At the top of the world...
- Ain't nothing better than an icy road in the morning.
There's a job only a few would dare.
- This isn't Disneyland.
This is real.
- One of the most dangerous jobs there is.
- All that matters to my wife and my kids
is that I make it home.
Long as I'm not in a pine box, we're good.
The ice road truckers are back.
- They're my roads, you know?
- On, baby.
- Shoot!
Last year, they chased their fortunes
over the frozen gauntlet of the Dalton.
- The Dalton will throw everything it can at you.
You don't know what's going to happen.
But this season...
Alaska's most fearsome road...
- Whoa! Get back!
ls just the beginning...
- Whoa! Ho! Ho! Ho!
As the new riders of the last frontier...
Come on, baby!
Head off the Dalton
and over the frozen rivers of Alaska's outback.
- This is the definition of the middle of nowhere.
- The weather's moving in.
The temperature's dropping really fast.
We may not make it.
This year,
the ice road truckers finally break through.
- Oh, shoot!
These are the truckers
who make their living on thin ice.
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll
- Well, I've been driving the haul road
for about ten years now.
I know every corner on that road.
What I don't know is what's around that next corner.
It could be something beautiful,
or it could be a near-death experience.
And that's the haul road.
On the haul road, also known as the Dalton,
there's a dead man for every mile
and a mangled wreck in every ditch.
- Whoa! Oh,!
Oh,!
From the truck yards of Fairbanks
to the oil fields of the frozen Arctic,
it's a 500-mile-long gauntlet of terror.
- Watch out. Here we go.
Starting in the winding curves
of the collision zone known as the TAPS.
- Watch out! Watch out!
To the monster drop of the notorious Roller Coaster
- Okay, hold on.
Over the sheer cliffs of the ice shelf...
Through the avalanche alley
of Atigun Pass...
- Watch out!
Run! Run!
Past the blinding whiteouts
of the North Slope...
- I can't see a damn thing.
Ice road truckers risk it all
delivering crucial loads
to one of North America's biggest energy reserves.
- They depend completely on trucks to haul in everything
that they need up here.
But this season,
they push beyond the Dalton into new extremes of danger...
- By God, let's go trucking.
Across the open ice of the widest river delta
west of the Mississipi to the native village of Nuiqsut
and over frozen swamplands to the lost gold-mining town
of Bettles.
- We're driving over 65% swamp.
With new roads come bigger loads...
- We're over 200,000 pounds right now.
Like 1/4 million-pound giants
that take three big diesels
to push and bash
their way up the ice.
Six truckers take on the ice roads
in the dash for the cash.
Only one will haul the most loads,
but all must accomplish their mission.
- I'll break it down for you.
It's 90 days with 2,500 loads, 50 million pounds,
and 500 miles of hills and curves
and rocks and snow and wind.
It's go time.
Jack Jessee, the king of heavy haul trucking.
Last year, Jack owned the ice road,
hauling the most loads and the biggest.
- They put it on the trailer.
They tell me to get it there safely.
I get it there.
And Jack's first load of the season is no different.
- Ready'?
It's a real tape-measure job.
- We're 100 feet long,
we're 17 feet wide,
and we're 16'6" high.
- Right on. Got it.
a giant docking station
for pipes leading in and out of the Alaskan Pipeline.
- One of the biggest concerns on a load like this is, I mean,
this is a pretty specialized piece.
Makes it pretty expensive,
so you definitely don't want any damage.
The oil fields have waited
nearly a year for this piece of equipment.
And now, with temperatures dipping
to a balmy minus 28 degrees,
the ice should be thick enough to support its 58,000 pounds.
- Well, it's nerve-racking.
The most concentration I feel like I have to do
is just getting this thing out of town
and not hitting anybody or anything.
The rig is so massive
it takes a fleet of pilot cars...
- All right, I got two that I can see behind us here.
And surgical driving skills
to move a mile.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Real slow, real slow.
I don't know if you're gonna make it here.
The slightest miscalculation
and Jack damages the $1/2 million load-or worse-
takes out a passing driver.
- The potential energy of that load is just amazing.
I've got a lot of brakes,
but they're only gonna work so good.
Mentally, it's just a-
it's a strain knowing you've got all this responsibility on you,
'cause if anything happens, I mean, it's gonna be my fault.
- Just come on through there nice and easy.
- Yeah, go real, real slow.
- We're clear back here.
At first light on day one
of the ice road season,
Jack Jessee is once again out in front.
