It appears to have been another successful year for the Tibbitt-to-Contwoyto Winter Road.

"We always make our mark," said Barry Henkel, director of winter road operations for Rio Tinto. "It's a very compressed timeline and a very demanding project. There's a lot of moving parts, which makes it not only interesting to work on, but we all work together as a team so that we can successfully haul everything north."

The winter road starts at Tibbitt Lake at the end of the Ingraham Trail and serves the Ekati, Diavik and Gahcho Ku茅 diamond mines, around 400 km north of Yellowknife, according to the joint venture of diamond mines in charge of building and maintaining the road.

Henkel said the road was built in mid-December and opened for business on Feb. 4.

The final day of operations was March 28 and in that roughly seven-week time span, it transported everything it had to, he added.

In the road's lifetime, it carried more than 5,000 northbound loads and a little more than 600 southbound loads. That includes items such as blasting material and general equipment. He also estimated the road helped carry more than 100 million litres of fuel up north. 

"Generally, the road starts getting built almost every year on Dec. 10 and we build until about Jan. 30," Henkel explained.

By that time, the minimum depth of ice on the road is 76 cm and can reach a depth of almost 100 cm as the days and nights get colder.

"That's when we take full loads," Henkel said. "And once we do that, we're hauling all the way through that."

Hauling is generally done by the end of March, he added, and after that, the crew does its cleanup and locks the gate on their way out.

Cleanup includes making sure there haven't been any oil spills and sweeping up any gravel to make sure it doesn't get into the lakes.

"Everything gets picked up, all the signs get picked up and if there's any litter on the road, we pick that up," said Henkel, who also thanked the dedicated group of people that come every year to build this road. 

"I was reminiscing with one guy (on Tuesday) and we were talking about the road in 2001," he said. "It gets in your blood almost because of the challenges and the camaraderie we have. You don't often get a project like this, but when you do, it's just a pleasure to work with them."