The Dalton Highway

In the summer of 2010 I’d just finished recording the first series of Bake Off. I was 100 per cent certain it wouldn’t be returning** so signed up to do a show called The World’s Most Interesting Roads instead. Its basic premise was that a couple of telly folk would sit next to one another in a four-by-four, driving across some of the greatest landscapes on the planet, from Nepal to Bolivia to the jungles of Laos. Already I should have been thinking Why view the brilliance of nature through an insect-splattered windscreen? Why not get out of the car in order to see it in all its glory? But ours is not to reason why, ours is to do and then get slagged off by A.A. Gill.

I was paired with lovable man-hunk Charlie Boorman, and on first meeting it became clear we were the chalk and cheese of ‘Let’s do a travelogue.’ He liked biking, wearing leather, drinking with the lads and … biking. I liked books, puns, 1960s Polish film posters and the odd night at a health spa. I expect the producers thought our differences might lead to some entertaining ‘banter’ or fighting. But there was no banter or fighting; just a lot of long silences where communication should have been.

We landed at Anchorage, Alaska, late on a gloomy afternoon and headed straight for our beds. Now, when I arrive at a hotel, there are many things I expect to see.

• a. Bored uniformed staff pretending they are on the phone when you check in so they don’t have to talk to you.
• b. Piles of leaflets for the local waxwork museum and log flume.
• c. The mild eye bulge of the concierge when two women request a double room.

What I don’t expect to find in reception is a lavishly stuffed and mounted polar bear rearing in my general direction. And that was just the beginning. In every hotel I stayed in in Alaska I’d go to the lobby to make a call and find a mummified musk ox behind me. I’d go get a soda from the machine on the landing, only to find myself in the shadow of a grizzly bear dancing with a couple of Arctic foxes.

If there’s one thing I hate more than trophy killing, it’s taxidermy. You’ve killed it. Don’t take the piss. Don’t fill it with sand and make it play poker with a load of animals that it would have made mincemeat of in the wild, for God’s sake.

I was aware that in this state of the Union I was in a minority of one. Saying you don’t like slaughtering things in Alaska is like standing up at a UKIP rally and saying you don’t think there are enough Polish builders currently working in the South East.

I don’t like guns either – they scare the living daylights out of me. I went clay-pigeon shooting once and burst into tears when I hit a target.

Instructor:	It’s clay, Sue – it’s not a real pigeon.
Sue:	I know. It’s just that I’ve got the idea of a pigeon in my head now …

Guns are, however, a part of life in the Last Frontier, so it was inevitable we would film in a gun shop – Jim’s Guns, to be precise, one of over thirty licensed firearms warehouses in Anchorage. We walked in. Charlie instantly headed for a high-powered 50 millimetre assault rifle and started talking serial numbers with a man sporting an impressive walrus moustache. I stood there, looking uncomfortable, in the shadow of a rocket launcher.

‘Hey there, little lady.’

I immediately froze. I come from a place and time where only serial killers in films say that.

A man in a stained motorcycle singlet and Chris Waddle-inspired mullet stood in front of me. I was distinctly aware that if we had been having this same conversation six feet away, just over the door threshold, I would be speed-dialling the cops around about now.

Ted:	My name’s Ted. What can I get you? Looking for anything in particular?
Me:	No, I’m just … browsing. Is that the correct verb? Do you browse through weaponry?
Ted:	Sure. Care for a few suggestions?
Me:	I dunno. Maybe – what do you have in mind?
Ted:	Let me show you something you’re going to love.

Unless it’s a petition outlawing handguns, Ted, I doubt it.

Ted:	OK, so you’re out at a swanky party. You’re in a little black dress. What do you need?
Me:	Spanx? A surgical truss?
Ted:	You need … this!

Ted brings out a snub-nosed black pistol less than six inches long.

Ted:

Smith and Wesson. .38 calibre. Great grip and the recoil won’t rip your shoulder out. Pop it in your garter belt and you are ready to go.