- It makes you feel pretty good
when they give you a big load like this
knowing that you're gonna get it up there.
They have full confidence that the job's gonna get done.
Getting the job done
means navigating the most dangerous road
in North America...
without adding another cross to the roadside.
In Fairbanks, 27-year-old Greg Boadwine
is bound for the Dalton,
a trip he thought he'd never make again.
- Hi, guys. - Love you, Dad.
- Love you guys.
In his second year on the Dalton,
Greg is out for redemption.
His rookie season ended in a terrifying crash
when his semi, loaded with drill pipe,
overturned.
- Steer tire on the passenger side
caught a little bit of snow.
Truck starts leaning, and I take my seatbelt off.
Feet go toward the passenger side, and next thing I know,
I'm standing on my passenger-side door and window.
About the only thing I thought when that truck landed
on its side was, "Oh,."
I knew I lost my job.
Greg was lucky to walk away,
and now he's lucky that his bosses
are willing to give him a second chance.
- After my accident last year,
I really feel that I'm just...
hanging here by a thread.
- Okay, bye. Love you.
- Have fun.
Don't let 'em beat you up too much.
- For sure.
As he leaves for his make-or-break season,
Greg may be anxious, but his family's scared.
- Sometimes I cry when he leaves.
I know he loves his job
and I try to be as supportive as I can,
but I can't sleep if he's on the road.
Until I hear his voice, there's no relaxing.
I don't want to lose him.
300 miles south is Wasilla, Alaska,
home to a certain rogue politician...
- Sarah Palin?
Yeah, Sarah Palin.
And a trailblazing ice road trucker.
- I didn't move here 'cause of her.
I was here 'cause of the snowboarding
and dirt biking and trucking and the skydiving.
Thrill-seeker Lisa Kelly
respect.
To get it, she's saying good-bye to her favorite things.
- I got my new little pony horse and my little family
I've established over the summers here.
I'm gonna miss my Rocky boy,
'cause I've been working with training him and stuff
and I've had him, like, three months,
and now I'm gonna be gone three months.
When he comes in, this is his herd.
There's two cats and two dogs.
Come on in.
I'm gonna miss my buddies, so...
That's for sure.
Well, babe, ready to hit the road?
Looks good.
Next stop, the haul road:
trucking's most unforgiving proving ground.
- Last year, I think, was a good beginning
as to proving myself,
but I don't think I've proved it yet.
And my big saying's been I had to work twice as hard
to prove I'm half as good.
But as soon as Lisa hits the road,
the CB buzzes with bad news.
- What you got?
- Apparently not.
- Uh, when-when did this happen?
Just minutes after truckers hit the ice road
on day one...
the Dalton struck back.
The investigating officer
rolls up to survey the wreck.
- This is the worst accident
I've seen with a vehicle of this size.
Something like this,
you can get serious internal injuries,
broken bones, and head traumas
from bouncing around in the cab.
The driver was taken to the hospital.
His condition is unknown.
While recovery teams race to the scene,
the officer tries to determine the cause of the accident.
- We have tire marks right here in the snow
where he's losing his traction.
You can see right over here
where he'd gotten off onto the shoulder,
which looks like it caused the load to shift,
tipping the truck over.
When a truck's wheel catches the soft snow
of the shoulder, it can set off an irreversible chain of events.
The mass of the load shifts to the right,
carrying the whole rig with it.
- You can tell by the debris field here he hit real hard
and it spread.
You can see how it went out about 20 yards.
But until they move the pipes
strewn across the road,
the final six miles to Prudhoe Bay is closed.
400 miles south in Fairbanks,
the accident is now on everybody's mind.
And although it wasn't a Carlile driver,
it underscores the danger of the ice road.
- The safety aspect of what we do is huge.
Make sure that we have no accidents.
Make sure that we have no injuries.
And we have the best drivers in the world here.
And one of those drivers
has just arrived for his 29th season on the ice
and his second in Alaska.
- Look what the cat dragged in.
Alex Debogorski, how you doing?
- My name is Alex Debogorski.
I'm 6'4" according to the doctor this morning
and I had some friends say they didn't know
that baloney could be stacked that high.
Every year, Alex tries to outhaul
his hard-driving rival Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland.
- So I'm catching up to you.
- Yeah? - Are you concerned?
- Not a bit.
Every year, Alex comes up a load short.
But it's day one of a new season and Hugh is nowhere to be seen.
