corner, don’t hope too hard for a paramedic. You’ll be disappointed; ambulances and fire engines are a long way off. And a cell phone signal? Forget it.

Under conditions like these, it’s easy to understand why a group of truckers driving on roads of ice in sub-arctic conditions makes for compelling television. The newest season of Ice Road Truckers promises to be just as exciting as the previous ones.

Alex Debogorski is one of the infamous Ice Road Truckers, and he’s a favorite among fans of the show. Alex began his trucking career several decades ago in Alberta. Now he makes his home in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. He and his wife Louise have 11 children and many grandchildren.

In season three of Ice Road Truckers, the action moved from Canada’s northern ice roads to Alaska’s Dalton Highway. The Dalton begins north of Fairbanks and ends at Deadhorse near Prudhoe Bay at the edge of the Arctic Ocean.  It’s known as the Haul Road, and it was built specifically for transporting supplies to the North Slope oil fields.

Prudhoe Bay is 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Ice roads built over frozen ocean water connect the oil fields with the mainland. Those roads are passable less than three months a year, and during that short window of time, the drivers of Carlile Transportation Systems have to shuttle as many supplies as the oil companies need. But even before they reach the ice roads, they have to navigate the brutal Dalton Highway, which in winter is serious business. According to the official Facebook page for History which broadcasts Ice Road Truckers, 400 people have died on that road since it was built more than 40 years ago.

Despite all the hard work by the crews from the Department of Transportation, there are places where the Dalton can be an icy beast in winter. It’s also not unusual for blowing snow to slam visibility down to nothing. And then there are the steep grades.

While Alex was taking a break from driving and filming for the show, I reached him by phone. I wanted to know how challenging the Dalton is compared to the ice roads of northern Canada.

“This road here– it’s mountainous. We got cliffs, [the highway] is 500 miles of concentration, we’ve got a truck rolling in the ditch probably once every two weeks just about guaranteed. And often upside down. They come down 7, 8, 11% grades and temps this year have been a little warm so it’s pretty slippery. Every once in awhile you’ll be going a little fast and realize, darn it all, I’m not going to corner it at the bottom. You try to get the truck slowed down so you can go around that corner, and then you’re meeting a truck at the corner. That’s the kind of thing that concerns me.”

I asked what he’d do if his truck broke through an ice road into the depths beneath.

“Unless it happens, I don’t know. I don’t overly concern myself about it. It doesn’t really bother me to roll down the window and hear the ice cracking. It does bother me if I’m standing on the ice and there’s trucks going by, and you can feel the ice moving. You can hear it crack, and sometimes you can see the crack shoot by you. That makes me pucker up.” He finishes with his trademark laugh which sounds a bit like Santa Clause’s minus the ho-ho-ho’s.

But the ice roads aren’t just built and then forgotten. They’re maintained and monitored with sophisticated equipment that regularly measures the ice thickness and checks for additional danger signs.

“If you follow the rules,” says Alex, “the chances of going through are just about nil. The guys who are in danger are the ones that put the ice road in because they’re going out there on thin ice trying to get the snow off. They’re the guys who usually go through.”

Though some have criticized earlier seasons of Ice Road Truckers for portraying the truckers as loose cannons with a death wish, Peggy Spittler, Marketing Director for Carlile, says the drivers are anything but reckless. “They’re professionals, not crazy drivers. Safety is a priority. We can’t stress that enough.” And, she adds, roads are maintained at the highest standards.

Carlile drivers are employees as they don’t hire independent owner-operators. But getting a job there is tough, especially in the current economic climate when business is down. But that doesn’t discourage people from applying. “After every show we get at least 400 calls from drivers looking for jobs from all over the world,” says Spittler.

Alex realizes how lucky he is, not just for what he does, but also for where it is.  “There’s a lot of beauty up here. I’m amazed by how many shades of colors you see on the way to Prudhoe Bay. When there’s a sunset, if the snow isn’t blowing, it’s a different color every night– shades of pink and orange and indigo. And the shadows…” His voice trails off in awe. “You can only get these colors in the winter in the northern areas because the sun is low on the horizon. Even the sunrises—I ask myself; how can the colors be different every day, every time you look at it? It’s amazing…”

The wildlife is also phenomenal. “Sometimes there must be 10,000 caribou at the side of the road. Later on, we might see some muskox, and in the summertime, the guys see grizzly bears. And of course, you’re always watching out for moose coming onto the road.”

When Alex isn’t driving the ice roads, he runs a business in Yellowknife that resells topsoil and he also hauls gravel. Additionally, he puts his notoriety from Ice Road Truckers to work during appearances at trucking shows and other events, selling t-shirts and signing autographs.