Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

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.

Simple Camp Life

Camp Life

Camp life for me is a simple life. A Tent and a Camp box. Oh and lets not forget the computer, but it actually reality, I do like the simple things. (On a side note it is not raining and my computer is getting wet so I will cut this short)

This was my first time trying a long exposure during the night and I like how it turned out. One this I would like to try, is doing it earlier in the evening and trying to pick up some of the background.

30/s, ISO 320, 3ev, f/10
Camp Life

 

 

Ready for the road, I hope

Alright I’m ready to start my journey back up to Yellowknife, I hope. The highway is still closed, but I’m still not planning to drive that stretch of the highway until Thursday.

Just because I may be stranded, I mean who knows what happens, I am going to tow up the camper. Hang out in Enterprise, NWT where there is at least 3G if I happen to have to stay a couple days. Then again I plan for the worst, so I’m sure it’ll all be good.

Camperjeep

May Long Weekend

I have decided to not edit over here and give you Kyle, 100% raw. That and I’m sitting on my deck, taking in the sun and can’t see the screen to edit my writing on this site.

Anyways, lets recap this weekend, it seems like a good one. Most of the time I don’t like weekends. More people in the house, I never sleep in, I get bored, etc. This one was different though, and that probably has to do with the fact I was busy for a lot of it.

Saturday was by far the best. I had the opportunity to attend Dave Brosha’s Yellowknife Scenes Workshop, which took us all around Yellowknife and taught me a lot. I have to say Dave does any amazing job teaching and I’m very glad he is willing to share is knowledge. I will have a full write up on YkOnline.ca about my experience and what the workshop was all about. The workshop started at 7:30am and finished at 6pm with drinks at the bar beside his studio. I think I’m going to write more about Dave in the coming days because not only is he an inspiration for photography, but he is also a great motivator. I can’t thank him enough.

Sunday started off as a haze, I felt as though I had a hang over. I slept for 10 hours, 4 more than I normally do, and because of that overslept and had a headache. To try and get rid of the head throbbing I decided it was probably better to get outside rather than work on the computer. I head to the backyard where I started messing around with the 12′ boat we have. The trailer has always been in bad shape, I thought I should try and change that this year. The trailer is a make shift one and is lite enough to be pulled by the smallest of cars. It has 2 runners on it and a rest at the top of the tongue where the nose of the boat sits, which are normally covered in carpet. Well, over the years the retro 70’s carpet which once decked out this trailer is now gone. After removing all the old rusted staples I meant to go out to the dump to find some more carpet, that never happened, I got lazy. Instead I pumped up the flat tire,  hoped it would deflate again and left it for the time being. For the rest of the day Taylor and I took off around town to skate. We ended up at a spot he refers to as the “C ledge”. There he and his “homies” skated while I photographed them. Some photos didn’t turn out to bad, but the sun was in the wrong place and I still need to play with the camera settings more. Of course to finish off Sunday I watched Lost, who didn’t. I feel I need to rewatch it, or have it explained more to me. I feel they finished it, but I’m still a little Lost, for lack of better words. I would really like to see an interview of the writer explaining their thought process of the whole show and finale.

So here we are on Monday, our last day off. I slept better and woke up refreshed, because of that I did do some work. I actually felt in the mood to write, the words were flowing. I started to write up the featured post of Dave’s work shop and made it half way before I realized that there was a bbq event happening at City Hall I wanted to cover. I grabbed my brother and off we went. We went to the BBQ and then to Pilots Monument because I needed some photos for another upcoming post. While down at pilots monument, I got a phone call from someone selling a Truck Camper, which I was looking for, out at Prelude Lake. A spur of the moment decision and we were on our way up the highway. Unfortunately we couldn’t find where this house was, with the camper. We searched everywhere, but it was no where to be found. After phoning them and getting no response and asking the gate keeper of the campground, we gave up and headed back to town.  At least the drive was enjoyable, when we weren’t bouncing all over the place.

That brings us to the now, or at least the now as I write this. The sun is glorious and warm. I am, so, ready for summer.