Continuation of the "Silhouette in the Snow" short story from McSnowwriter’s Pamphlet published previously on Blogarctic on June 5.  http://preludeblogarctic.spaces.live.com/

…………….The grader chewed up two sections of the portage. A small rise with a dip in it, half way up the hill, had not frozen over and the rear wheels of the grader sank deep into the snow. They began to chatter as they found traction on the dirt and rocks below.

"It’s like pulling an anchor up hill," I exclaimed to myself, glancing back at my train.

Regaining traction out of the dip, I fought the portage upwards to another soft spot, where ten minutes of rocking back and forth had created a runway good enough to gather momentum and lurch free of the mud and slush that had impeded my progress. I did not stop when I reached the crest of the hill but continued bouncing along to the north end of Yen Lake.

I stopped when I got on the ice of Yen Lake. I jumped out of the grader and did an inspection of my ensemble. Everything was covered with mud and ice. The bombardier got the most of it. It sat there last in line looking more like a muddy block of ice with skis poking out the front than a man-made machine.

"Nothing broken after that adventure," I summarized to myself. "More work will have to be done on this portage or the tractor-trailers will have lots of problems"

That inspection done, I walked over to a large structure whose dark outline I had glimpsed in my lights when I arrived at Yen Lake. The structure was squatting at the shoreline. I could now make out the charred remains of "my home" that had burned down four days ago.

"Home" was a twenty-foot long by eight foot wide plywood building mounted on a deck. It was suspended off the ground by four massive skis used for sliding the contraption across the ice and snow. We had pulled it along with us from "Fort Byers" at the start of the winter road. We were using it to eat and sleep in while we were constructing the road.

"I shed no tears seeing it sitting here burnt down to the scorched deck," I muttered to anybody who could hear.

It was a relic from a by-gone era. It was used on cat-trains crossing Great Slave Lake in the 1930’s and 40’s. It could sleep six people in a pinch. The storage boxes on the floor, used for food supplies, acted as seats at meal times. The source of heat was an oil heater with its chimney poking out the roof. Bunk beds were bolted to the walls. It did not have a fridge so the food was either canned or frozen. Frozen food, mainly TV dinners, were stored in a food locker outside on the deck. Water came from a hole drilled in the ice of the lake where we parked for the night.

"Home" did not have modern toilet facilities, so you had to be sure when you needed to go. More specifically, the facilities were minus forty degrees, open aired, twinkling stars for a roof, a snow-bank for a seat and no place to hang the roll of toilet paper. No contemplating life, reading a magazine or sitting around out there. Needless to say, baths and showers were non-existent. This was all part of the job and one got used to it.

If you wanted privacy or take a nap, you could always go and nap in the cabs of our constantly running equipment. I spent many a night lying on the front bench seat of the 4 by 4 Ford truck with my head out the windows. Looking at the stars and northern lights, while listening to music fade in and out on the truck’s radio tuned into Edmonton’s CHED radio station, was my typical evening entertainment.

I did not know the full story on how it burned down. I had left for Yellowknife with Jim McAvoy, in his Cessna 185, the day before it burned. Jim was delivering needed parts to our crew then returning to Yellownife empty, so I hitched a ride. I had returned via Echo Bay Mines a day before this little adventure started. The break was enough time for a badly needed shower and two days with my girlfriend. The crew speculated that the oil line for the heater was not completely turned off and burning oil spilled all over the floor when they started to pull it to that night’s new location. Whatever the cause, there it sat, burned to the deck-line, when they returned from their work assignments of the day.

Echo Bay was forty-five miles away down the portage and across the ice of Great Bear from this location. Terra Mines was eighteen miles to the east, so Louie and Johnnie Soldat, with the grader and bombardier, proceeded to Echo Bay. Nick Jones, Dave Thompson and the rest of the crew struck off towards Terra Mines making another new portage with the D-6 cat, skidder, FWD and Bug. I don’t think they shed any tears over the demise of their "home" either.

Inspection and reminiscing complete, I motored over to the T – junction in the middle of Yen Lake. The easterly spur road was to guide me over a number of small lakes and portages to Terra. Terra Mines, a silver producer, was located on the Camsell River just south of Great Bear Lake. I could visualize Terra in my mind. I had spent six months there, working underground, four years earlier.

Robinson Trucking had the contract to haul fuel and supplies into Terra and haul out silver concentrate from their mill.

I turned east and traveled about a half a mile before I reached shore. I raised the plough and blades as I started over the rough, newly constructed portage. Boulders and gravel were exposed at various spots as well as willow branches poking out from the snow roadway.