Garter belt, Ted? Are we in a fin de siècle burlesque show?! But Ted is just getting started …

Ted:

OK, so … aim it at my nuts. Go on!

I really don’t want to hold the gun, let alone train it on Ted’s little twins.

Ted:

Come on, go for the nuts! Come on!

‘Come on!’ came another voice from the direction of the cash till. I was being heckled by a guy to blow another guy’s nuts off.

I’m a sucker for peer pressure so aimed for Ted’s groin and pulled the trigger. After it clicked, I realized that I hadn’t even bothered to check whether the gun was loaded or not.

Ted:

Feels good, huh? Tell you what’s better. The great thing about this little baby is that it comes with a laser sight. Depress the trigger a little. See?

I squeeze my forefinger and a red dot appears between Ted’s balls.

Me:

That’s great, Ted. A laser sight. After all, I wouldn’t want my ability to kill a stranger to be compromised by being blind drunk.

Charlie saunters over, carrying a bolt-action Remington rifle.

Charlie:	Do you know they sell grenades here? It’s awesome!
Me:	I’ll leave you boys to it. Ted, look after those nuts. Charlie, I’ll be waiting by that stuffed lynx in reception.

Our next stop was Whittier, a tiny port city on Western Prince William Sound. You go there to watch the orcas, the minke and humpback whales, or to die of hypothermia. Whittier is about an hour’s drive from Anchorage, a little more if you get stuck behind a herd of Dall sheep or some rogue moose. It remains one of the weirdest places I’ve ever visited. It has a total population of around 220, all of whom live in two abandoned army facilities not altogether convincingly converted into condominiums.

Begich Towers, one of these blocks, is a brutalist beige blot on the landscape, looming large over the smattering of thin trees and ramshackle collection of tugboats and pick-up trucks which litters the railway line. Everywhere there is the grey filth of melting snow. The magical freeze was ending when we arrived, and all that remained was the endless drip, drip, drip of the ugly thaw.

‘Well, it’s certainly living up to its tag line,’ said lovely John, our fixer.

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ he continued, ‘the saying goes, “There’s nothing shittier than a day in Whittier.”’

That’s how legendarily glum it was. It had its own rhyme. I wondered if that sort of thing could catch on back home.

‘There’s no point in schlepping to crappy old Epping!’

‘A smack in the skull is preferable to Hull!’

The first thing the production team decided to do was split us up. Charlie went off to do something – I forget what. Something manly and charismatic, I’ll warrant. I was sent off to meet a weather specialist, the legend that is

Brenda T.

Brenda not only ran the local gift shop (specializing in antlers and leather goods – mainly antlers) but supervised the Whittier weather station. Brenda turned out to be as cranky as she was brilliant.

Me:	What’s the weather doing, Brenda?
Brenda:	Shit if I know. Look at the book, dumb-ass. Anyhow, I gotta go feed the reindeer.

I was in clover. Not only was Brenda thrillingly indifferent, bordering on abusive, but she had ANIMALS TO PET.

We headed down the stairs, out of the army condo and into the snow. Over the road there was a pen, inside which were two reindeer which I

INSTANTLY ANTHROPOMORPHIZED.

They’re sad in that pen, I thought. Look at their sad, sad eyes. They want to walk. They want to graze freely. They’re telling me that – they’re trying to communicate their sadness through the medium of ignoring me.

Right, I decided. I’m going to take them for a walk.

Me:	Brenda?
Brenda:	[snarling] What?
Me:	Can I play with the reindeers?
Brenda:	Whaddayamean, play with them?
Me:	I don’t know. Maybe … walk with them?
Brenda:	Jesus Christ, you Europeans …

She opens the gate and purposefully grabs one of the reindeer by the rope that hangs from its neck.

Brenda:	Take this one. It’s less mean.
Me:	What?
Brenda:	Come on, come on. This one won’t kill ya. Now listen, English. Whatever ya do, don’t let go.

