Permafrost proves conclusively, if we actually needed more proof, that in the Far North, Mother Nature fights back with endless creativity. The mileage champions of the Alaska Highway Project, the 18th Engineering Regiment, faced and bested every challenge. Then they passed the Big Duke River, and Mother introduced them to permafrost—muskeg on steroids.
Slims River Bridge–more on the 18th
Heavily wooded terrain, “creased by many small ridges” gave way to a “scene of desolation”. Fred Rust remembered that “dead trees stood together like thousands of scarecrows.” They knew nothing of permafrost, but that would change.
The first ominous sign that they faced a major problem came from the kitchen police (KP’s). Sent to dig a garbage pit, the KP’s “searched far and wide for a spot… no matter where they went, they found frozen ground. One man on KP here for a week still complains that he had to dig 21 garbage pits.”
Out on the road, permafrost changed everything. Company A, as it had all the way up from Whitehorse, cleared a path out front. The other companies would use the path to follow, upgrading the path to road as they went.
Not in permafrost.
The thin surface of dirt and rotted vegetation rested on ice. Clear the surface and the ice melted to water. “Equipment bogged down everywhere.” A company trying to move up to a new section of road ran into “a nightmare of stuck trucks and broken axles… one truck could not follow another’s tracks without bogging down… Sometimes you would see D-8 hauling a train of three or four trucks, dragging them through the gumbo.”
Corduroy, the answer to muskeg, didn’t work. Dragging logs to lay across the roadbed took too long. The ice melted faster than they could bring the logs.
Eventually they learned to never expose the ice to warm temperatures, to leave the dirt and vegetable matter undisturbed, to lay the corduroy on top of it and then spread a thick layer of gravel on the corduroy.
But even then, “companies coming behind had to gravel and otherwise rework the ‘road’ of forward units. A good deal of this was less road than a sort of corduroy causeway in a Lake of mud.”
People who drive the Highway today still drive over permafrost between the Big Duke River and the Alaska border. Driving a motor home over undulating pavement, listening to the furniture behind your seat break loose and slide across the floor, you know mother nature won the battle.