"A lot more work has to be done on this route too," I said as I bumped along.

Portages are improved by drawing in as much snow as you could get from the banks and packing it down with a drag pulled behind the skidder and other motorized equipment. The snow would then freeze like ice and provide a good hard topping for the road. A good portage had lots of snow and ice on it so as to protect the tires of the tractor-trailers from punctures. Protruding rocks and willows would act like spears and nails.

The plough in the "up" position limited my forward vision. It was "ok" on straight stretches but was hampered when going around corners and seeing the road close to the grader. I proceeded over a series of small sloughs and portages winding closer and closer to Terra.

"Where is Billy’s truck?" I said, "I should be coming up to it soon."

"Wham." I heard the loud retort and felt the grader give a violent shudder. It seemed to jump straight up in the air and then come crashing down in a bone jarring halt. I was flung forward into the steering wheel and then fell to the side of the cab. I regained my feet and stood in the cab rubbing my sore shoulder and looking at the controls of the grader. The engine was not running. The sudden stop had stalled the engine.

"You had better f*cking start" was my only official statement regarding this new situation.

I put the transmission in neutral and turned the ignition on. The engine started with a roar and I monitored the gauges to see if everything was operating normally. Satisfied that it was, I jumped out of the cab to see what caused my unscheduled stop. I inspected the belly blade – OK, walked to the plough – OK, walked around the right side to the wing blade…

"Opps!!!!!" I exclaimed to myself.

The wing blade was dangling by its cable from the pulley that was attached on the high stanchion mounted on the rear bumper. Looking down along the length of the blade I could see that it was detached from its hinge mount at the base of the grader. I knelt down and saw that the metal of the hinge joint was twisted and sheared off. Looking around the ground, I saw the outcrop of rock sticking out of the snow with a gouge mark along its side and top. The telltale marks now sported the nice orange colour from the grader. I stood up and surveyed the portage. I was going around a corner at a narrow section of road. The plough and belly blade had cleared the obstacle however the base of the wing blade had caught it square on. It was one of those things.

"Well, if it didn’t get the wing blade, it would have probably ripped a ski off the front of the bombardier," I said, trying to make light of the present predicament.

"Can’t drive like this," I said, swinging the blade back and forth like a pendulum attached to the top pulley mount. Any sideway movement would cause it to come crashing into the side of the grader. A quick search of the assembled equipment produced a chain normally used to pull things out of ditches, etc. Using a rope to cinch the base of the blade close to the hinge mount, I secured the two components together with three wraps of the chain and hooked the end into a suitable link.

I maneuvered the tank-trailer and bombardier past the rock out-crop, without further incident, and set off again with an eye on my repair job. It seemed to be secured well enough for the movement along the portage. I settled back in the warmth of the cab and thought of Terra Mines.

It was four years earlier when, as a twenty-four year old, I hired on at Terra Mines as a miner. It was a six-month contract to work underground and live at the 60 man mining camp. No women and no booze. The exception was Wednesday nights. You could get up to four "open" bottles of beer, which you had to consume in the recreation room. The only other form of mass entertainment was a weekly movie night. A movie was shown on a bare white wall by a 16 mm Bell and Howell projector. That was "if" the weekly supply plane could make it in from Yellowknife.

The going was slow and un-eventful. The portage was flat and smooth. Sparse trees and shrubs poked out of the snow all around me. The tops of rock outcrops were blown clear of snow. Again my mind went back four years….

……I heard that a couple of friends, Daren Cranna and Leo Lachowski, were working at a small start-up mine down the Camsell River. It was approximately twenty miles from Terra. It turned out that they were driving a tunnel into the side of a hill for a small operation situated right on the shore of the river.

For something different to do, I decided to go down the river to visit them. So, on a long summer evening, after work, I filled up two – five gallon tanks with gas; that powered a ten horsepower kicker; that was attached to a 14-foot aluminum boat; and off I went.

I had to be back with the boat before morning. It belonged to the Exploration department and they needed it first thing to go stake some claims around Terra.

I did surprise my two friends, Daren and Leo. We spent a couple of hours swapping stories of our different adventures over a bottle of scotch that one of them produced from his kit.

Then I had to go back to Terra. That is when the river surprised me………the weather had changed…….

My mind snapped back to the present as I suddenly saw numerous yellow and red lights down the lake, maybe a mile away. I had just come off a portage onto a small lake and was proceeding around a point of land. My spirits rose as I got near the source. I had finally made it. I stopped the grader well away from the first set of lights, glanced at my watch and saw that it was 5:30 am.