With that, Brenda shoved the rope into my hand and trudged off into the snow. Suddenly I was left holding my first reindeer. At this point it’s fair to say I had certain expectations.

For starters, I expected the reindeer to look at me with gratitude, acknowledging I had liberated her, pupils swelling in adoration, the way they do in Disney films. I expected her to meander towards me, nuzzle at my neck and gently place her antlers either side of my head, cradling me with her horns. I expected to stand there, gently stroking her, breathing in her scent – the smell of Christmas. ‘I love you,’ I’d whisper. ‘Moo,’ she would reply – or something close to that. (My reindeer is a little rusty.)

Well, I didn’t get any of that. What I did get was a psycho quarter-ton hot-water bottle with attitude. The first thing the reindeer did once my hand hit the rope was roll her eyes in my direction. Then she started moving. I had expected her to be strong, just not that strong. Also, what I hadn’t reckoned on was her sheer speed. Reindeer can hit speeds of up to fifty miles an hour when they want to. And this one wanted to. Suddenly I was running through the slush full tilt trying to keep hold of the rope, until the pace became too much and my arm nearly left its socket. I let go of the rope, and off into the distance hurtled Brenda’s reindeer.

‘There’s a moose loose!’ I shouted in the heat of the moment. I regret it. It was neither funny nor the correct species of deer. And therefore even less funny.

I trudged up the three flights of stairs to Brenda’s flat.

Me:	Brenda?
Brenda:	What? Tell me you didn’t bring a reindeer up a stairwell?
Me:	No. I … I’ve lost her.

Brenda rolls her eyes so hard I can actually hear them rotating in her skull. There is much harrumphing. Finally, she puts on her sheepskin coat, moleskin shoes and beaver mittens – then calls someone on her mobile phone, which is the size of a brick. (I guess it has to be if you’re dialling wearing beaver mittens.)

Brenda:	Mikey, the English has lost the reindeer. Can you get the boys on it? [To me] Jesus, you … I should put a bull’s eye on you.
Me:	Bull’s eye? What, like a target?

Suddenly I am in an episode of Fargo.

It is exactly at this moment that Charlie pitches up, looking manly.

Charlie:	Hey, I’ve just been talking with the lads about the headlamp modifications on the Kawasaki Concours.
Me:	That’s nice. I’ve been losing livestock.

We got into the Jeeps and drove in circles round the pale streets. I started to get nervous. Brenda’s opening gambit had been mild hostility; I didn’t want to know what the next level up was like. After two hours of ducking and diving there was still no sign of the reindeer. Nothing. I ended up back at Begich Towers ready for Brenda to run me through with a souvenir antler. As she came out onto the street to meet me, a patrol car pulled up and a policeman yelled, ‘Brenda, you lost a reindeer? Only there’s one on the railway tracks …’

I’d been saved.

I tried really, really hard not to give the reindeer a backstory: ‘All these years in that pen, no hope of freedom, year after year – I had to come down here and end it once and for all, while I had the chance.’ In my head this scene by the railway tracks was an ungulate end game – a suicide bid, years in the making, with me the unwitting accomplice.

I thought about the train coming and wondered how long it would take me, Railway Children-style, to strip down salopettes, tracksuit bottoms, woollen thermals and double-sock combo to my pants, in order to wave them – and realized I would freeze to death way before I’d got through the first layer.

I imagined Brenda on the tracks. A locomotive coming. She turns round. The driver catches the look on her face and shits himself. The train comes to a standstill an inch in front of Brenda’s nose. Terrified. She has terrified a train. She’s like a character from X-Men. She can make anything feel mildly, but thrillingly, disciplined.

We arrived at the railroad, where a small crowd of burly men had gathered. The reindeer was busy chewing a tuft of frozen weed poking from the rails. One of the locals stood opposite the reindeer, braced himself and bellowed.

