The Failing Ice Bridge Dividing This Yukon Community

“Here in Dawson, we are fortunate that we have six seasons. The regular four,” says Otto Muehlbach, ticking them off on his fingers, “and two more; freeze up and break up.”

Muehlbach—an older man with a kind, thin face, a wool cap pulled over his ears and a lingering, pleasant accent from his German roots—runs Kokopellie Farms with his partner, Conny Handwerk. When VICE caught up with him January 16, he was just finishing selling his wares—onions, beets, potatoes and carrots with the dirt still clinging gently to them—at the Dawson City Arena.

In order to get there, Muehlbach drove from his farm in the Sunnydale neighborhood of West Dawson, where he has lived for eight years, across the Yukon River to get to Dawson City. In other years, Muehlbach would have taken the official ice bridge, a government-sanctioned roadway which has traditionally formed, mostly of its own accord, when the river iced over during the long winter freeze. However, in the last two years, the river has failed to freeze sufficiently at the usual place to create this government-maintained road.

The bridge, which is usually 400 metres long and 60 metres wide, has been operated and maintained officially by the Yukon Government (YG) since the 1960s. At the the time VICE visited Dawson in mid-January, there was still a long, dark slash of open water at the point the ice bridge should be.

This means that the 150-some people who live in West Dawson and Sunnydale have to find an alternative, unsanctioned work-around. Otto himself says he has been driving across the river near a large gravel bar, upstream of the intended bridge point.

During the summer months, the communities are connected via the George Black ferry; the place where the ferry crosses the river is also the place where the ice bridge is supposed to be. The ferry usually stops running sometime in October and the ice bridge usually opens anywhere from November to February, depending on conditions, and is in use until April at the latest. This creates two shoulder seasons each year when West Dawson is cut off from the rest of the community and there is neither ferry services nor an ice bridge—the “freeze up” and “break up” seasons to which Otto was referring.

While this is generally accepted as par for the course of living in West Dawson, never having the river freeze up means there is no official road into West Dawson all winter long, which means government vehicles—including emergency services, like ambulances and fire—cannot legally cross the river to get to the community. An otherwise unfortunate accident—such as a wood chopping or snowmobile-related injury—becomes much more serious in a West Dawson winter cut off from these services.

In the case of a severe medical emergency, YG, the Yukon Hospital Corporation and Emergency Medical Services have “shared remote response procedures” during periods of inaccessibility in West Dawson, which “may include the use of a helicopter,” Breagha Fraser, spokesperson for Yukon Community Services said via email.

In the case of fire services, YG has an agreement with the City of Dawson fire department to provide services to West Dawson only “when the community can be reached by ferry or ice bridge,” says Fraser. The rest of the year, the community cannot be aided by fire services.

Despite being within spitting distance of each other—you can literally see the town of Dawson from the West Dawson ferry point—West Dawson is not part of Dawson City, which means it is not connected to municipal services, like water, sewer and power. Like many people who live outside of incorporated communities in the Yukon, it’s up to West Dawsonites to meet their own basics, and many live partially or fully off-grid, meaning that they need to have things like fuel and water delivered. Because the ice bridge hasn’t come in, these basic utilities can’t be trucked over.

This has forced some residents, like Willow Peerenboom, to shutter their properties in West Dawson and attempt to find housing on the other side of the river, which, like much of the Yukon, faces a severe housing shortage. Peerenboom owns two properties in West Dawson, but is currently renting a place in Dawson City because her partner has to come into town to work every day—made a hassle by having to cross around the open water—and because she is unable to get oil or water delivery.

She would “basically have to hire a helicopter” to get supplies in without the ice bridge, she says.

“It’s been a huge disruption,” she adds.

In addition to the inconvenience to her day-to-day life, Peerenboom says her property values—along with many of those in West Dawson—have suffered as a result of the unreliable access. She and her partner are considering selling, but the uncertainty of the ice bridge and winter access to services has decreased the value of her home to the point where she wouldn’t even get her mortgage back if she sold now, she says.

