The ice highway allows for the transportation of supplies and materials to a remote underground extraction operation, located in the Golden Triangle, an area known for its abundance of high-grade gold.
The year-round job involves the grading and grooming of the access road, as well as filling crevasses. Tsetsaut also provides the mine with machines, peripheral personnel and manages work camps.
But working on ice is difficult. With up to 30m of snow/year, the glacier is continually moving, freezing and thawing. As the day warms up, the glacier erodes, causing creeks to form in the centre of the access road, which expand into small rivers that must be diverted into drainage ditches. These need daily maintenance and the operator must fill and seal cracks while being careful not to remove too much ice.
Tsetsaut decided to invest in durable machines. The company uses a fleet of Volvo CE machines, including three excavators, five wheeled loaders and nine articulated haulers. The equipment is used to load and unload freight, haul material over the glacier, load and unload earth for the construction of the mine and remove snow from the access road and mine. These have been supplied by Volvo CE dealer Great West Equipment of Terrace, British Columbia.
Equipped with protected components and a robust undercarriage, the EC220E and EC350E excavators are able to work in the tough terrain and extreme conditions.
The 10 haulers load up at night and drive in convoy over the glacier to the mine in the morning. They reload at the mine and then make the return trip. The distance across the ice from load to unload is 10km and a one-way run takes an hour. Operators make an average of three or four trips/working day.