Local:

Screw you!

The reindeer pauses for a moment and looks at us.

Local:

Yeah, you – ya big bastard. Screw you!

Another joins in.

Local 2:	Screw you!
Me:	How is that helping?
Local 2:	Best way to get ’em. Swear at ’em. Always works, no idea why.
Me:	Oh.

I make a mental note, in case any of my First Great Western trains back home ever encounters a Reindeer on the Line.

Local 3:	Fucker! [A man in a visor to my left] You little fucker!
Local 4:	Fucker! [A woman from behind me]
Local 5:	Asshole! [A kid who’s just joined the group]
Me:	Any of you been on the ET ride at Universal Studios? You’d love it!

By now the reindeer has taken a few tentative steps towards us. The crowd redoubles its efforts. I join in.

Crowd:	Asshole! Fucker!
Me:	You … massive dick!

Sure enough, the reindeer increased her speed towards us, crossing the railroad and finally submitting to the tether. Brenda slapped her hard on the butt, emitted a throaty laugh in my general direction and headed off to whittle something horny back at the shop.

Once the reindeer was safely back in her enclosure, I pottered over to say goodbye. I like to think that the look she gave me, right before she stepped on my toe, was one of pure devotion.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’m a boy. You can tell from the antlers. Fuckwad.’

We resumed our relentless drive northwards, stopping briefly at Wasilla on the way. Lovely John the Fixer had said he could get me an interview with Sarah Palin at her house as he had an in with Todd, her husband.

En route, Charlie asked me, ‘Who’s Sarah Palin?’

‘She’s Michael Palin’s wife,’ I replied, jokingly.

‘Oh,’ he said, and carried on driving. I still don’t know to this day if he was winding me up or if he genuinely believed me. Either way, we travelled the next seventy kilometres in silence.

Once in Wasilla, we parked at the security station at the end of what looked like a very long, posh driveway. I got out.

‘What do you want?’ said the robotic voice over the intercom.

‘I’m here to see Sarah Palin,’ I ventured politely.

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No, but I’m with the BBC.’

In retrospect that might not have helped. It was a little like trying to curry favour with Kim Jong-un by telling him about your work experience fortnight with Sony Pictures.

‘Wait there,’ said the security Dalek as he went off to check my details.

There was a long pause. I could make out John the Fixer in the distance, gesticulating wildly. The more I looked, the more I realized the frantic waving seemed to be for my benefit. I wandered over to find him finishing a phone call.

Me:	Hey, John, security is just checking me out. I think I’ve managed to swing it.
John:	I just got off the phone with Todd.
Me:	Cool!
John:	He said you get the hell off his property or he’ll blow you off.

We’d been travelling for hours before the constant bump of hard core gave way to the smooth icy surface of the Dalton Highway. I’d been droning on about early contrapuntal music and Charlie had been telling me what his watch could do at two hundred metres below sea level when we felt the change. Suddenly we were no longer buffeted by loose chippings. We were gliding.

The highway is some 414 miles long, stretching from Livengood, north of Fairbanks, to Deadhorse, near Prudhoe Bay by the Arctic Ocean. It is one of the most remote roads in the world. Sometimes the only thing travelling alongside you is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It’s grimly ironic that this blot on the landscape – an ugly reminder of our addiction to fossil fuels – is the very thing that created the road and, therefore, the very thing that enables us to experience the pure wonder of this part of the Alaskan landscape.

The moment we hit the ice, I knew we’d hit trouble. The road itself is well maintained and robust – you quietly skate along with no hint of trouble. It’s steering that’s the issue. It’s easy to get in a trance state, overwhelmed by the views, the magnitude of the landscape, the barren beauty of it all, and in doing so let your hands relax a little on the wheel. If you veer, even a tad, that’s where they’ll get you – those fingers of black ice splayed at the road’s edge. Hit one and they’ll claw you off track and pull you into a snow-lined gulley with no hope of getting out.

