2018/07 Arctic Part 2 - Retreat from Tuk |
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We had to tighten all the hatches as the wind was threatening to tear them off. It was truly a “dark and stormy night”, though it was only dark from the storm; otherwise it would have stayed light all night. The wind was shrieking around us and shaking us on our springs. The rain was beating on the roof and back door. We didn’t dare open the door in case we lost it. There was nobody moving outside.
Thursday July 5th
The wind turned around overnight so that it was coming straight off the ocean. With high tide and the storm surge, the ocean was a lot closer than in this picture. 
We hunkered down to wait the storm out.
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Arctic Ocean (0.29) |
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We were getting wet inside. Our window frames have gutters and drain holes so that condensation will drain away. The gutters were filling up with seawater and there’d be squirts of water onto our table. I had to move the cameras off the table. Too late, Sandie realized that the same was happening in the bedroom and her clothes had all been rinsed. The wind was picking up seawater and driving it up the windows’ drain holes! It was time to move!
I had to go outside to retrieve our step which was skittering away up the road. Sandie held the door while I slid out. I found that I could stand up, so I reckoned that we could probably drive without being blown over and we got ready to move. We talked to some other campers, also hunkered down in their vehicles. I heard that the Tuk fishing fleet had been forced to abandon their summer camp because of the storm surge. There was talk of the road being closed, and of Arctic storms often lasting four or five days. 
That made up our minds. We’d planned to spend another day in Tuk, but being hunkered down there for four days wasn’t appealing so we set off back to Inuvik. As we were leaving we spotted the dog, walking sideways with the wind. In places the waves were breaking onto the road.
I’d been worried about our being blown over but our main enemy was mud. After about 12 hours of heavy rain, the road had disintegrated. The single track in the centre of the road was churned-up black mud and the narrow shoulders were steep glistening clay, about six feet above the tundra. 
At first I couldn’t make any headway at all but I eventually got the hang of it, just feathering the accelerator enough to keep us moving at walking pace. After a few kilometres I got stuck on a hill. I stopped rather than risk sliding off the road, but then we slowly slid backwards until one pair of back wheels fell off the shoulder. Possibly the wind had pushed us off and there was a danger that it might push us further and we’d tip over on the way down.
We hadn’t seen any other vehicles on the road. We weren’t going anywhere without a tow, so I parachuted out of the driver’s seat down onto the tundra and climbed back up to the road and the mud and began walking back to Tuk. Sandie was sitting very still and belted in on the high side of the truck, hoping the wind didn’t blow her and the camper off the road. It was 4C (39F) and sleeting with a gale force wind and the clay was shin deep so my progress was very slow.
We hadn’t seen any traffic so I expected to have to walk for an hour or two. I was walking along with my head down when I was passed by a pickup truck coming out of Tuk, so close that I could have touched it! Sandie said that this one did stop at our camper to ask if she needed help, and she told him I was going for help. He didn’t mention that he’d seen me so my guess is that he hadn’t; a near miss.
The next driver to stop was an Asian driving a small truck. I asked him for a ride into Tuk and he pointed to his front seat, which was occupied by a pile of electronic gear and said “No room”. I asked him to send a tow truck from Tuk but he didn’t have enough English to understand.
I had a ball of clinging mud around each foot and I was getting slower, wondering if I’d make Tuk before I froze. Then, a third truck stopped and offered me a ride and not to worry about the mud. He worked for the power company and said that his co-worker had gone off the road too and he was going to Tuk to get some help and then go back to tow him out. They’d tow us out next.
He was obviously used to the road, getting through the mud with a series of slides and recoveries. He had another passenger, a young girl with a small baby. He dropped her off at a Tuk apartment block, noting that the road there was partly underwater. He found the guy who he’d hoped would help us but the guy refused “Not going out into that mess.”
Plan B was to get his boss to help so we went to the power plant, noting that the access road was half underwater. “Lost it last month. Looks like we’ll lose it again.” His boss made sure he had towing gear and set off in his pickup. The idea was to use both trucks to rescue the co-worker.
After a few scary slides we made it to the camper, where he dropped me off, promising to return once they’d rescued his co-worker. Sandie said one of the campers we’d talked to at the Point had come by in his truck camper, apologized for advising us to leave, and wished us luck.
While we were waiting, another pickup stopped. Did we want a tow? This was a pickup with a large service body, possibly as heavy as us but with single rear wheels. It looked very capable. The driver hauled out a very substantial chain and then apologized as it was too big for our tow hooks.
Shortly after he’d left yet another pickup stopped and I recognized the driver as the guy who’d earlier refused to help. “S’pose you want a tow?” He didn’t look very enthusiastic but he efficiently hooked us up, and roared his engine, pulling us along while I angled us sideways and up the shoulder. We were back on the road! I tried to pay him for the tow but he got back into his truck and drove just ahead of us until we made it up the hill.
It was very likely that we’d slide off again. We realized that a big part of the problem was the road’s steep camber. It was OK for fast traffic but at walking pace the truck was sliding down the camber. I was having to go into bends on the high edge and stay as far from the low edge as possible. Sandie found all this nerve-wracking so there was lots of screaming and shouting involved.
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Road from Tuktoyaktuk (1.21) |
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We were getting close to the end of the muddy section when we met a couple of trucks at the brow of a hill. I was, of course, in the middle pf the road, as were they, and I slowly trundled to my right to give them some space. The first driver went to pass me on the shoulder, realized he was sliding off, and accelerated to get back up the crown of the road. This didn’t work and he ended up with both nearside wheels off the road, suspended much as we had been. The second driver waited for us to get out of the way and he stopped to help the other.
Shortly after we came to the co-worker’s pickup, completely off the road and partly embedded in the tundra. There was no sign of our benefactor or his boss or his co-worker. The road beyond was better gravel and it was easy to see how drivers coming the other way would be surprised by the slickness of the mud.
There was still the muddy section near Inuvik to negotiate but it didn’t seem to have had as much rain. It looks really bad in this picture but the road wasn’t 
elevated above the tundra so sliding off wasn’t as big a risk.
It had been a long day and we were looking forward to staying at Inuvik’s Happy Valley campground and taking advantage of their showers and dump station. We were lucky to take the last site, not a scenic spot but it was flat and had electricity.
I don’t remember much about the evening other than washing our personal mud off. The truck and camper and my outside clothes were still smothered of course.