(The title is of course a nod to the recently deceased actor Roy Scheider.)

The famous last words (before your car, snowmobile, or best friend falls through the ice) are usually:
    "well the ice looked thick enough to support us....."

Barnes Lake


This morning we drove from Merritt to Barnes Lake (near Ashcroft BC) to give R.Dale a little seat time in the Forester on the ice. Building some muscle memory around how the car/tire combination responds on ice is pretty important, and the more that is pre-wired in to your brain, the less dial-in time you'll need at the actual event.

We knew the lake had been used for an ice race on Sunday and clearly so because the course was plowed, and very, very dark and shiny from the cars "polishing" it. The real ice race cars use spiked tires and really rip up the surface.

Dark means slippery
(yes the cracks are normal, and quite safe)


So we parked the car and gingerly walked out on the ice by ourselves to check everything out. It looked pretty normal. I joked a little about how I was not crazy about being down there without another car in case something went wrong. We had our sat phone and PLB in the trunk but who needs that when you are driving around the lake?

We decided to do a SLOW lap around the "long" oval (the shorter circuit has a turn halfway down the main straight which shortcuts the course) to check the surface out.

Start of the main straight (rest of it is out of sight to the top left)


Now, bear in mind I have been to this lake at least 4 times and am very familiar with a) driving a car on ice, b) how things are done at this particular lake.

We get about 3/4 of the way down the main straight, and I see I am on line for a long patch of "different" ice, about 150 ft long and about 10 ft wide. Generally speaking the lighter color the surface the more grip you will have (e.g. covered with snow or chewed up ice) and the polished ice (the slippery stuff) looks very dark and wet. The polished line to the right looked very dark and wet and I figured this was a pretty decent line to stay on the lighter stuff.

Then the car starts falling through the ice, the back end first. Luckily our speed is just keeping the front wheels above the ice as the back wheels drag down through the water and ice slush!! Thoughts about life insurance payments block my brain a little. If I move the car to the right, is that even wetter, because it is darker? Finally the light bulb goes off in my head (about 30 secs later than it should have) and I start to nudge the car to the right and we once again are on firm ice.

What happened?

Answer: when the cars race, they chew the ice so badly that ruts form. While they thin the surface "a bit" the ruts are just annoying to drive on, so at the end of the race day, Sunday, Fred Robertson (he plows the track) would have bored a hole through the ice to let the lake water up to fill the rutted areas, which then freeze flat. (almost) Instant road repair!!! (They do this on the ice roads up north too.)

Now, I have had Fred tell me in past years (he looks a bit like Chuck Yeager, who I've met, but that is another story), "just stay off those sections I've repaired until they freeze, ok?"

The only real danger to us was of being embarrassed and having our car stuck in a little lake on TOP of the ice about 4-8" deep. There was plenty of solid ice under that "repair" puddle.

Was it a bad choice to make? Yes.

This incident illustrates a really subtle point, that my brain's interpretation of the surface had been wired to use of the track when it had a light covering of snow (like 2 weeks ago) and when the repaired areas looked darker. With the recently polished dark "hard" surface, the repaired areas looked lighter and safer but were in fact the opposite. In fact the still-wet repaired sections also have a green-ish tinge but I guess I was at the wrong angle to see that, it was really clear to see them as we drove away from the lake looking down from high up.

A lot of choices you make up north (and every day, truth be told) are based on what experiences you have and how your brain is wired to interpret the information.

I have a pair of special prescription sunglasses that are designed for giving me more contrast in snowy/icy conditions, where picking out each little piece of information can help you choose the right place to put your tires. As I write this, I just realized I also was not wearing them on the lake. That counts as my second mistake!

After that little scare we each took a few laps of the short course (away from the major ice repairs) and had some great fun. I felt instantly dialed in, having been up there a sort time ago, and R.Dale quickly got into the swing of it and we both agreed the combination of the Forester and the Cooper tires (plug plug) on the ice was very predictable and responsive.

R.Dale nicely sideways


"I'm not going to push it all that hard..."
(the grooves from the ice racers visible here)


We are now back at Casa del Wallace to finalize our Alcan preparations during the remainder of the week.

For more information about the people that really race fast on this lake and know what they are doing (unlike me), visit http://carsonice.ca/

PS Please don't tell Fred, ok? He'll be cranky that I drove through one of his repair sections...!

PPS Kala and Paul have a myspace page set up for our team, check it out!