For 10 months of the year, the only way to access our site is by plane from Yellowknife. Given the time of year we were going in, the option of the ice road was possible. The road into the site opened at the end of January. The NT Power Corp flight schedules would only get us in, to get out we would have had to charter our own plane out. Going in by road made more sense if we could swing it. There were two of us from Toronto and one of our NT Environment colleague’s from Yellowknife. It is about a 4 hour drive from Yellowknife.
We crossed the first big lake (Marian Lake) and traveling at a speed of ~50-70km/hr it took an hour. The roads on the “ice” are wide and smooth for the most part.
The portages between the lakes are another story, just paths cut through the bush. The worse part was probably the small stretch of road going into the Snare Rapids hydro facility. It was extremely rough.