Alex gets a jump on him with 48,000 pounds of pipe
bound for the oil fields.
But the haul road is just a warm-up
to a more dangerous journey
that will take him across the frozen Colville River...
to a remote native village.
And with one trucker already coming close
to meeting his maker,
Alex is looking for all the help he can get.
- Heavenly Father,
we ask you to protect your servant as he travels,
as he does the good work for his fellow man.
In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
- Good to get a blessing from a priest.
Good to have myself blessed
and good to have the truck blessed.
Some weight's been lifted off my shoulders.
Lisa Kelly reports for her first load of the season.
- Ryan is gonna run up with you today.
I've already given him his load
and what I got for you is a car hauler.
Word of the wreck
is fueling her first-run jitters.
- Can we trade?
- No.
The thing with the car hauler,
you've never pulled before, right?
- Right. - Okay.
On the ice road,
a car carrier stacked 17-feet high
with pickup trucks
is a rollover waiting to happen and it's big trouble for tires.
- If you get going too fast up the road,
those things have a tendency to blow tires,
so don't try to break any speed limits.
Time to go north.
- Okay.
- We'll make it happen either way.
- Thank you so much for running with me.
I appreciate it.
As Lisa pulls onto the ice road...
it seems to be waiting to take her down.
- The frame of the trailer is, like, this far off my tires,
so if I hit a bump too hard,
the frame will come down and pop the tires.
Lisa's got just 15 hours to reach Prudhoe Bay.
If she goes too slow, she blows the deadline...
too fast, she blows her tires.
Her first run of the season
may be the most difficult 500 miles of her career.
- It's like running the car trailer on balloons over cactus.
Greg Boadwine returns to dispatch
for the first time since a rollover accident
ended his rookie season.
That ill-fated load was 40,000 pounds of drill pipe,
not unlike what's now scattered six miles outside of Prudhoe.
- Greg.
- How you doing today?
Desperate to prove himself,
he'll take any job he can get.
- Well, looks like pipe.
- Oh, really'? That sucks.
- All right.
- Another load of pipe.
I'm always concerned about a load of pipe.
Doesn't handle that great.
Just makes me nervous.
I don't like round objects that fall.
Hauling 47,000 pounds of pipe
is like carrying a load of would-be projectiles.
But with a new season in front of him,
Greg's got his sights on the road ahead.
- Our absolute primary goal making it to Prudhoe.
Jack Jessee.
The haul road ace is out ahead.
We need to have him behind us and keep him behind us
for the duration of the ice road season.
In the southern foothills of the Brooks Range
is the loneliest 30 miles of road on the continent
branching off the Dalton
and dead-ending at the town of Bettles, Alaska.
Population...
More sled dogs than people.
- Bettles is 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle,
right smack in the middle of Alaska.
Bettles is isolated from the outside world
by impassable rivers,
except for the 30 days out of the year
that the rivers freeze deep enough...
so the most hard-core of ice road truckers can roll.
- This is really like old-time trucking in Alaska.
This is how trucking used to be years and years ago.
Welcome to the Bettles Trail.
- It's a trail because
It's not a road.
The trail is a relic of the old Hickel Highway,
the forerunner of the Dalton,
built in a rush after the great oil discoveries of 1968.
- There's a saying in Alaska.
"We don't give a damn how they do it outside."
And I think Governor Hickel
was operating with that Alaskan spirit.
Crews bulldozed the permafrost
to make the road, and in just one year,
Hickel's Highway melted away.
- As soon as the warm weather started to warm up the road,
it turned into a bog, one long 400-mile mud hole.
It hasn't improved in the 40 years since...
while Mervyn Gilbertson and his father before him
have trucked the Bettles Trail.
Their mission?
Deliver freight to the town of Bettles
and fuel to the power plant.
- We're coming right up to the edge here.
Partway in,
they're faced with their first river crossing of the winter.
- Is this thing- is it deep enough to hold us?
- Well, we're kind of doing test holes
to see how thick this ice is and how far it is
to the ground under there.
- Lot of pressure built back up in here.
There's a lot of water wanting to come through.
Pressurized water breaks through the ice
in streams called overflows.
Overflows are like natural jackhammers busting up the ice.
- Ice is too thin.
The water's too deep.
- What do you think, Merv?
- Let's try it.
The first time you go across a frozen river,
you're always just on edge.
All right.
As you ease onto it, it's like,
"Okay, is it gonna hold me or not?"
