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It was a stone cold day in January of 2001. Maybe not from
an Arctic perspective, but
-18°C at the Toronto lakefront with the
humid damp air is a bone chilling experience. I was working
for EMS at the time, not ‘Emergency Medical Services’ but the
more prosaic ‘Energy Management Systems’. Almost a year had
passed since the company started a huge project to supply
fiber optic substations with high-tech security systems.
Substations are located every hundred kilometers along the
Trans Canada railroad tracks from coast to coast and I had
already been in almost every one of them hardwiring and
downloading our systems - sometimes with Valery, our
company’s programmer, sometimes single-handed. Armed with an
SUV, rifle, chainsaw, computers, wires, tools and laptop, I
was driving through all kind of terrain, having the time of
my life.
That January day, I was in the
Mississauga
office preparing for my next trip, collecting parts and
tools. It was nice and cozy and nothing indicated what kind
of day it would really be.
The call came around 3 o’clock that afternoon: a
substation in northern Ontario had a problem. One of the doors
wouldn’t opened and the client (I think it was NTNT)
threatened to walk away from the project if it wasn’t fixed
soon. It took me half an hour to collect my tools and spare
parts, jump into the Ford Explorer SUV rental that was just
outside the door, and drive away on a journey I would never
forget.
With all my outdoor experience, I don’t know what I
was thinking when I drove away to a place that I have never
been before (somebody else installed our system in few
substations in Northern Ontario).
All I had with me was a set of GPS coordinates and from that
I knew the substation was some 800 km “as the crow flies”.
At the beginning of the journey, the route wasn’t so bad
despite some icy patches and snow falling down at French River.
As usual, I had my coffee at the Tim Hortons in Perry
Sound’s, filled up the SUV’s tank using the company credit
card and hunkered down for the crazy 600 km ahead of me. A
trip like this wasn’t out of the ordinary for me, though, so
why it was so crazy? Because this time, despite the weather,
I didn’t have the blanket, candle, matches, warm clothing,
extra gas canister or even the small survival pack that for
years I have always carried with me on all my long journeys
and hunting trips. Yes… what I was thinking? More likely, I
didn’t think at all…
The regular, normal route would take me through Sault Ste
Marie, and after a night at the hotel there or in Wawa, the
next day I’d be at the work site. But of course, that day I
wasn’t thinking properly – I realized I knew a shortcut.
From my hunting trips I remembered that there was a private
gravel road for about a hundred kilometre stretch which
would save me at least 150 clicks. Both ways would save 300
clicks and on a long, lonely drive, this was definitely
something to take into real consideration. I was passing
Sudbury
around 8:45 pm. The gas station I was aiming for was located
on H-wy 144, about 135 km ahead. After that there wasn’t any
open gas station for another 300 km. It sounds strange for
the city slickers, but that’s the reality in northern Ontario, especially at
night. The gas station was open till 10:00 pm and after a
crazy drive on icy route 144, I just barely made it, rolling
into the station with five minutes to spare. Full of relief,
I faced one more unwelcome surprise - they didn’t take
credit cards, only cash. Luckily, I had twenty-some dollars
on me and thankfully, that year it was enough to fill up the
tank. Well, almost. The tank wasn’t empty; it wasn’t
that good a price.
By the time I pulled out of the gas station, the temperature
had dropped significantly. It was -25° C, with a high wind.
I didn’t think about it much, and focused more on having
over 150 km ahead of me. That short cut, as I said, was a
private road used for logging. I didn’t think that at that
hour there would be any traffic and there wasn’t, but the
road itself was a big challenge. Just slightly plowed, with
no salt or sand, it was covered by solid ice throughout,
almost a hundred kilometres. Up and down, sharp turns left
and right… it took all my skills learned years ago on
European rallies to drive close to 100 km/h. My SUV was
going more sideways than straight, but it was sort of fun,
especially with the snow banks to hold me inside. I didn’t
think of what would happen if the SUV went out of control
and crashed in that kind of weather; there was not a soul
that would know where I was, or where to look for me.
I
knew that route from my previous trips, and I remembered one
especially nasty turn. It was just after a hill hill on the
top of which was a sharp turn right, and then a steep
descent. Now, every time the route went up I was kind of
expecting that sharp right turn. And finally it happened. Of
course with that speed the car just flew sideways. Right,
left, right - the trick is to turn the steering wheel before
the car straightened itself and believe me, you have to move
that wheel real fast. And of course you never, ever touch
the brake. Though it felt much longer, I was going straight
again in no more than ten seconds. I reset the speedometer
to zero so I could mark the distance to that nasty turn on
my way back. I breathed a sigh of relief and finally enjoyed
the beautiful scenery flooded in my high beam headlights,
spruce under heavy canopes of snow, all black and white and
big snow flakes that just started to fall down. Nobody and
nothing around but nature.
Finally I came to an asphalt route, close to a town
called Sultan and after few kilometres I turned left toward
Wawa. Back in those days, GPS wasn’t anything like it is
today. It was accurate, but it just had an arrow pointing in
the direction of the landmark “as crow flies” and the
distance to the destination. It was up to my judgment which
route I chose to turn right. The only problem was that there
wasn’t any route right, or left for that matter. After a few
more kilometers, the GPS arrow started to point backwards,
indicating that I must have overlooked the turn. I went back
and this time I was real careful. Soon enough, a small
clearing between the trees and a very narrow route, like a
snowmobile trial, showed up in the headlights.
