Driving as far north as the gravel goes

This is a story of driving for glory in the smallest car fit for the road.

That car is the Smart, a compact with heart, even when it's weighed down by its load.

We pointed her north and ventured on forth just as far as we thought we could go.

But we'd pause on our run, at the end of Day One, for a date with a mummified toe.

 

DAWSON CITY, Yukon - Lorraine Sommerfeld handed over the key to the Star's Smart car with a strange combination of reluctance and enthusiasm. She'd driven it from Kelowna, B.C., north into the Yukon as part of the Smart Winter Expedition, a rolling convoy of seven of the little cars headed as far north as the permanent road goes.

Here you are, boss," she told me when we met up for the handover in Whitehorse. "She's like me. Treat her with respect, and she'll treat you the same way, too."

Of course, at this point Sommerfeld (for her story, click here) had the distinction of being the first person in the convoy to have driven off the road, heading into a snow bank the day before when a truck forced her too far over from her lane. So I didn't expect much when I began the drive the next morning.

There were a dozen automotive journalists and writers on this leg of the journey, driving the Smarts from Whitehorse all the way north to Inuvik.

I paired up with a young journalist who once worked at the Star and the two of us loaded the back of the car with our small bags and large jackets.

There's plenty of room for a driver and passenger to spread out in the 70 horsepower Smart, but not a lot of room for luggage. Think of it as like a sports car without the sport, or a motorcycle without the motor.

In fact, there's some 220 litres of space for luggage behind the seats if you want to see out the rear window (by comparison, a Pontiac Solstice maxes out at 153 litres, and a Honda Goldwing motorcycle has 147 litres).

But we didn't want to see out the rear window – we've got side mirrors, after all. So we stuffed it to the top (340 litres maximum), mostly with our jackets, gloves and hats.

In the front, we forgot about the detritus behind and switched on the seat heaters. The car warmed quickly. And so it should: Toronto was -12 C, and it was only -4 here.

The Klondike Highway that runs north through the Yukon from Whitehorse to Dawson City is paved all the way, though the plows don't clear the road down to the asphalt. They sprinkle sand for grip (salt stops working on ice at around -10 C), but the curves through the mountains and the heaves from the frost mean grip is often a relative term, sought after and not always achieved.

The Smarts were equipped with Continental winter tires – not too expensive at around $500 a set, thanks to the 15-inch wheels – as well as advanced traction technology, including the Electronic Stability Program, which brakes individual wheels if it senses slippage, and Cornering Brake Control, which helps keeps the vehicle stable on curves.

These are needed, of course, to counter the car's very light weight, at just 820 kg unloaded, and its narrow width, which means one of the wheels is always going to be in the snow if you're following a regular- sized vehicle's tracks.

It's not possible to switch off the ESP and, aside from the occasional foray into an empty parking lot that called for donuts, none of us wanted to do so.

The greater danger, as Sommerfeld had found out the previous day, was from other vehicles on the road that swirled the snow behind them like white tornadoes. Our convoy was linked by walkie-talkies, and whenever a truck of any size could be seen approaching, the lead driver would call a warning into the radio and we'd all slow right down or even pull over, four-ways flashing.

To continue on would be to drive into a complete whiteout for several seconds or longer. Overtaking was just not possible.

So we drove north through the low mountains here to Dawson, where we parked the cars and, after dinner, a few of us wrapped against the -15 stillness of the cloudy night and walked the couple of blocks to the Sourdough Saloon, to enjoy a Sour Toe cocktail together. (For one of Mark Richardson's earlier stories about a trip to the Yukon, which has a link to a video of him consuming that drink, which comes with a pickled human toe, click here.)

 

The drive north is far in this very small car, and we followed the tracks like a train.

Sometimes we would slip and the Smart, it would tip, and we'd get towed and drive on again.

And then, almost there, in the cold arctic air, we sped off and spun into the snow.

But the crash we survived and, feeling revived, we drove on to the finish, more slow.

INUVIK, N.W.T.- This was our longest day of the journey, and by far the most adventurous of the convoy. The Dempster Highway is the only road in Canada to cross the Arctic Circle, and it reaches more than 700 km north of Dawson City all the way up here to Inuvik, on the Mackenzie Delta where the river washes into the Beaufort Sea.

The road is gravel all the way. In the summer, it has a reputation for driving sharp rocks through the thickest of tires, and for snow any day of the year. In the wintertime, it's coated with a sheet of ice that is usually cold enough to maintain friction with its covering of snow.

It's a gated road, and the previous day it was closed to traffic due to whiteout conditions at Hurricane Alley, where the wind blows strongest across the tundra in the foothills of the Richardson Mountains.

Today it was open, and we left at 7 a.m., three hours before the dawn.

The lead vehicle was a Mercedes-Benz GL-class SUV, packed with supplies, followed by the seven Smarts and then another GL-class and finally a modified G-Wagen loaded with spare parts for the cars.

It even carried a couple of extra windshields – all our glass was already chipped and cracked by rocks thrown up on the road, but we considered them battle scars, proof of the drive so far.

Rule No. 1 on northern roads: keep your distance from the vehicle in front.

Most of us did not do this, however. The young journalist and I christened our Smart "Celine" (this being a love-hate relationship) and drove her at the back of the pack. Most drove close to each other in order to see the rear lights of the car in front. Drop back a little farther and all would be obscured in the swirl of snow; drop back too far and radio contact would be lost.

We found a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, but still got some new cracks in the shield along the way.

The wide glass of the windows and windshield, as well as the plastic of the large sunroof, allowed uninterrupted views to the front and sides. I'd expected it to be flat and featureless, but the clear moon shone through the clefts of the mountain range to the west, illuminating the peaks that could have been clouds looking down on our little cars.

This is a popular tourist drive but not in winter. The sign at the road's entrance warned of no services for the next 370 km and it wasn't kidding.

Our convoy, led by the heavy GL SUV, began to drive at just over 100 km/h but we soon agreed over the radio that this was too fast for the light, short wheelbase cars. The young journalist had been gripping the wheel tightly, skittering around the bends as we all rushed to keep up with each other.

At a more sedate 90 km/h, everyone relaxed and we drove until the sun rose, finally shedding light on a wide, remote plain that dropped away below the road and across to the low rise of the Ogilvie Mountains.

When we changed drivers and I took the wheel, I found the Smart to be secure on the road, nimble and sure-footed. Of course, the convoy ahead had punched holes through the drifts so there was either bare gravel or numerous snow tracks to follow, and we were light-hearted when we paused for a photograph in a pull-off at a stunning vista over a valley of the wide Ogilvie River.

"Don't park here with the others," said the young journalist. "Park over there."

So I sped off over there, an empty area of the pull-off and, with no definition to the bright snow all around, promptly wedged Celine into an unnoticed drift deeper than my boots.

"That wasn't very smart," said the guy driving the G-Wagen, as delighted photographers clustered around to take pictures of the Smart spinning its rear wheels uselessly against the deep snow. And so I distinguished myself by being the first person in our convoy to drive off the road into a snow bank.

The little car came clear with a quick yank from a tow rope, but it reminded us of the danger of driving in such remote areas. On our own, that would have taken shovels to dig out the car, and there's no room in a Smart for proper shovels. And it was another reminder that the smartest car on the road can't outwit the rules of physics, or the stupidity of its driver.

I may have been the first but I was not the last. Even the president of Mercedes-Benz Canada himself made the same mistake pulling in at Eagle Plains, a purpose-built rest stop halfway along the highway. No one told him he wasn't too smart.

North of the Arctic Circle, snow blew swiftly across the road. The gravel route sinewed through the low hills of the Richardsons (no relation) and the highway became mere tracks in the white. But slow and steady won the day and we cleared the strong winds to level out at the ice bridge at Fort McPherson over the Peel River, then the wider ice bridge at the Mackenzie River.

By now it was dark and we knew the end was near with just over 100 km to go. The young journalist took back the wheel. We were warm and comfortable inside the little cabin. Our speeds picked up and traffic became more frequent – a car every 10 minutes or so instead of every hour.

But with just a dozen kilometres left to drive, tired after a dozen hours on the road, the young journalist misjudged an oncoming car and moved too far to the right to avoid it. The deeper snow of the verge pulled at our right tires. There was no steering back. I picked up the radio and called into it, urgently: "We're going off the road! We're going off!"

The next few seconds were a blur of white and dark. Celine hit the deeper ploughed snow piled high at the side and spun around to point back at the single Smart following us, and the SUV and truck behind. I thought about the solid metal cage inside the car that protects the passengers, and was grateful. We spun some more, to the other side of the highway, and wedged our nose in the opposite bank of snow. The Smart behind fishtailed but found an empty space, and the other two pulled up alongside.

From 100 km/h to zero in maybe 10 metres – the ABS couldn't have done better.

We were fine, of course, though grateful we'd hit nothing more than snow. You have to thump into something hard to actually flip, and the rocks and trees were way off beyond the ditch. In fact, we drove out of the snow bank without a tow – the weight of our luggage over the rear wheels gave extra traction – and pressed on the last few minutes to the end of Canada's most northerly permanent link to the south.

And so now it's complete, this adventurous treat, as we drive on the highway to home.

And who won the prize, in this editor's eyes, as we near the end of this tome?

Why the little Smart car, for it's raised high the bar of what good design can achieve.

So don't try to diss it, because I still miss it and the thoughts such a drive can still leave.

 

WHITEHORSE, Yukon - It was a long journey back south along the Dempster. The sun eventually rose to show the snow to be thicker in George's Gap, just north of the Circle, but we were all better rested and followed the lead SUV along a secure path. A little wiser now, nobody drove off the road. The wind blew harder across Eagle Plain, clearing the snow completely from the raised road.

Feeling victorious now, we paused again at the Arctic Circle and one journalist even stripped to his underwear in defiance of the -20 elements, as proof of the very temporary triumph of technology over the elements. (Dep. ed. note: 'Fess up, Richardson – it was you!) And then the sun set and the wind settled and the moon came back and we reached the asphalt again.

The next day, we drove back down the same Klondike Highway that we'd taken before. We knew the routine now: truck coming, pull over. In the southern half of the Yukon – a territory the size of France with just 34,000 people – we felt less remote, almost suburban, after the isolation of the Dempster.

On the way down, we agreed that the Smart would not be anybody's first choice of vehicle for the long drive to the Arctic. Not enough luggage space, too lightweight to be firmly planted on the road, too narrow a track to find a comfortable path on the highway. In fact, the only new car anybody could think of that would be a poorer choice would be the Dodge Viper, with its wide tires and absence of ABS.

However, the Smarts all made it, with the only signs of damage being cracked windshields and, for poor Celine, a cracked front bumper. We were comfortable, warm and safe.

It was with a strange combination of reluctance and enthusiasm that I handed over the key to Jim Kenzie for the final, long drive south to Vancouver. His report on that leg will appear in next Saturday's Wheels.

But thinking differently, and not as a car guy: The Smart may have been far from the first choice for this drive, but it made it, and back again, which speaks volumes for today's auto technology. And it drove through the fragile Arctic with the lightest footprint of them all, using very little gas and treading only gently on the Dempster's blowing snow. So maybe this drive really was smart, after all.

mrichardson@thestar.ca

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