Ice Road

Ice Road

Ice roads (ice crossings, ice bridges) are frozen, human-made structures on the surface of bays, rivers, lakes, or seas in the far north. They link dry land, frozen waterways, portages and winter roads, and are usually remade each winter. Ice roads allow temporary transport to areas with no permanent road access. Seen in isolated regions of northern Canada, Alaska's Bush, northern Michigan, northern Scandinavia and Russia, they reduce the cost of materials that otherwise would ship as expensive air freight, and they allow movement of large or heavy objects for which air freight is impractical.

Ice roads differ from winter roads in that they are built primarily across frozen waterways. Ice roads may be winter substitutes for summer ferry service. Ferry service and an ice crossing may operate yearly at the same time for several weeks.

An alternative meaning of ice bridge is a natural ice road or a structure formed during glaciation. These were used in prehistoric migration.

Read more about Ice Road:  Function, Driving, Media References

Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or road:

    When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain! The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.
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    Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.
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