Earth Matters

March Puzzler Answer: NWT Winter Road

March 23rd, 2015 by jallen

winterroad_oli_2015055

The answer to the March 2015 puzzler, most commenters agreed, involved snow and ice and cold climates. A great many guesses correctly zeroed in on far northern latitudes, with surmises about pipelines in Alaska, airport runways in Siberia, railroad sidings, and ice roads on frozen lakes. You can see the full answer and image reveal in our March 22, 2015 Image of the Day.

Reader James Simard was the first to get the location fully correct as the winter road in Canada’s Northwest Territories. James wrote:

The world’s longest ice road connects Yellowknife to three diamond mines: Ekati, Diavik, and Snap Lake. Of the 475 kilometers (300 miles) of ice road, 86 percent of it is across frozen lakes.

The ice road is the only overland supply route for the mines. Each winter, a year’s worth of fuel, construction material, heavy mining equipment, and explosives are trucked to the mines. The road provides the most cost-effective method for transporting these supplies.

However James went a step further and said that it was Landsat 8 image (yes!) from April 10, 2014 (alas, no). It turns out my puzzler choice was something that the USGS Earthshots posted online (and James’ detailed quote is from that page). If I had known the USGS folks had run this before, I would not have selected it as a puzzler. This image is actually a much more recent Landsat 8 image from February 24, 2015. I actually stumbled on it while purusing the daily images from a sister satellite instrument, EO-1’s ALI, but the Landsat image three days later covered more of the winter road. Nice find, James! Clearly I need to comb through the Earthshots page in the future first!

I also want to give a special shout-out to reader Shirley. She also got the right answer, giving the full name of the Tibbett-Contwoyto Ice Road. However, she did have an inside track on the answer. She wrote: “My company works on the road every year.”

On Facebook, many people posted correct answers (including James one minute after he posted the answer here). Some readers locked into the correct answer after recalling episodes of the History Channel’s TV series Ice Road Truckers, which focused on the Tibbett-Contwoyto Ice Road during its first season.

If you would like to know more about the Tibbett-Contwoyo Ice Road, check out the references cited on our Image of the Day answer.