Winter Road

Stormer Lake is halfway to Pikangikum, a reserve where B., a friend of Kendall’s, lives. We’ve been wanting to visit him and decided that this would be a good chance.

Just driving to Pikangikum was a cultural experience. In the summer you have to get in and out by air or by water. In the winter, there is a road. The winter road is not wide at all. You definitely do not see other cars on it. It’s all large pick-up trucks and big rigs. In general, people tend to speed down the road, not seeming to worry too much about getting over for oncoming traffic. Kendall told me about one of his friends who began to feel slighted on the road. He felt like everyone just expected him to get over for them. He had enough and decided that he wasn’t going to get off to the side anymore for oncoming traffic. A scary game of chicken if you ask me. Reportedly, he touched side mirrors with another vehicle as they passed each other. Too close for me!

Meanwhile, in our little car, we were cautious. (Maybe a bit scared too.) The road on Wednesday morning was narrower than usual. It had snowed quite a bit the night before and the road was not yet plowed. So we had a narrow passageway with fairly deep snow on either side. We would see a truck flying toward us and Kendall would get over. However, he didn’t want to stop or slow down too much for fear of getting stuck in the deeper snow. So we would just grit our teeth and plow through.

At one point, a huge gas truck was barreling down the road toward us. Kendall had no choice but to pull off the side of the road into deep snow. We were stuck. Three pick-ups were following the gas truck. Two passed us, but before the 3rd one could get by, Kendall opened his door and asked them to stop. He went to the trunk where he had conveniently stowed a tow strap (which, by the way, we had just found left on the road the day before). The pick-up pulled us out and we were back on our way.

From what I’ve heard, this is just another routine trip on the winter road.