It featured the activities of drivers who operated trucks on ice roads crossing frozen lakes and rivers, in remote territories in Canada and the U.S. state of Alaska.

[citation needed] In 2006, the History Channel hired Thom Beers, owner of Original Productions and executive producer of Deadliest Catch, to create a series based on the Ice Road book.

Shot in high-definition video (although the season ended before History HD was launched in the US), the show "charts two months in the lives of six extraordinary men who haul vital supplies to diamond mines and other remote locations over frozen lakes that double as roads".

Instead, the burly, bearded, swearing men (and women) who blow methyl hydrate into their own transmissions and welcome storms as breaks from boredom ... are much better television.

Rick Yemm, Alex Debogorski, and Lisa Kelly traveled to India and put their driving skills to the test on the narrow, treacherous mountain roads that lead from Delhi to Shimla, then up to the Karchan and Kuppa hydroelectric dam construction sites in the Himalayas.

The truckers were accompanied by spotters, who were responsible for making the negotiations in case of problems with other drivers in the city and keeping them safe during their routes and difficult spots on the road.

As the season continued, the drivers were dispatched to carry supplies over the stormy Rohtang Pass to the town of Keylong, which had been cut off for months due to the bad weather.

The season finale aired on December 5, 2010, with the truckers attempting to deliver loads of jet fuel for helicopter crews who were working to rescue people stranded in the mountains by the storms.

The roads were often hacked out of vertical cliffs like a tunnel with one side open to the air, with rock overhangs overhead and drops of several hundred feet below.

– Hugh Rowland and Rick Yemm, Lisa Kelly and Dave Redmon, and newcomers Timothy "Tim" R. Zickuhr and Augustin "Tino" Rodriguez.

In episode 6, Kelly and Boles transport 32 breeding llamas across the Salar de Uyuni, the world's biggest salt flat, 12,000 ft (3,700 m) above sea level.

The series original theme song was the Aerosmith's lead single for the album Get a Grip, Livin' On The Edge, composed by Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Mark Hudson and released in early 1993.

In the television worldwide premiere, the song "Black Mo" by Blues Saraceno was used as theme and background music in promotional videos of the spin-off's first season.

In 2008, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights from the History Channel to create a scripted, theatrical action film based on the series.