After some setback due to warmer than average weather, the Dettah Ice road has finally opened on January 28th to vehicles under five thousand kilograms.
This is the latest that the road has ever opened in the last thirty years, going beyond the previous record of January 11th. The road has an annual average opening date of December 24th. The road was open for its longest period of time in 1995 and 1996, at 140 days. The previous shortest amount of time was in 2017 and 2019, when it was open for only 91 days.
The GNWT completed completed ice profiling on January 23rd, which is when they determined that the ice was finally thick enough to allow for crews to work on construction of the road. Depending on conditions, construction of the road normally takes around five to seven days.
