hidden lake

Apr 04 2015

Another weekend of fishing at Hidden Lake

When the weather is nice and you still have the means to get out to a remote cabin out of cell service where there are good drinks, good food, good fishing and good fishing stuff like best marine battery and good people, you just have to go.

Took a friend, Joe of Chasing Pisces, out to Hidden Lake to for a day of ice fishing. He was on a mission to catch a lake trout. Well, he caught one. Then caught another. And another. We found a sweet spot.

Preparing the ciscos started off the day, along with a big breakfast. With two lines set and the third hole drilled we were setting a line when the fish started to bite like crazy. one, two, three, four fish later we finally were able to leave to try for some whitefish. A venture which didn’t pan out.

While lounging around the next morning I thought to myself, Yellowknife is a place where you can start up until three in the morning swapping fish stories only to get up the next morning to make new ones. It is a beauty.

One my way back into town from the lake I stopped into the Scouts cabin on Pontoon Lake where an ice road was plowed into. The Scouts Cabin was a popular place for friends and I back eight years ago now. It is a little run down and is in need a major clean and renovation, but bits of history still hang on the walls.

Mar 25 2015

Hiding at Hidden Lake

The first time I went out to Hidden Lake was as a Scout in 2002. It was the annual snowmobile camp where Scouts would spend 5 days out at a camp on Hidden Lake. We’d snowmobile right from town with all our gear, food and fuel for the week. During the week we’d spend it learning about the operations of a camp as well as many outdoor survival skills. Over the years we did many things. One of my most memorable trips was when we did a lake wide scavenger hunt that had us doing activities like shelter building, signal fire building and ice fishing, all guided by a compass and map.

I have gone out to Hidden Lake every year since with the exception of a couple of years where I was out of town. This year I tagged along with today’s Scouts and helped mentor them just like others did for me. One of my favourite events of the winter.

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Apr 15 2012

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.