80,000 pounds of loaded big rig
lowers onto the brittle Bettles ice...
- Whoa!
And instantly breaks through.
- Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Careful!
- Ahh!
Halfway up the Bettles Trail,
80,000 pounds of tanker truck meets river ice...
and loses.
- Whoa.
- Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Careful.
- Ahh!
At 42 below zero, a submerged wheel
can freeze in place within minutes.
Mervyn needs to move, or he'll be trapped in the ice.
Back on solid ground,
but the mission to resupply the town is a bust
if they stay on this side of the river.
- You've got freight.
You need to get it to Bettles.
Mervyn gives it one more shot,
hoping the multiple layers of ice can hold him.
- Power your way through it,
bust all the ice out of your way.
Chains gripping,
he claws forward and across the other side.
- Whew!
Ha-ha!
But before the month is through,
the convoy will face the same treacherous river crossing
more than 20 times.
- Let's go to Bettles.
120 miles south...
a new driver is preparing to face the beast.
Cold.
Rookie Ray Veilleux
is about to pull away from everything he's ever known.
- Oop!
Text message.
When he gets a reminder
of what he's leaving behind.
- Oh!
It's my daughter.
It says, "Hi, Dad, miss you and love you!"
That's pretty cool.
That's excellent.
With his daughters blessing
and 40,000 pounds of pipe,
Ray starts his rookie run up the Dalton.
He heard the legend and he studied the maps.
Now it starts for real.
- This is where all our hell starts.
We're gonna hit Roller Coaster, Mackey-all that stuff.
It's gonna get real slow.
But you do what you gotta do, I guess.
What Ray had to do was leave his home and family
in the Lower 48 and start a new career in Alaska.
- I drove truck in Montana.
I had my own dump truck and stuff like that.
I've been in business for myself for, like, 20 years.
I was always the boss.
But now I come here, and I have to start at the bottom.
Down in Kalispell, Montana,
Ray was living the good life:
happily married, raising two kids,
and running his own construction company.
But when the housing market tanked, Ray lost his business
and suddenly found himself in the same fix
as a whole lot of other guys.
- What's at stake for me is hanging on to the things
I've worked hard to get.
And I don't want to lose them.
If you're a responsible parent, husband,
you're gonna do it.
You're gonna do what you got to do to support your family
and not lose what you got.
Come on.
For now, hard times may be behind him,
but deadly moments lie ahead.
- Every man for himself,
so we're off on our own and we'll get it done.
200 miles up the ice is Alex Debogorski,
rolling through the high country of the Brooks Range.
- A little more snow on the road and a horse with a-
with a sleigh behind it, and we can be singing Jingle Bells
going down the road.
We've just got that kind of scenery
that you think you should be behind a horse and a sleigh.
But this winter wonderland
leads straight to a trucker's nightmare...
Atigun Pass.
- One truck north over the pass.
- Okay, uh, copy that.
At 4,700 feet,
Atigun is the northernmost high mountain pass
on the continent.
And it's where one of the most dangerous tricks of the Arctic
can wreak havoc with truckers.
- Holy mackerel!
Temperature went right up to minus five.
It's called thermal inversion.
The coldest air, being heavier,
sinks beneath the warmer layers of air.
As Alex climbs the pass,
the temperatures can dramatically rise...
causing his traction to decrease.
- Temperature isn't too great.
It's just three above zero.
On these steep hills, I like it when it's cold,
'cause then I'll have a little better traction.
The danger zone is 32 degrees.
The ice just begins to thaw and truckers start spinning out.
- Uh-oh, this looks like it's a little slippery.
Spinout here and there's nowhere to go but down,
hundreds of feet down.
- Holy mackerel!
Goodness grief.
Just as long as a person doesn't change direction
or start using a bunch of brakes.
The temperature hits the critical mark...
just as Alex enters another danger zone.
Warm temperatures can also trigger avalanches.
- Hang on to your socks.
Colder.
But for Alex, the stony summit of Atigun Pass
rolls by without an avalanche or a spinout...
but maybe with a few more gray hairs.
- In getting older, I'm getting better.
Six miles south of Prudhoe Bay
is a disaster zone.
Earlier, a big rig ripped into pieces
and scattered across the road.
Word has come in that the driver is okay.
Now a DOT road crew is on the scene.
But with daylight waning and traffic backing up,
the whole season is on hold until the wreck is cleared.
