Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

Heading north to Inuvik, NT for the weekend

I have lived in the north practically all my life but I’ve never actually been to Inuvik, NT. I’ve actually been to more of western Nunavut than western NWT. I’ve been to Cambridge Bay, NU, Kugluktuk, NU, Bathurst Inlet, NU and so on.

I’m excited to see what is going on in Inuvik. The terrain has always intrigued me and been somewhat of a mystery to me. It is further north than Yellowknife but is still below the treeline and lies along the arctic coast.

Welcome to Inuvik sign

The point of my trip to Inuvik is business but I will have the flexibility to explore the area and find out what is going on up there. My goal is to try and experience Inuvik as if I am a tourist and record everything I am seeing and doing.

While I’m in Inuvik the Great Northern Artists Festival will be taking place, which will be one of the events I’m going to check out. The festival features artists from all over the north showcasing there art and taking part in workshops.

Tomorrow I may even get the chance to go to Tuktoyuktuk, NT, which is an even smaller community.

Let the adventure begin.

Fort building on Vancouver Island

One of the many things I liked to do as a kid was build forts out of everything. I’m sure most kids are like this. Well I started off with the parents couch, which was perfect for forts. The cushions were square and firm, perfect for building up. I later moved onto tree-forts and I had a lot of those in the backyard.

Well this afternoon I got to relive some of my childhood and build a fort on Long Beach out of drift wood. I’m on Vancouver Island up on the west coat at Long Beach, which is south of Tofino.

 My fort is built strong to withstand the elements. It has several large logs as support beams and is right up a wall of brush. I also started to dig down in the sand a little as I knew I would not be able to make the roof very tall.

Arched logs at the front of the structure create the arch of the roof and support the centre beam that runs to the back of the structure. From there cross logs were places as the roof.

With the sand I used to dig out inside I used as a small barrier on the opened to make it small to again protect from the elements. In the above photo you can also see how I used twine I scavenged from around the beach to bind the arch.

Here you can see the slightly dug out area inside the fort. You will also note the giant gaps in the roof. Now if I were to actually want this to protect me from the weather I would want a short distance away to the bush and gather several branches to place over these logs to make them water tight.

It is a pretty cool little fort and hopefully a kid comes along and spends sometime playing in it.

See I could be on survivor no problem. 😉

Another Adventure to Victoria

Once again I am off on another adventure and this one I have been looking forward to for sometime now.

I actually haven’t really traveled any where since January when I moved back to Yellowknife but that was only from Fort St. John. There seems to be enough for me to do in Yellowknife to make me feel like I don’t need to go anywhere.

Yellowknife from a plane

I’m off to Victoria, BC this time around. I will be attending the Social Media Camp once ago and figured I might as well go a few days early and see the sites.

Friend and coworker Martin will be taking me up to Long Beach and Tofino. We might also get to go to Pender Island.

I have to say even though I don’t think I could ever really live anywhere else I really enjoy Vancouver Island.

It was tough leaving Yellowknife this morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, sunny and 22*C. Yellowknife summers are like no other.

Now lets see what I can get up to on Vancouver Island!

My Hidden Lake Adventures

I have tried to get out to Hidden Lake every other weekend this winter and that seems to be working. I went out for Friday night and most of Saturday this weekend and now I feel exhausted but it is always fun.

This was one of my hang-ups living in Fort St. John, I didn’t get out in the woods much. It could have been for several reasons: I didn’t know where to go, there wasn’t a place to go, no one to go with or maybe I just had a general lack of ambition to do so down there. None of those are a problem here in the Northwest Territories. It is my domain, where I grew up, what I know.

There is not just one cabin I could go use, there is 3, all on different lakes spread out outside of Yellowknife. Even though my snowmobile broke earlier this year I have friends who lend me theirs. I’m never without access to the great outdoors and the ambition is there.

Hidden Lake is one of my favourite places to escape to because there is no contact with the outside world. In other words no cell phone service. The cabin itself is well setup with a propane furnaces that doesn’t require any maintenance other than changing out the bottles. Even then three 100lb bottles hooked up into the system allow it to go for several weekends without needing to be changed.

The cabin is located on a ridge of rock at one end of this lake and even though I have gone to this cabin now for almost ten years I finally climbed the ridge this winter. Check out the view:

While there is a lot of time for good R&R we do get some work and maintenance around the cabin done. This past trips project was to get some scrap wood out from behind the outhouse so we could have a bonfire. While I was cutting a trail in towards the outhouse I got the snowmobile stuck – this in no way reflects the performance of the snowmobile, just the driver 😉 – so we had to cut it out.

It did eventually drive right out of there once we cut out the brush that was wrapped around the skis.

Moving on to a more recreational activity, no winter outing at a cabin in the Northwest Territories would be complete without some Ice Fishing and Hidden Lake offers some of the best. Ciscos are often a good choice for bait when Ice Fishing and sure enough out of our three holes we caught a Lake Trout.

       

Finally of course would be the Northern Lights or Aurora. Getting out of Yellowknife with all its light pollution generally means the aurora will be good and sure enough – when I was actually awake – they were.