“We’re at a stand still,” she says.

Last year YG spent $120,000 in an effort to manually force an ice bridge to form, an attempt which failed and was abandoned after a week (although West Dawsonite Kyler Mather successfully built a pedestrian crossing himself near the failed government site). This year, YG spent $200,000 in an attempt to create the bridge using a log boom, which helps to collect ice at a preferred location. So far, that project too has failed.

Over the January 19 weekend, Mather orchestrated another attempt at an unofficial crossing point, rumours of which were flying all over Twitter and have been confirmed by news reports and locals, including West Dawsonite Sebastian Jones.

A video of people working on the unofficial boom was posted to Facebook over the weekend.

“This attempt is slightly more sophisticated that last year’s,” Jones says.

Last year Mathers used a rope and a tree to create an impromptu boom. This year, Jones says people took a more direct approach: they cut off hunks of shelf ice up to 15 inches thick and turned them so that they were at 90 degrees and let them float into the open lead in the centre of the river, where they basically corked the gap like a bottle.

It hasn’t quite frozen in place yet, but “assuming what they’ve done holds,” it will mean a foot bridge for West Dawsonites, Jones said.

Although this means an increase in convenience for people living there, it doesn’t change anything in the way of service access, since it’s still unsanctioned and therefore not traversable for government and commercial vehicles.

The contractor hired by YG to create the unsuccessful ice bridge is still plugging away at it, says Jones, working on installing a second boom since “what they did before simply wasn’t doing the trick.”

Jones’ assessment is confirmed by an earlier interview with Paul Murchison, Director of Transportation for Yukon Highways and Public Works.

The second boom is being deployed to “speed up the freeze,” Murchison says, and will be coupled with spray ice, which acts “almost like a snow machine.”

How effective that will be remains to be seen.

“One of the challenges of this project,” says Murchison, “is we are going into it with a lot of uncertainty.”

All this raises the question of why the ice bridge so stubbornly refuses to form, when it has done so with relative reliability in past decades.

Although many locals blame climate change, which the North is experiencing at a much higher rate than than the south, it’s not quite so black and white, says Jones, who is also the fish, wildlife and habitat analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society.

“No one really expected (the climate to change) this quickly,” says Jones. “But it’s not as simple as ‘it’s warmer, so the river doesn’t freeze properly.’”

Jones notes that, with warmer temperatures in recent years, the river is starting to freeze later, which means the water is lower, affecting build up.

It has been an unusually warm winter across much of the Yukon, although Dawson has still seen -40 degree temperatures. The weather this week is supposed to be in the low to mid -20s; definitely ice-freezing weather.

A 2018 National Research Council Report on the issue cites a growing gravel bar—which has changed the flow of water, ice and debris, affecting ice accumulation at the bridge site—ice jams farther upstream and “warm effluent” from the Dawson wastewater plant as possible influences for the change.

The report notes, “the impact of climate change on the future operation of the ice bridge should also be assessed.”

The idea of building of a bridge—a permanent one—has been floated from time to time, an idea which has typically been nixed, says Jones, because of cost.

The last time the issue was discussed in 2005, bids for building a bridge came in at $50 to $60 million.

“(The Yukon) is a big river,” says Jones. “At this time, there’s absolutely no prospect of a (constructed) bridge happening. At the moment people are just going to have to live (without reliable winter access).”

Despite the difficulties the situation imposes on some people, even if it were on the table, many West Dawsonites are not in favour of a permanent bridge, including Jones and Muehlbach, arguing it would destroy the unique character of their community, which many people choose to live in because of the off-grid, semi-wilderness lifestyle it allows them to have.

For his part, Muehlbach says the situation doesn’t really bother him; it’s just part of living in West Dawson.

“It’s a fact: if you’re trying to beat Mother Nature you’re going to lose,” he says. “You’ve got to adapt.”

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