We’d been going an hour or two. I’d been expressing my thoughts on Gothic architecture and Charlie had been telling me how, on an expedition, you can make dirty pants like new by simply reversing them. Occasionally he would pause from his anecdotes to give me helpful pointers on my driving.

‘So these bike tours, you get a load of grimy lads, couple of cases of grog, make a fire, get some meat on the go, start telling stories …

‘WATCH OUT ON THE RIGHT!

‘Sometimes you’ll wake and you’ll be in the desert with a mouth full of sand and a tent full of empty bottles and you won’t ever know how you got there.

‘SUE! YOU’RE VEERING TO THE RIGHT!’

It was warm in the car – rhythmic puffs of hot air gusted from the vents, and my belly was full of cheese sandwiches and bad coffee. Visibility was excellent – I could see for miles ahead. Nothing coming. Nothing going. My muscles relaxed. My famously limited attention wavered.

‘The local guy will fix us up with a couple of shots of local whisky, then we’re back on the bikes. Your arse gets sore after a while, but you can get a half-decent massage from some of the local girls …

‘WATCH OUT ON THE RIGHT!’

I had gone into a hypnotic state – snow – road – snow – road – snow. The car drifted too far and suddenly hit a talon of black ice. It became impossible to control the steering. It was over in a flash. Our vehicle, now stationary, was at a forty-five-degree angle in a ditch.

Charlie rolled his eyes. Poor guy. Every moment I remained next to him, his masculine credibility plummeted further.

Not knowing anything about cars, I turned the engine on and ceaselessly revved the engine until the smell of burning rubber overwhelmed us.

Charlie:	Shit. Axle might be broken.
Me:	Is that bad?
Charlie:	Yep.
Me:	Oh. Sorry. Can we get a new one?

Charlie said nothing and merely turned his attention towards the horizon.

Suddenly, from behind us, a noise like a vast mechanical exhalation. A giant truck hove into view, stopping gracefully just a few inches from our car. The fenders were sparkling and you could smell the heat of the metal.

The cameras turned to the driver, who was stepping down from his cabin. It was an impossibly handsome man in his early thirties – trimmed beard, piercing blue eyes. I felt my personal polarity shift a little, then settle.

Man:	You guys in trouble?
Me:	No.
Charlie:	Yes.
Man:	Need a hand?
Charlie:	Yes, please.

I stood there, dumbstruck, as thick, sleek cabling was uncoiled, hooks attached, weights and tensions considered.

Throughout, the trucker worked silently. I couldn’t help but notice he averted his gaze from the camera. Fascinating, I thought. Perhaps he has escaped to the wild country after a divorce and doesn’t want anyone to find him. Perhaps he is on the run. Perhaps he’s worried the publicity will alert his pursuers to his location and he’ll be caught again.

(I can’t emphasize enough how exhausting it is being me.)

Man:	What are you guys filming?
Charlie:	Oh, just a documentary for the BBC back home.
Me:	Is it bothering you? You want us to stop?

I am trying to make maternal concern sound a little sexy, and failing.

Man:	No, it’s OK.
Me:	I can’t help noticing you don’t like the camera.
Man:	Nah. It’s just, you know …
Me:	What?

I am getting close to finding his secret. I lean in.

Man:	It’s just … well … I wanted a break from all that stuff.
Me:	A break?
Man:	Yeah, we just finished season three of Ice Road Truckers, and I needed a bit of downtime before the next one. You know.

In the middle of nowhere – nowhere – I had managed to crash a car and be rescued by a bone fide global superstar, Jack Jessee. The only thing that could have made the experience weirder was if we’d been hit by Joey Essex, treated on the scene by one of the doctors from 24 Hours in A&E, then flown home by Jeremy Spake.

Day six. We’d overnighted in Fairbanks, where I’d caroused with a female roller derby team. Boy those girls can party like it’s 1958. Sadly, I had to get up and be in the car ready for filming at the crack of dawn.

