People are driving on Dawson City's $10 ice bridge

It may have seemed at first like a harebrained scheme, but the ice bridge built by some industrious amateurs in Dawson City seems to be working.

Kyler Mather, one of the builders, said people have been using it for a few weeks to drive their vehicles across the Yukon River, between West Dawson and downtown. 

And it cost next to nothing.

"No more than ten bucks in chainsaw gas," Mather said.

Mather and his friends had better luck than the Yukon government. The territory hired engineers in December to build an ice road crossing in Dawson. One month and $150,000 later, those efforts were going nowhere and the government pulled the plug. 

Before that, though, Mather and his friends found their own solution. In January, they located a narrow stretch of open water on the river and got to work with a chainsaw.

They cut out a massive slab of ice that was then moved by the river's current to span the gap. 

"We weren't sure if it was going to break in half, or get sucked under by the current or whatnot," he said.

They were soon walking across, and Mather said a few weeks later people were driving on it. 

Still, he's not gloating over the government's failed efforts.

"In a way you're kind of comparing apples and oranges ... I think they were maybe bound by where they maybe had to go across," he said.

The government has said it can only build a sanctioned ice bridge where the ferry landings are, downstream from Mather's bridge. The amateur bridge is also a use-at-your-own-risk prospect, whereas a government crossing must meet certain official standards.  

The government has not said whether it will attempt to build an ice bridge again next winter. The river has typically frozen over naturally in years past, but that hasn't happened the last couple of winters.