A slippery slope - fun on the glacier.

(Lou, Yukon)
The emotional rollercoaster we’ve been riding on our broken down snowmachine took a couple of stomach-churning turns this week.

We fixed our machine! All by ourselves! (With only a little bit of help from just about everyone in a hundred mile radius.)

Then we managed to break it again before we got it running!

Superb. How did we manage this amazing feat?

We went to town last week on a borrowed Skidoo to collect our new snowmachine, a 1993 Polaris 340 (or Piccolo as we’ve named him.) The new part we needed to fix our machine, a coupler, was there at the PO (along with a very welcome parcel of gin and chocolate.)

We waited for it get above -30 before going to fit the coupler as our disabled machine was still two miles away out on the trail. It didn’t. We went anyway as we wanted to return the Skidoo our Alaskan pals had lent us.

The new coupler fitted beautifully. We got her running but she just wasn’t happy, smoking and backfiring, now what? Ah, very simple, we fouled the spark plugs. We changed them and headed home for gin.

Delighted with our mechanicing skills, we returned the Skidoo the very next day. Our kind friend had offered to weld a tow hook on to Piccolo for us, so we set off on that and the Skidoo.

What could go wrong? A Sunday visit to friends 20 miles away. Lovely.
A glacier has formed at the end of our trail through the woods. When temps drop, creeks will often overflow. The downward pressure of the ice pushes the flowing water out at the sides of the creek so it runs up and over the ice and into the surrounding snow.

Overflow seeping into our trail on the river from under the snow

The water then freezes in increasing layers causing a small glacier to form. It grows throughout the winter in a humpy mass. It is intensely, hilariously slippery, black and white comedy film slippery. Without crampons, you just cannot stand up. Nor can you steer a snowmachine or dogsled and I could relate many hilarious bone-breaking, head-whacking, sled-busting stories about crossing glaciers.

Spinning out on a glacier last year

You slide off the hump, to the edge of the ice, as you cross. At the edge there will often be water, overflow, still running and sitting perilously hidden under a layer of insulating snow so it remains unfrozen.

Stuck in very wet overflow last year, for a very long time

The Rangers got their machines stuck in overflow at this spot a few days ago and were thoroughly drenched trying to winch them out. It took them two hours in the 30 below cold.

Glacier on another nearby creek forming icicles

We thought we’d be smarter than the Rangers. We left our machines in the woods and went on foot to investigate the glacier and overflow, and make a plan.

Our ingenious plan was, unhitch the sled we were towing. Then I drive the machines over the glacier, one at a time, whilst Neil stands knee deep in the overflow. As I slide towards him, he pushes the machine away from the water, preventing it from getting bogged down in the slush. Then we hand haul the sled across with a rope.

Pulling the sled by hand, water in the trail behind

A brilliant plan as far as I was concerned though not so good for Neil.

Very, very slippery

It worked. It took us an hour, but we could have been stuck for three times that and the water on Neil’s moose hide muks soon froze to a harmless crust. Weren’t we feeling clever! Yes, and we fixed our machine, don’t you know?

Pride before a fall.

Getting back up the glacier was a bit less easy due to the slapstick slipperiness I described earlier.

We had dropped off the Skidoo at our pals, then stayed way too long chatting and were returning after dark on Piccolo with our sled. We just could not get traction to drive the machine up on to the glacier and despite pushing and pulling it slid into the mushy overflow.

It’s a small, light machine so although we could potentially pull it by hand with a rope, we could not find anywhere within the rope’s length that wasn’t as slippery as, well, ice to stand and pull from.

Neil ended up flat on his back feet jammed in some flimsy willows. I found a small patch of hard packed snow that allowed me to tug gently like a 6 year old girl before I slid off it, so I gave up and took photos instead.

“Are you pulling that rope, Louise?” “Hard as I can”

We managed it somehow.

Piccolo safe on the creek

And got the damn sled up too, and got the whole shebang across a further flat section of trail that was beginning to turn into soggy slush beneath our feet.

Overflow slush

Pulling the sled on a rope again. Got stuck on a ramp in the woods too, for God's sake

Still, we had gin at home and we’d fixed our other machine!

Or so we thought at that point. The next day we gave it a proper test run. Things were not right. She crept forward in gear and cut out at low revs. We are mechanical innocents, unable to diagnose the simplest problems. However, that’s what the internet’s for and in a short time we had a mind-boggling array of suggested diagnostics and fixes from forums across the globe. None of which worked.

In the end, we simply stared at an exploded diagram on the Polaris website and played spot the difference until we realised-

With 30 below temps and cold fumbling hands and snow in everything we managed to lose two tiny pins out of the driven clutch. Tiny wee simple pins. They dropped down in the snow, deep in the sub-nivean world, with the shrews and lemmings and other tiny wee things.

It has snowed and blowed since and we will never find them.

Without them, we cannot adjust the cam that allows the drivebelt to sit in the correct positon on the clutch. Basically, we can’t drive the machine.
So our Polaris Widetrak is out of action again waiting for parts. At least it’s waiting in the yard now.

And we do have the marvellous Piccolo. Though much smaller and not a wide track he pulls like a little ox so we are out getting wood and debating just how far afield we go on him. Certainly he’ll get us both to Dawson to collect the two silly damn pins for the Widetrak.

I once asked a friend who has lived here 30 years, what spare parts should we keep for our snow machine? He said, “well… it depends what’s going to break.” Or what you will be stupid enough to lose in the snow.

Not travelling again for a bit will be OK as I do not wish to be seen. I’ve accidentally dyed my hair orange. I am much, much younger than I look in the photos, I’d like to make that clear, but I do see the occasional grey hair. As any working woman in the entertainment or corporate world can tell you, it is illegal to look old. Plus, I’m vain. So I keep my hair dyed to the medium brown colour that I detested in my younger days.

When we are cut off from the world in fall and early winter I let the dye grow out of my hair to allow it to recover from constant soaking in chemicals. Then I dye it again as soon as there is any danger of being seen.

I couldn’t find my usual hair colour in Whitehorse this summer so had to take a terrifying leap into the unknown. Who’d have thought Medium Brown 5.3 could be such a uniquely British shade? Caramel Brown 6W/116B has not worked out well. Another period of isolation whilst the carrot glow works its way out of my Barnet will be just fine.

Absolutely no need for a photo of me with orange hair. I'll be wearing this hat for a while

I’m not the only resident here who will appreciate a break from machine travel. Under the snow, as I mentioned, is a sub-nivean world of tunnels and chambers made by shrews and lemmings.

Protected from the cold and predators, they have a mini civilisation going on beneath our feet with covered walkways, sleeping chambers, larders, toilet areas, shops, post offices, night clubs, municipal offices… well, I’m not really sure what they have but definitely they have tunnels.

Snowmachines pack the snow down so hard they are unable to tunnel beneath our trails and have to run across in the open. At the trail’s edge we can see rodent exit tunnels, scurrying tracks from tiny feet, then an entrance tunnel back into the safety of Sub-nivea.

Sadly, these rodent pedestrian crossings have no traffic lights.

Look at this poor fellow. Just nipping from his larder to his bedroom and some knobhead on a 600 pound snowmachine crushes him flat.

The yard will be safer for a few weeks with our Widetrak out of action again, until our pins get shipped to Dawson. So we wait and, hopefully, fade.