I was starting to regret the bit in my contract where it said I would be working ‘daylight hours’. The closer to the Arctic Circle we got, the more the days lengthened, until we’d only have a few hours of gentle dusk before I’d be back at the wheel.

After I’d finished a fascinating monologue on Dadaism, Charlie took out his earplugs and we stopped for the night. Our pit stop was one of the most magical on earth. Wiseman. I’d call it a village, but the population was fourteen. What does that make it? A grouping? A settlement? Who knows? The moon backlit the pines and the only thing you could hear was the occasional drift of snow in the mountains. A local hunter had told me that I had to be quiet, because the moose were always listening. And so that night I whispered ‘Hello’ into the depths of the forest, then told them the hunter’s exact location – just in case he had been serious about them earwigging.

The next morning I rubbed my nose with the heel of my palm to get the blood flowing again, ate a stack of pancakes, three eggs and a portion of gravy and biscuits. Then we got back in the bloody car.

It was my turn to drive again. By now Charlie was sick of my driving. He was better at the wheel, capable of focusing on the road for more than ninety seconds without getting distracted by a bird or an animal. Plus I think he hated being in the passenger seat because that meant he had to work the CB radio – and this compromised his masculinity. It wasn’t right – two grown men, revealing their coordinates to one another. It was just too intimate.

The CB radio is your best friend on the highway. Once your eyes fail in the endless and unrelenting white, you turn to the radio and listen to your salvation – your voice. It is your voice, and the crackling one in the box that comes back at you, that tell you where you are and how you are doing. And whether or not you are still alive.

The temperature was dropping and a vicious wind started to kick around the tyres. As we passed a lone worker at the side of the road, the director, Ian, travelling in the support car behind, radioed through.

‘Charlie! Stop! Let’s do a piece here, with this guy. This guy spraying the road.’

I was pretty relieved I wasn’t involved. It looked like they were going to be talking about technical stuff, plus the wind chill looked like it could turn the tops of your ears into Frazzles.

I watched Charlie chatting away. Poor Ollie, the best sound guy in the business, was standing holding the boom above him, trying not to faint with the cold.

The highway worker was resurfacing the road with a pressure hose. The water started to freeze as soon as it hit the ground. He was motioning forward violently with his hands.

Ten minutes later Charlie bounced back into the car. The ends of his whiskers were crispy.

‘Blizzard’s coming in,’ he said. ‘We need to get out now, else we’ll get stuck.’

‘Right,’ I said, trying to pretend this sort of thing happened to me every day. ‘I should probably turn the ignition on then.’ (I really am very lacking when it comes to initiative.)

‘OK!’ shouted Ian. (Shouting was Ian’s default setting; he really was very commanding.) ‘We’re breaking for lunch!’

Me:	What do you mean? We can’t break – we’ve got to get out of here! There’s a storm coming!
Ian:	I know. There are some plastic cheese sandwiches and some cold moose cuts. Oh, and Oreos. [He adds, as if that will somehow sweeten the deal]

I got out the car and opened my mouth long enough for my taste buds to get anaesthetized by the chill. Then I tucked in. It’s amazing how good plastic cheese and moose can taste when you can’t taste at all. I plucked up courage to speak to the gaffer.

Me:	Hey, Ian, can I have a word?
Ian:	Sure. You want to try some of this bear? It’s weirdly fishy.
Me:	No. Listen, why are we waiting? Isn’t that a bit reckless? Can’t we have synthetic sandwiches and wild animal meat at our destination?
Ian:	Yes, but … Well, thing is … they’ve seen the rushes back home …
Me:	So?
Ian:	And they’ve decided they’re not … not … dangerous enough.

There is a slight pause before I respond.

Me:	Dangerous?
Ian:	Yes. Dangerous. I can see what they mean. There’s no point in having ‘dangerous’ in the title if nothing dangerous happens. You see?