- Two loaders on the side of it, tie off to the truck,
and just try and drag it back over and flip it
without going in the ditch with the loaders.
When it's this cold,
metal becomes brittle; chains snap without warning.
Inch by inch, the cat drivers
leverage the tons of straining metal.
Until...
At last light, the crew finally clears the road
into Prudhoe Bay.
Nightfall, the northern lights flare across the sky.
But even the king of heavy haul, Jack Jessee,
can't take time to enjoy the light show.
His newest rival, Greg Boadwine, is on his heels.
- And look at that.
We've got ourselves a Jack Jessee
in the parking lot, by God.
Jack Jessee.
- Greg, what's happening?
- I've finally caught up to you.
Starting to wonder if I was going to.
- I've been sitting here waiting on you.
- Oh, I do appreciate it. - I got a handicap.
- Oh, okay. - How you doing?
- Smaller and lighter than you.
- You know, buddy, I'd offer to trade you loads,
but I really like mine in comparison.
- You know, most people say that.
Reaching the halfway mark at Coldfoot,
Greg needs to refuel,
giving Jack an opportunity to take the lead
but not for long.
- We are lean and limber.
Jack's not gonna beat me to Prudhoe.
Just five miles south is Lisa Kelly...
nursing her car hauler up the ice.
- Um, it's rough, so that means I gotta go slow for my tires,
my wonderful tires.
Gonna take her slow
and try not to blow anything off the trailer.
At just 25 miles an hour,
Lisa is playing it too safe for her convoy partner, Ryan.
Already two hours behind,
they stand to blow their deadline to Prudhoe
unless Ryan breaks one of the unwritten laws of the road.
- All right, um...
- What?
- Oh.
At the truck stop, Lisa takes it up with the boss.
- All right.
It works for me, I guess.
Thanks.
Okay, bye.
Let's just get there.
Let's get it done.
- Lisa's never pulled this trailer before.
I figured I have quite a bit, so...
to make it a little easier.
And make sure we get to Prudhoe tonight.
It's a bitter moment for Lisa.
No trucker wants to admit they're having trouble
with a load.
But on the Dalton, knowing when to step down
can mean everything.
70 miles north is rookie Ray Veilleux...
coming up on the big mountain pass.
- We're on our way to Atigun Pass.
And I just hope I make it, that's all.
I've just got my fingers crossed on this one.
First over the 4,700-foot pass
was Alex Debogorski.
But the old veteran did it in broad daylight.
This rookie is facing Atigun in the dead of night.
- I'm focused.
Focused.
Gotta pay attention.
And there's a dark omen just ahead.
- Oh, there's a wreck right up ahead of us here.
Ray's heard reports of the second major accident
of the season,
a big rig that spun out and crumpled into the ditch.
- Wow.
There's the trailer right there.
That's a mess.
Flipped right over.
That's just what we need.
Ray starts up Atigun.
- So I don't want to miss a gear here.
If I miss a gear here, then we're screwed.
The darkness beyond his wheels
is a sheer cliff dropping 1,000 feet.
- Whoa.
And Ray's running barefoot,
or without chains.
- Okay, I'm shooting for the pass barefooted.
We're just gonna hit it and zip right through.
It could be that in his rush
to pass the second accident, the rookie has set himself up...
- Holy-
To be wreck number three.
- There go my tires.
We're sliding.
Damn it!
Come on!
On the knife-edge cliff of Atigun Pass...
- Come on!
Ray Veilleux loses traction,
bringing the truck to a full stop.
- Uh...
I'm done.
- What the hell is that?
- Burnt out at the pass.
A burnout is when a spinout
comes to a dead stop.
- At the pass, we have a burnout.
- Damn it!
Not chaining up was a rookie mistake
that could've killed him.
- I knew it was going too good.
But at least he's still on the road.
- So we're going.
We're climbing up now.
We're still moving forward.
Got the rubber end down.
It's all good.
As night deepens and temperatures plunge,
the ice road truckers rumble over the mountains
and onto the barrens of the North Slope.
And the first driver reaches the gritty oil town
on the Arctic Ocean.
- A successful trip to Prudhoe.
Alex Debogorski beats everybody
to the top of the world.
- I'm just setting my first load of the new season down.
It's nice and cool so there's no mosquitoes.
But for Alex, it's just a pit stop.
Come morning, he'll head across a vast expanse of river ice
to one of the most remote places in Alaska.
Minutes later, another trucker rolls into Prudhoe.