I started walking towards the running and parking lights of the trailer attached to a blue Mack tractor. Its exhaust stack was pumping out a long stream of mist high into the night sky. The sky had darkened considerably from earlier on. The northern lights were no longer visible and the moon had long since departed. I could now make out another two tractor/trailers parked close by, each with their running lights on and exhaust streaming straight up.

I got to the cab of the truck and banged on the door. No sound or movement. I opened the door. Deserted. Not sure what to expect, I walked over to the other trucks and one by one I opened the doors of each truck just to find that they were also deserted. Three tractor-trailers sitting in the middle of a small lake, in the middle of the night, roughly ten miles from Terra. Weird. No – Eerie was more like it.

Realization quickly came to me. The road was blocked ahead. "This must be where Billy went through the ice," I speculated aloud.

I began to walk down the road ahead of the first parked truck. I felt myself tense up in apprehension of the unknown. One hundred yards along I could make out a dark blotch in the snow and ice of the road. I approached cautiously as I slowly began making out details. A tractor and tanker frozen solid in the ice.

Bill Warren was hauling a full load of 8000 gallons of diesel fuel in his tanker. The ice just simply gave way underneath him and the tanker sank straight down leaving less than a foot showing above the ice. The tractor sat as if it was trying to pull itself and the tanker out of this hole. Its two front wheels were sitting comfortably on the ice with the engine and cab above, however the remainder of the tractor sat at a 60 - 65 degree angle to the ice. The rear set of tandem wheels, fifth wheel and frame were completely submerged. The back of the cab was at ice level.

"That’s why you travel in pairs or convoys," I mumbled to myself.

I looked around but couldn’t see the condition of the ice. I walked slowly back past the deserted trucks to the grader contemplating my choices.

"Can’t wait here with a broken wing blade and a frozen solid bombardier."

"I have to get this equipment into Terra."

"Is the rest of the ice weak and rotten or was it just this one spot?" I wondered.

I walked around the sorry mess of equipment under my care wondering if anything else could happen tonight. I was tired, sore….. and hungry.

"I’d love to have a cup of coffee right about now," I wished.

Mind made up, I engaged the clutch and the grader moved slowly forward. I set the V-plough on the ice and steered off the road towards the shoreline, one hundred yards away. I figured that I’d stay as far away from the accident as possible, which meant that I would hug the shoreline.

At slow speed I circumvented the "bad" area at a crawl. The grader door was wide open. My snowsuit was on and done up. My heart was in my mouth. I reached shallow water without incident. I could see frozen bull rush weeds along the shoreline so I traversed through these past the equipment sitting in and on the ice at the middle of the lake.

My concern, about bashing the plough into a boulder poking out of the ice in the shallow water along the shore, was alleviated when I reached a small point of land and decided to swing back out to the center of the lake and re-join the existing road. I relaxed only after reaching the "dry" land of the next portage.

"Well, that’s it for Billy Bishop’s Bath"

My watch read 6:30 when I spotted bright lights in the distance. Terra. As I got closer I could make out the large tin clad building which housed the mill and machine shop. Five minutes later I was parked in front of the building’s large doors.

The night watchman was the only person around. He gave me directions to where Robinson’s personnel were billeted, so with sleeping bag and kit in hand, I walked over to the doublewide Atco trailer being used as a bunkhouse. Passing the washroom I saw two guys washing up and getting ready to start their day. I poked my head through the doorway and said "Hi" to Nick Jones.

"Hi," he said, "What took you so long?"

I just gave him a blank look and, as my mind raced over the past twenty hours, I just shrugged my shoulders.

I knew that it would have to be a pretty tall tale to keep the interest of Nick or others who have "been there – done that." Maybe I’ll tell him another time when it wasn’t so fresh in my mind.

"Where can I sleep?" I asked.

He showed me where four beds were placed in a large room. Someone was still snoring in one but stopped as we entered.

"Thanks" I said after he showed me which spare bed to take, "I’m going to crash for a bit"

"By the way, will you be seeing Dick at breakfast?" I asked Nick as I crashed onto the bed.

"Yes" he said, putting on his parka.

"Could you tell him that his bombardier is here," I said.

I quickly rolled over to hide a big smile that broke out on my face. I had just I visualized the expression on Dick’s face when he saw the block of ice and mud called a bombardier.

I went to sleep knowing everything was all right. A job well done…given the circumstances.