Suddenly everything around me begins moving very slowly.

Me:	Why would ‘dangerous’ be in the title, Ian?
Ian:	Because it is. Because that’s what this show is – The World’s Most Dangerous Roads.
Me:	No, no, no. The show I’m doing is called The World’s Most Interesting Roads.

Suddenly, I’m thinking, am I on the wrong shoot? Is there a crew somewhere pottering around a creek admiring rare birds and wondering why Bear Grylls is presenting it?

Ian:

Well, it was called that originally, Sue, but the title got changed. That was ages ago. We did say. Didn’t we? Please tell me someone told you.

Suddenly it all made sense – the total lack of tourist traffic on the road, the locals shaking their heads as we chugged out of town. That lone woman crossing herself at the final junction in Fairbanks, the wooden crucifixes that sporadically lined our route. But mainly this – why would you travel on a road made solely of ice WHEN OTHER PERFECTLY SAFE AND SCENIC ROUTES ARE AVAILABLE?

I got back in the car and ingested something that may or may not have been polar bear. Fast.

Me:

[yelling] Come on, Charlie. We’re off!

I reach over and try to pop his seat belt on.

Charlie has difficulty replying, as a clod of indiscriminate meat has attached itself to the roof of his mouth. He has to use the traction of a handful of crisps to dislodge it.

Charlie:	[mumbling] Hang on. Gimme a second …
Me:	WE DON’T HAVE A SECOND! [I scream, channelling Jason Statham again – before putting the car into the wrong gear and revving the engine to fuck]

Along the side of the entire Dalton Highway there are delineators. These are white and red sticks positioned at regular intervals along the route, giving you some idea as to the visibility. In clear conditions I knew I could see nearly twenty.

Almost as soon as we were under way, I felt a change. Nothing physical. It was instinctive, limbic. Something wicked this way comes – that kind of thing. After a few minutes the steering became a little harder, the tyres a little lazy. The wind started to smack against the window with more of a scream than a whistle. We were now nearing the highest and most exposed point of the route – the Atigun Pass, as it crosses the Brooks Mountain Range, where the ice road snakes violently to the right and up a long and punishing 12 per cent gradient.

Suddenly, from nowhere, the snow started. Not like snow I knew. The snow I’m familiar with has a simple trajectory – falling simply from top to bottom. It comes from up above, it lands at my feet. Simple. This snow was different. It emerged from everywhere – up, down, left and right – and swirled in huge circles around us. Visibility went from fifteen to five delineators in less than ten seconds. The incoming blizzard turned the air white and then the road white until visibility dipped again from five to two to one. Then nothing. Just a wall of white – nothing but white.

A large drift started accumulating on the front right tyre and I tried steering to correct it, but the back kicked out, and suddenly we were – I didn’t know – sideways, maybe? All I knew was there was a ravine somewhere to my right and I did not want to fall down it.

In a second the vehicle was wedged solid with snow. Suddenly, and rather magnificently, Charlie went into overdrive. I could smell the testosterone coming off him. Every anecdote, every adventure, every cell in his body had been leading him to this. His hero moment. He jumped out of the passenger seat and fiddled with the tyres (to this day I have no idea what he did, but goddam it, it was TECHNICAL) before pulling me out of the driving seat. This was no time for feminist badinage, so I let him. Charlie was the only one of us who was experienced enough to get that car moving again.

And I was the only one experienced enough to get the entire Ice Road community rocking to my CB skills.

It’s amazing what you learn about yourself when you come face to face with death. What I learned is that when I confront my own mortality I like to do it in the voice of Fenella Fielding.

For some reason I began to speak like her. I guess I figured that the only people out there listening were men and that in order to get them to save us I’d need to sound really HOT. Is that the action of a feminist? Oh God, I don’t know. I really hope so. It was merely self-preservation. I’m sorry.