It's the rookie.
- I'm happy.
It's first load of the season, so that's good.
After surviving a bad spinout
on Atigun Pass, Ray Veilleux settled down and made good.
- You know, I'm just a rookie.
I'm the new guy.
I just got lucky,
you know, and kept it on the road
and got the first load up there.
Just kept truckin'.
20 miles south of Prudhoe Bay,
Greg Boadwine's still gunning to pass Jack Jesse,
though he's running out of road.
- I don't suppose you've seen our haul road ace Jack Jessee
floating around up here somewhere.
- No, I sure haven't seen him yet.
- Geez, if you haven't seen him and I haven't seen him yet,
I guess he's already beat me into town.
Then, on the horizon...
- Jack
Taillights.
You can see Jack Jessee's strobe lights up there.
All right, we finally see him.
Time to go get him.
Probably got three, four miles on me.
I guess we lucked out after all,
and we're gonna get the king.
- You think he'd slow down a little more or something.
- Oh, that always works.
- Pretty sure we got just enough distance to catch him.
Gotta catch the king.
Somebody's gotta knock him off his throne.
Now two drivers duel
the ace, Jack Jessee;
the upstart, Greg Boadwine.
- We got just enough distance to catch the king
before making it in to Prudhoe.
Time to go get him.
Two miles to go,
Greg is right on Jack's taillights
looking for room to pass.
- Ah, there's Greg.
Greg finally caught up with us.
- Took us the whole trip, but here we are.
- I figured he'd catch us a little sooner than that.
Jack is running slower but bigger
and is more of an obstacle to pass.
After chasing the king for 500 miles...
Greg comes up a few feet short.
- Oh, yeah.
Still working on you, by God.
- You got me.
- Well, I'm glad you finally made it here.
I started to get worried for a second.
- Jack gave me a little bit of crap today.
It's basic banter.
The more he gives me crap,
the more I think he might actually respect me.
- Glad you made it.
- The more he gives me crap, the better I feel about it.
But what makes a family back home feel good
Dad's okay.
- Hi, honey.
- What happened?
- I'm in Prudhoe.
- All right, love you.
- All right, tell the kids I said hi and love 'em.
- All right, love you.
- All right, love you too.
- Bye.
Five miles back,
emerging from the darkness of the tundra...
- We are right here, right now.
Is Lisa Kelly.
- I'm almost to the Prudhoe Bay here, and, uh,
just about finishing up this trip.
Halfway through,
Lisa had to suck up her pride and swap trailers
with her running partner, Ryan.
- It is 34 below.
She's worried it will haunt her
for the rest of the season.
- Lisa's concern was that the other drivers out there
were gonna give her a hard time for swapping loads
and that she couldn't handle that load and that-
I discount that completely.
- They say women gossip?
Try truckers.
They're the worst.
Daybreak, day two.
After his night delivery to Prudhoe Bay,
Alex Debogorski starts on his second leg:
far across the river ice to the village of Nuiqsut.
- I've got loader tires for the airport loader, I think,
and a bunch of lumber.
I'll be driving on ice...
on the frozen water.
He reaches the ice bridge on the Colville River.
But the snowpack is so deep
that the only way to tell where the tundra ends
and the river begins...
is the sound of ice cracking.
- Here, you're on water.
Whoa, baby.
Even with being experienced in driving on ice,
it's still a little nerve-wracking
when you're driving over a long distance of water.
River ice is shot through
with pockets of flowing water.
Some are large enough to swallow a big rig.
- One more bend and we're in Nuiqsut.
The ice buckles and moves one final time.
And Alex is once again on steady ground.
After a year-long wait and a 560-mile journey
from Fairbanks...
- Hi, how's it going?
Alex delivers the first load of the season
from across the ice.
- God bless you and your family, and thank you for everything.
Alex is first to Prudhoe Bay
and first across the ice.
But just as one Canadian grabs the lead,
the invasion kicks up a gear.
- Finally, back in Alaska.
Them guys that were making all them bets
and saying I wasn't gonna show up-
they're gonna their pants
when they find out Polar Bear's back in Dodge.
Next time on Ice Road Truckers...
- Let's go just a little tad harder here.
The Polar Bear is back on the hunt.
- And I'm not stopping today.
I'm getting to Prudhoe Bay no matter what.
And the Dalton...
- Right now we're in a phase two blow.
Begins to take its toll.
- When I step on my brakes, they're not catching.
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll