Canadian truck drivers routinely haul massive multi-ton loads across frozen lakes in the dead of winter, relying on ice roads that only exist for a few months out of the year…

A closer look

Canadian truck drivers routinely haul massive multi-ton loads across frozen lakes in the dead of winter, relying on ice roads that only exist for a few months out of the year when the temperature drops low enough to freeze the water solid; driving a fifty-thousand-pound rig over a fragile sheet of ice requires the driver to maintain a very specific, agonizingly slow speed, because going too fast creates an underwater wave that can literally shatter the ice ahead of them and plunge the truck into the freezing abyss; it is a terrifying, high-stakes game of physics and anxiety, perfectly demonstrating the extreme lengths to which capitalism will go just to deliver supplies to remote diamond mines; nothing gets the adrenaline pumping quite like knowing your entire livelihood depends on the thickness of frozen pond water