Ice Road Defender
Just four months after crossing the infamous TAT in his Defender 110, MUD-UK’S Kev Baldwin takes on Canada’s epic ice road
Fresh from the Trans-am-trail, MUD UK’S honcho battles the extreme temperatures of Canada’s ice road
In the February issue of LRM I interviewed Kev Baldwin, co-owner of MUD-UK, after he had become the first UK driver in a Defender to successfully complete the Trans-america Trail (TAT). Despite having just traversed 5500 miles of remote dirt tracks normally undertaken by dual-sport motorbikes he was desperate for a new challenge. And true to his word just a few months after we spoke he drove the notorious ice road to Tuktoyaktuk in northern Canada on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
Fortunately for Kev after crossing the USA, Brian Williams of British 4x4 in Denver, Colorado, generously offered to let him store the Defender at his premises over winter, which saved him the expense of transporting it back to the UK. It also meant that Brian could give the vehicle a thorough check over, as well as install a high amp battery, which is apparently common place for owners of vehicles in this part of the world, and a plug-in engine heater.
A few days prior to the journey, Kev then made his own personal preparations to cope with the extreme temperatures, putting together a kit with plenty of clothing and lots of food including self-heating military rations and Kendal Mint Cake, in addition to extra fuel, which as it turned out he didn’t need. He also fitted a few necessary accessories, again essential for the severe minus temperatures he’d find himself in, such as a cover to the front of the winch to protect the exposed rope and an Exmoor Trim radiator cover.
I managed to pin down some time with Kev to find out more about what it’s like to leave Tarmac in favour of ice. What made you want to drive on one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of road? The Demster Highway, which opened in 1979, was the first all-season road across the Arctic Circle that linked the town of Inuvik to the smaller village of Tuktoyaktu. In the summer Tuk is only accessible by boat and plane; come winter people drive on the iced-up Mackenzie River delta channels and frozen Arctic Ocean. As you can imagine, building the ice road each time requires a large annual investment in maintenance. Over the past few years they’ve been constructing a new 84-mile-long two-lane highway packed with gravel that links all three Canadian coasts – Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic. This was the last winter you would be able to drive the 116-mile seasonal ice road. It was now or never.
The Dalton Highway is the other road that goes near to the Arctic Ocean, but the 414-mile road, which begins at the Elliott Highway, north of Fairbanks, and ends at Deadhorse and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, is owned by oil companies and the last leg of the journey has to be taken by a private bus.
The Tuktoyaktuk Winter Road, which is part of the Dempster Highway, is the only public road to cross the Arctic Circle making it the most northerly point you can drive in the western hemisphere on a regular road, if you can call it that! It seemed fitting having driven coast to coast across the USA that we should attempt to drive as far north as possible in North America.
So, you didn’t do the trip alone?
No, I did it with my Canadian pal Wes Branson who I first
“Defenders aren’t commonplace in Canada. I didn’t see another one for the entire trip”
bumped into on the TAT trip. After we had completed the second half of the TAT together, we came up with the idea to drive the ice road as our next adventure. He did the Arctic trip in the same Wrangler soft-top, which I thought was pretty hardcore! One thing I learned from the TAT is that big experiences are something best shared, so it was good to have my old travelling companion along.
What were the weakest points of the Land Rover during your trip?
Cold starting was a big problem when the temperatures dropped below minus 20. I worked out the plug-in engine heater was warming the coolant which would fool the ECU into thinking the engine didn’t need the heater plugs. The engine would crank but refuse to fire. We tried bumpstarting it by towing it with Wes’ Jeep but it still wouldn’t fire. It did however help generate some heat in the cylinders so cranking it after a tow meant it would slowly fire into life one cylinder at a time. It sounded like a Thwaites dumper! Interestingly, once I’d got home a Land Rover engineer told me that the TDCI is known for poor cold starting. He told me that the Bigfoot 110s built for an Icelandic press trip were fitted with a manual override on the heater plugs.
Wherever possible I’d leave the engine running all night. Even with the radiator fully covered and ticking over all night, the temperature gauge never moved off the bottom of the scale. To give you an idea of how cold it was, when we filled up with fuel in Tuktoyaktuk, the temperature gauge went from normal to stone cold in the time it took to fill half a tank of fuel. And that’s with the radiator covered and the engine still running. It was minus 45, mind!
Did you experience any other problems relating to the extreme weather?
The door seals couldn’t keep out the powdered snow and the normally over-efficient Puma heater barely kept the cabin warm enough.
On the really cold mornings it would take time to get up to speed, frost would then accumulate on the side windows so I took to driving with a fleece covering my knees.
When I got home I discovered a large dry patch of skin on my right arm from resting on the freezing cold door glass for three weeks.
Surely the Defender had its strong points?
Probably the Bfgoodrich All Terrain tyres, which were brilliant and I can honestly recall only ever having one scary moment in the entire 6000-mile trip.
Sounds interesting, I’ll ask you about that later. So you didn’t have to use snow chains then?