As Charlie wrestled with the screaming motor, I was pleading down the airwaves in my husky new accent. Most accidents, I remembered from our safety briefing, are caused by eighteen-wheelers ploughing into smaller vehicles. Eighteen-wheelers can’t apply their brakes in these conditions – it’s just too dangerous. They’d jack-knife on the ice and career to their deaths.

‘Northbound four-wheeler stuck at the Atigun Pass,’ I pleaded. Although, with that voice, I might as well have been saying, ‘Anyone of you big lads fancy a blowie, on the house?’

I kept on going until the radio crackled.

Man:

Hello, little lady.

Oh God, not that again. It must be an Alaskan thing.

Man:

How can I be of assistance?

Well, hellfire, I just bagged me a mountain man.

I don’t remember much about the man who rescued us, other than he was hugely disappointed when he finally made the connection between the sexy voice emanating from his CB and the goofy nerdulant coming towards him, sobbing. He’d expected an incandescent Emily Blunt; he got Gareth Malone. With tits. I also recall that he was wearing a T-shirt in minus thirty degrees. Honestly. How hard can you be? Alaskans.

Our saviour chaperoned us through the blizzard all the way to our final destination – Prudhoe Bay. By that point night had finally fallen and we were so exhausted both Charlie and I fell into our first proper silence together. For the first time in weeks we no longer fought against it, and instead gave in to the blissful quiet.

We parked the four-by-four next to a row of super-trucks shivering in the fierce crosswind. Daisy chains of cabling connected their engines to batteries so they didn’t choke in the cold. Stalactites hung from the fenders and slivers of silver ice nestled in the tyre treads.

The complex at Prudhoe was a vast industrial hangar catering for the itinerant thick-necked strongmen who make their living on the oil fields. We entered a voluminous hall – polished floors, hard lines, long empty steel tables. We hadn’t eaten for hours and were starving. We could smell food but couldn’t see any. We couldn’t see a soul. Then, we realized that on each wall sat a giant vending machine. Not the sort of vending machine I grew up with, those derisory affairs in leisure centres which sent a pack of Discos down a steel chute, rendering its contents dust as it smacked down to earth. These were industrial monstrosities, dispensing every food product known to man: Thai green curry, Singapore noodles, burgers, fries, chow mein, pork balls. You name it, the automated metal claws could get it. We jabbed wordlessly at buttons for hours, and pre-prepared international cuisine rained down from the sky.

When I finally got up from the table I remember feeling the twang of muscles I never knew existed, newly warmed sinews spasming from the shock, I guess. I hobbled to my room, which was on the second floor, past a deserted launderette the size of a tennis court. Huge drums spun and stuttered; inside, endless loops of checked shirts and Y-fronts belonging to the myriad men lodging there. I went past a state-of-the-art gymnasium – treadmills beeping, rows of stationary bicycles flashing. No one running. No one cycling. No one.

Everywhere you looked it was like a Stanley Kubrick film – beautiful, chilly vignettes of the automated soulessness of the future.

Where was everyone? Where had they all gone?

‘Is there anybody there?’ I shouted. Nothing.

For a brief moment I panicked. What if the BBC commissioners had changed their minds again? What if the show had gone from The World’s Most Interesting Roads to The World’s Most Dangerous Roads to The World’s Most Sex-Starved Oil Workers? Or, even worse, Redneck Psycho-Killers.

I remember clearly that my door had four locks. I remember I made use of each and every one of them. I remember a perfect silence save the thrum of the launderette and the gym and the canteen, and all those other vast, empty mechanized spaces that carried on beating in the absence of human life. I cried. I cried because for a while I had felt truly under threat, lost and insignificant and vulnerable. I cried for my family and friends and my dogs. And I cried because I missed home. Finally at the end of the road I allowed myself the memory of home.

Then I dried my eyes and rehydrated a lasagne using the mini-kettle.

I hope it was dangerous enough for you.

It felt dangerous enough for me.