Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

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.

IMG_3924

 

IMG_3923

 

_DSF6644

 

_DSF6622

 

IMG_3909

 

IMG_3885

 

IMG_3846

 

IMG_3878

 

IMG_3860

 

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.

A Truly Northern Weekend

I have no pictures, because this was a working weekend. Rather, it was a northern weekend. One without electronics, especially considering I lost my iPhone.

Saturday was a busy day. If you were me, along with family and friends, you would have driven 150km out of Yellowknife, past Rae-Edzo (Behchoko). The reason for such a drive was to cut down standing dead, also known as firewood.

Kyle snowmobile

We, and I say this with a grain of salt, because I am only there to help, get a cutting permit for the season so we can heat our houses with our wood stoves.

Leaving town at about 9am, we arrived at our cutting area (the location which is top-secret), break trail in with snow, cut for a couple of hours, haul it all back to the trailer, load it up and drive back to town.

It seems like an easy thing to do, but it does drain your energy. I’m also certainly not going to complain about the amazing -1ºC it was out there, but I certainly got wet and heated up quickly. I prefer this job in -20ºC. I think my gloves and boots are still soaking wet.

Now fast forward to Sunday morning. I’m up at the crack of dawn, you know about 8:30am here in the north and ready to go back out.

I fill our sled toboggan full of firewood and drag it to the front of the house and proceed to stock it up inside the house next to our wood stove. I brought in enough wood to keep us going for the week, burning only in the evening to kill the chill at night.

My next task was kindling. Kindling is also an annoying part of wood burning, because it seems you are always running out. Fear not I fill a milk crate, so again, we should be good until the next weekend.

The last thing I did this weekend was move snow. On a side note did you know this Hay River, NT company will make you snow. No thanks, I got lots. So much so I needed to remove it from the deck on our house. Otherwise in the spring water would be everywhere around the house.

If you have ever shovelled snow, you will know how straining it is. Now imagine 4ft deep snow on a deck 12ft in the air. I had to throw that snow so far.

I enjoyed every minute of this weekend, including my afternoon cooking and baking. My one regret for of the weekend is that come Monday morning I am going to be tired! Instead of being tired though, I’m going to be awesome.

Oh yeah I also blew a cylinder in my snowmobile, rendering it useless and lost my iPhone.

A Cabin Companion

So if you haven’t noticed I have, once again, been a little absent over here.

I am currently sitting in a chair, in front of a fire, in a cabin back in the bush. I had the greatest intentions about coming out here for the weekend. I was going to read a book, listen to some podcasts, go cut some fire wood and of course write. It was going to be a blast, all by myself.

Well things never work out the way you imagine them. It is currently Saturday morning and I have no ambition. I barely made it through the night with the wood I head and instead of going out to cut more I decided to write this. I don’t know how to describe the feeling. I guess it can be called laziness.

Although I’m giving into my own laziness and heading home today, I did do the one thing I had been wanting to do for 2 years. That was to stay the night out here. Next time, which I hope will be in two weeks, I am going to bring a foamy. I may be able to “rough” it but plywood and my back don’t agree.

There is one other reason I feel I have lost ambition out here and that is companionship, a parent is one thing an actual companion is another. I now understand why so many people who wonder out in to the bush have dogs. They may not be great conversationalists, but they still listen…. for the most part. Having a dog would be great, a close friend would be better. Sometimes I feel sorry for the Madtrapper, and think maybe all he needed was a friend. Other times I side with him and think people should have just left him alone.

Well the time has come for me to stop talking about my missory and pack up and head home. I was going to take a bunch of photos but my flash light died so I used the batteries out of my camera.

Tell me, what is something you long for? Mine would be companionship.

Ice Thickness Chart and Information

Because of the high amount of traffic I am receiving from my first last post about Ice Thickness, I thought I would write another one with more information that would apply to people out side of Yellowknife.

Here is a Ice Thickness Chart that show how thick the ice has to be to be able to support you, a snowmobile, car, truck etc.

Ice Thickness Chart

I also wanted to explain how to properly measure the ice you are on.

What you need: Ice auger(an axe could work, I have done it, but it makes a mess), L shaped stick (can be anything), measuring tape, and a shovel.

How to Do it:

  1. Shovel away all the snow in the area where you want to drill your hole in the ice
  2. Prep your Ice Auger, make sure blade is sharp. Start it up if it is a gas auger.
  3. Start drilling by slowly drilling your hole so that the auger goes down in one spot and continue down.
  4. While your drilling it is a good idea to pull up the Auger once and a while to get the ice shavings out of the hole. Use the shovel to remove them once they are up.
  5. Once you have gone throw bring your auger back up and make sure you don’t put it in the snow so it does not have clumps of snow and ice on it when you want to put it away. (Not something you have to do, just something I do)
  6. Clear all the slush and ice chips out of the area with the shovel and try to get as much as possible out of the hole.
  7. With your “L” shaped stick put the vertical end ( — part) into the ice and then pull the stick back upwards you that the vertical part of the stick is underneath the ice at the very bottom of it.
  8. Then mark on the sticks horizontal part (|) where the ice (top) begins.
  9. Once you have pull the stick our again, with the measuring tape measure from where you mark the ice began to the bottom part.

You will now have a general idea of the thickness of the ice in that area. But remember Ice Thickness can change very quickly and can be different thickness’s only a foot away from where you measure. Many things contribute to how thick the ice can be, such as the depth of the water, if the ice is exposed to the air and/or sun, as well as how much snow is on top of the ice. Think of the snow as a blanket. When snow if on ice it insulating it, preventing it from becoming thicker and stronger.

Read up more on ice here

Remember to always be safe and cautious. And have Fun.