Surprisingly not, other than the big trucks no one here uses snow chains.
The snow is a lot dryer than we get in Europe so on the deserted stretches of road in the north it was possible to drive at 60 mph on snow and ice all day long. Even at those speeds, the big rigs would pass you.
How did the locals respond to the 110?
It always attracted attention wherever we stopped. One guy couldn’t believe it only had a 2.2-litre engine rather than a V8! Defenders aren’t commonplace in Canada. I didn’t see another one during the entire trip.
“It wasn’t anything like you see on the Ice Road Truckers reality television series”
Were there any points when you thought you might not make it?
At the halfway point on the Dempster Highway we discovered the road had been closed due to nine foot snow drifts. The truck stop and motel here at Eagle Plains, with a total population of nine, are the only services on the entire route so we had no option but to sit it out with no idea when they would reopen the road. We ended up spending four days holed up in the truck stop waiting for the road to reopen. The truck drivers told us they’d been stuck there for ten days last winter! At this point we knew that Wes wasn’t going to make it back to work on time and I wasn’t going to make my flight home, but by then we decided we’d do whatever it took and stick it out as long as it needed to reach the top of the ice road. We’d come this far and we weren’t about to give up now.
What was the most challenging moment?
When they re-opened the Dempster Highway, they sent an 18-wheeler truck first as a trailblazer and we followed with the big trucks bringing up the rear. We had a 250-mile drive to Inuvik in the dark and in a snowstorm including a white-out on the stretch they call Hurricane Alley. It was probably the scariest drive of my life. Navigating using only the snow poles at the side of the road reflecting off the headlamps, all I kept thinking was, ‘what the hell am I doing?!’ Six hours later we rolled into Inuvik with the town’s temperature read-out showing minus 37. The following morning the hotel receptionist told us a truck rolled off the road behind us and lots of drivers spent the night in their vehicles on the Dempster.
So, it wasn’t easy at times, then?
Certainly not – we covered 500 to 600 miles some days, so there was a lot of early, dark and bitterly cold morning starts. Daily distances were dictated by where places were open so we often had no option but to press on. The daily routine was drive, eat, fuel, drive and sleep, for three weeks. It was a tough, tiring trip. Even when we reached Tuk and the end of the road, we only spent a total of 20 minutes in town filling up with fuel and taking a few snaps before a local cop warned us a storm was blowing in and recommended we ought to be heading south again.
But it must have made for a memorable journey?
Most definitely and it wasn’t anything like you see on the Ice Road Truckers reality television series. There is no creaking and groaning of ice under the weight of your vehicle. That’s all sound effects for added drama. It’s just like driving on any road, only shinier and slippier. One trucker told us in ten years he could only recall one truck going through the ice and it was normally down to, and I quote, “some stupid asshole ignoring the sign saying the road was closed”. They weren’t big fans of the TV show.
Would you say this experience changed your life in any way?
Both the TAT trip and the Arctic trip have made me
appreciate how important the work-life balance is. You’re a long time dead! After meeting Wes in a motel car park in Arkansas, our adventures have cemented a friendship for life.
What do you think is essential to completing a journey like this?
A sense of adventure and the ability to go with the flow; things will happen out of your control, so there is no point stressing out about them. Problems will always get sorted somehow.
So, you’ve completed the coast to coast off-road in America, and now crossed northern Canada, what’s next Kev?
I have toyed with the Trans Canada Trail (TCAT), which is a coast-to-coast off-road route but that’s a much larger three to four month undertaking than the TAT through genuine wilderness. It’s a reminder of how large Canada is. Closer to home, Iceland is somewhere I never tire of visiting. It’s one of my favourite places in the world and somewhere every Land Rover owner should go at least once in their life.
You told us that your last road trip was a great inspiration for new products – but you couldn’t reveal anything at the time – can you tell us now?
The MUD arm rest was something I dreamt up on the TAT trip. After eight weeks of long days in the driving seat you get to appreciate any little thing that’ll make your life more comfortable behind the wheel of the Defender. For large parts of the TAT I’d have the window open and the hard edge of the door top started to really annoy me.
When I got back home I got to work on creating the armrest straightaway so that I had a prototype to try on the Arctic trip. It was weird how I got used to it so quickly and how much I missed it when I removed it. Our first batch sold out within days and the feedback we received was “why has nobody thought of this before?”
And did you get any ideas from this adventure?
I’ve already started working on them; I’m keeping my lips sealed for now though.
Would you ever consider organising trips like this for your customers?
Maybe, MUD has always been about doing the things that nobody else does so it would be neat to come up with a unique trip of a lifetime MUD experience. The fact you can complete these big overland trips in standard vehicles means it’s accessible for anyone.
Wes and I managed to drive the length and breadth of the North American continent without a roof rack laden down with storage boxes and jerry cans and an expensive dual battery system with flashing LEDS.
It’s a reminder that a stock vehicle, a map and a sense of wanderlust can provide you with a trip of a lifetime.