On January 29, 2017, a Friday, I left the Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk for the 7,000 km return drive to Waterloo, Ontario. At Inuvik I turned south on the 730-km-long Dempster Highway.
At kilometer 366, just south of the Arctic Circle, lies Eagle Plains, a hotel-service-centre complex, marking the midpoint of this rugged, romantic, and scenic highway. Conceived during the Diefenbaker era, the Dempster is the only Canadian all-weather road to cross the Arctic Circle.
At Eagle Plains I stopped for fuel and in a call assured my wife Marilyn that despite the increasing cold things were progressing normally and that I hoped to reach Carmacks, a village some 170 km north of Whitehorse, during the wee hours. There I would spend the night with a friend. Refreshed, I continued south, supremely comfortable in my electric jacket, listening to the satellite radio, enjoying the calm and peaceful northern darkness and the star-lit sky. A green sign on the left announced that I had just passed kilometer 180, half way between Eagle Plains and the Klondike Highway junction.
At about 6:00 PM I suddenly noticed cold air from the heater. A look at the temperature gauge saw it climbing rapidly. I shut off the engine and opened the hood. I loosened the radiator cap and unleashed a violent geyser of steam and antifreeze that knocked the cap out of my hand, sprayed my jacket, and hit me in the face and hair. My skin was too cold to be scalded. In vain I desperately searched far and wide for the radiator cap, in the engine compartment, in front of the car, beside the car, and under the car, fully aware that the loss of the cap greatly added to my difficulties. It seems that the radiator had frozen thus preventing the coolant from circulating.
I climbed back into the car, re-connected my electric jacket, and started the engine. The temperature gauge had dropped significantly and I drove until the gauge again approached the top. It didn’t take me far, perhaps half a kilometer, or so. Again I shut off the engine and waited for it to cool. And so I progressed slowly, alternating driving and cooling. Downhill I might manage a kilometer, or two, but climbing hills shortened the runs to a fraction.
There was no traffic, but during one of my cooling waits I saw headlights approaching in the distance. I turned on my flashers as two double tanker trucks slowed and stopped. One of the drivers recognized me and offered me the little antifreeze he carried, about one liter. The other driver had none. They tried to convince me to follow them some eight kilometers to a rest area where I could at least warm up in one of the trucks, but since I was midway between Eagle plains and the Klondike Highway I saw no advantage in turning back and declined their kind offer. They were most reluctant to leave me, but I insisted that I would be all right.
By this time the inside of the car had frosted up and I had to keep the defroster running to maintain two tiny peepholes on the inside of the ice-coated windshield. During the antifreeze eruption my hand got sticky and it became difficult to take the right-hand glove off to turn the ignition key and to put it back on, and so it was left off much of the time. The truckers had warned me that the cold was intensifying further south, especially in the Tombstone Mountains area, and it was already very cold indeed.
It must have been shortly after 05:00 AM when I reached the Klondike Highway. I turned north and an hour later pulled into the Bonanza Gold Motel on the outskirts of Dawson City. I marvelled at how I found it because of the heavy frost on all the inside glass of the car. I know this hotel well. Outside the closed office is a board telling you what rooms are available and you take the key from the board. There was one room left, and it was on the second floor. I staggered up the stairs like a drunk, bashing into the railing several times. Managed to get the door open, and immediately ran a warm bath. It felt wonderful, and I increased its temperature three times.
I slept for three hours then walked to the Napa Car Parts store, right across the highway. They had antifreeze but no radiator cap for my car, and there is no other major parts store in Dawson City. I was stunned because the radiator cap is essential. Without it the coolant will boil, even with the extreme cold outside. It was Saturday and I was wondering how long it would take to get one up from Whitehorse. A kind mechanic understood my dilemma, dug through his junk pile and found one. I could have kissed him.
It was bitterly cold in Dawson, without windchill they reported -42°C (-44°F) at the airport. I poured antifreeze into the radiator, applied the cap and tried to connect the block heater. The extension cord was stiff like a frozen snake. When I tried to straighten it, the blue insulation shattered like glass, some of it hitting my face just below the left eye. I gave up and tried the starter and miraculously the engine caught. I watched the temperature gauge and saw that it climbed too rapidly, but then it suddenly dropped. It seems that the frozen rad suddenly cleared and things returned to normal. I took the car for a test run on the highway, and how wonderful it was to feel warm air on my face and hands. The small windshield peepholes began to expand slowly.
I called my wife Marilyn in Waterloo, and my friend in Carmacks, where I arrived in time for supper. There it became clear that my hands had suffered frostbite during the twelve hours of inching the car along, without heat and with the defroster blowing -40°C air into the cabin. Because of the tense situation I had been unaware that my fingers were freezing. The picture shows the right hand 24 hours later, Sunday morning.
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Sunday afternoon I continued on to Whitehorse where several of my friends expressed great concern and made me promise to visit the Emergency Clinic at the Whitehorse hospital. This I did first thing Monday morning. There I was received with great interest and one of the doctors told me that I had probably come to the best place in Canada for the treatment of frostbite. They were currently using a modification of an approach found promising in Europe, involving a drug called Iloprost, apparently difficult to obtain, but researchers at the Whitehorse General Hospital requested and received permission through Health Canada’s Special Access Program to administer it.
I was granted five treatments, on five successive days. Each treatment involved a five to six hour intravenous infusion of Iloprost, accompanied by a one-hour, warm whirlpool bath for the hands. Since Iloprost can precipitate a drop in blood pressure, I was monitored during the infusions. After the treatments the hands had aloe vera cream applied before they were bandaged.
This is what the right hand looked like on Tuesday, after two treatments. It was the fourth dayafter the event.
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After the five treatments I continued on to Ontario. The next picture shows the right hand on February 1, day 12 after that fateful night on the Dempster. Not very pretty, but somewhat encouraging.
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The next picture shows the right hand on day 28. It looks promising and feeling has returned to the fingers. They are still somewhat sensitive to cold, but gloves easily deal with this issue on cold mornings. I can use the hand almost normally, and my computer’s trackpad again recognizes one-finger, two-finger, three-finger, and four-finger gestures.
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I am tremendously and humbly thankful for the superb help I received in Whitehorse, and I am, once again, impressed by our health care system. It may not be perfect, but it is there when you need it. At the Whitehorse General Hospital I simply presented my OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) card and there were no personal charges. My hand isn’t out of the woods yet, but there has been so much progress during the past 28 days that I have cause to be gratefully optimistic.