In fact it was a
snowmobile trial. Oh well, the arrow on the GPS pointed
straight ahead, and it was all that mattered. And it wasn’t
far, just about 15 km. With a shrug, I pointed the SUV off
the main route. Now I was going on the snowmobile trial in
Ford Explorer in the middle of the night. In retrospect, it
was probably a good thing it was the middle of the night as
there was less of a chance of meeting a snowmobile going
high speed at me from the opposite direction; those babies
can go over a hundred kilometers an hour. Of course, no one
would expect to encounter an SUV on a snowmobile trail and
that would end in disaster.
I was coming closer to my destination, just a few more
clicks. The trail widened somehow into a sharp right turn
and as I was coming out of turn, this time going slow, out
of the corner of my eye I noticed a dark grey shadow moving
across my path, maybe 15 yards ahead of me. Well, there is a
God and he loves me. He must. That shadow was a freight
train. If I was going any faster, and I have no idea why I
slowed down so much, I would have hit that train and that
would have been the end of that trip and all other trips as
well because I’d simply be dead. It took about five minutes
for the train to clear the path. After that, it was easy to
find the substation along the tracks.
  
It was cold. The thermometer outside the substation pointed
to -25° C. A howling wind didn’t help either. But inside the
substation was nice and warm. All systems were working,
except one door and it didn’t take me long to discover that
the problem was in a proxy mounted outside the door. Whoever
installed it hadn’t stripped the wires, opting instead to
connect them isolation, which didn’t work so well.
  
In normal circumstances, it would take five minutes to fix
that and another ten to check the systems, but in that cold
it took me over an hour because every few minutes I had to
warm up my fingers inside. They simply didn’t function for
any longer than that; they were frozen to the bone.
Finally it was over, system checked and working, and
I was heading back home. When I came to Sultan – Wawa route,
I had a blink of common sense come to my brain to go to Wawa,
just about 150 clicks west. But no, why should I listen to
common sense? In keeping with my crazy thinking of the day,
instead I turned east to go the same route I came. It was
1:40am, I had 260 km to go to the nearest open gas station,
and I was in the middle of nowhere with no way of knowing if
I had enough gas to make it. That gas station at H-wy 144
opened at 6:00 am. At about 2:30 am I figured I had another
130 or so km to go - I’d be there way too early to count on
it. But I kept going anyway. The town of Sultan showed on the left again, and I took
the right turn with no sign where it was headed but I was
already confident which way to go. I zeroed the speedometer
for that nasty turn I was anticipating and after the
railroad crossing, the rollercoaster on that icy private
route began again. I wasn’t going as fast as before to save
gas, maybe 80 to 90 km/h. The turn was coming. Just another
3 km, and then…
Everything happened so fast that I had to recoil
after everything was over. The nasty turn showed up sooner
than expected, and when I came to the top this time with the
left sharp turn I saw a huge Christmas tree going right at
me with all its lights blazing. It was so close that I saw
the terrified face of the truck driver right in front of me…
My reaction was instantaneous. There weren’t many options -
actually, there was only one: go straight through the snow
bank. And that what I did. I don’t even remember how it
happened, it happened so fast. All of a sudden the truck was
gone and I was off the road, but alive and in one piece. The
truck didn’t stop. Maybe the driver thought it was just a
bad dream. Definitely he didn’t expect any traffic on that
private log route at that ungodly hour. It took me several
minutes to get out of shock, then I started to get out of
the snow and back on the route. Amazingly it didn’t take
long, and I didn’t have to leave the warm interior of the
SUV.
Oh, well, that wouldn’t be the last time. The near
death experience happened to me often enough that I started
to get used to it. Shortly afterwards, I was on the route
again, still driving under 90 km/h to save the gas and then
something happened again! I had seen a shadow moving fast on
the right, then heard and felt a bump in the back. Not much,
but enough to hit the brakes. Of course I didn’t have a
flashlight either, so I turned around fast, using the
handbrake. In a moment my headlights shone in the opposite
direction and spread on the route, quiet and already
lifeless, lay the body of one of the most beautiful animals,
the lynx. It had hit the side of the car and was run over by
a rear tire. I felt real sorry, but I knew could not do
anything to avoid it. It was just pure bad luck. It would be
a shame to leave it to rot, so I took the lifeless body and
dropped it in the back of the car.
Finally, I came to the cross-section with H-wy 144
and turned right toward Sudbury. It was still before 4:00 am, so the
gas station was closed. The reserve light on the dashboard
blinked and then glowed steadily. There was no other choice
but to keep going. So I went. It was the longest 100 km that
I ever remembered. I was going 80 km/h and it took me over
an hour before I saw the lights of town close to Sudbury where I knew there was a 24 hour gas
station. I had that gas station in sight when the engine
kicked couple times and stopped. I changed the gear to
neutral position and the SUV just rolled quietly through the
snowy landscape, finally coming to a rest right at the pump.
I know it is hard to believe but that exactly what happened.
The rest is history. Happy go lucky, I didn’t
stop at the hotel in Sudbury
but drove straight to
Mississauga. You wouldn’t normally
say that 400 km of snowy route was ordinary, but that’s what
it felt like, after what I had been through. Around 10:00 am
I parked on my driveway in
Mississauga, went inside, drop my
clothes on the floor and hit the bed. After few hours of
sleep I drove to
Guelph
to report a lynx killed in a route accident. It is an
endangered species, so you have to actually show the killed
animal to the conservation officer to prove it was in fact
was an accident. After that I could keep the lynx legally.
The story ends here. I guess I stretched my luck a bit this
time, but again I was alive and kicking, and that’s all that
matters.
Marek Mañkowski
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