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Jun 10 2011

Treeline Lodge the Lodge itself (Part 1)

This is another post on Treeline Lodge, the lodge I spent a few summers at as a teenager. You can read my introduction to the lodge here, but basically it is a Tourism/Outpost Camp 150 miles north of Yellowknife, NT in the Arctic Tundra.

I’m going to try to describe the actual lodge in this post. I attempted to get an image from Google Maps, but do to it location, in the middle of nowhere, the quality stinks. I’ll start with everything that was within the “bear fence”, which was basically an electric wired fence that was meant to slow a bear down enough it can be dealt with.

First was the kitchen building, which was a long rectangle building. One entrance at the front of the building and another at the back for the cook and staff. As you walked in there were 4 large picnic styled tables with benches around them for camp residents to eat meals. About mid way down the building you would approach a built-in serving countertop, where residents would get their meals. As you went into the kitchen you would find an industrial sized grill and oven – I mean some means eggs on that grill. On the other side was an industrial sized sink, with countertop scattered throughout. There was also a large island table in the middle of the kitchen. As you passed through the kitchen you would walk into the pantry, with a big built-in, walk-in fridge on you right and freezers on the left.

Running parallel off the right side of the kitchen building were two building for sleeping quarters. Each building had 12 rooms with two beds in each room and a hallway running down the middle. They were very basic rooms, each bed with closet and bedside table.

Attached to the lodging building closest to the bear fence was a hallway that lead to a few different places. The first was the fully functioning bathrooms and laundry room. Each bathroom (Men/Women) was fitted with actual toilets, sinks with running water and showers. If you made a left turn while going down the hallway you would pass a very small room which housed two very large water tanks. These tanks – which I had to fill from the lake on a daily basis – were for drinking and washing water. Water was pumped from a clean lake and then filtered to the max and then pumped into the hot water tank or throughout the buildings. Continuing down the hallway would get you to the final room. This room was the rec room. There was a small library, a few table games and SATELLITE TV. The TV was a big deal, guys would come in from the field and this is where they would ended up after supper. The other reason that made this room unique was it 25ft (I don’t actually know) ceiling. I never did know why it was so high. At one point I thought it was because someone might have wanted to build a second floor, but I never found out.

As I have become long winded about the Lodge, I’ll break this into two posts.

Treeline Lodge, NWT

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Memories · Tagged: lodge, NWT, tourism, treeline

Apr 27 2011

Treeline Lodge’s Peggy’s Pit

I introduced Treeline Lodge last week, a place that now lives in my memories. I will now share specific parts of the Treeline Lodge I remember, this time Peggy’s Pit.

As I mentioned Treeline Lodge was built close to two old mines and because of that there was a fairly large road system in the area. The roads weren’t elaborate and was just made of gravel. Because of the relatively flat tundra building the roads would have been easy but the gravel would have had to been created from something.

So to make the gravel, a large rock area was, I’m assuming, blasted out to make said gravel. Gravel was continued to be blasted out of the large rock until a pit was formed.

The name comes from an owner of mines in the North at that time, although her reputation is not in good terms in the north. Supposedly Petty Witte, aka Margret Kent, cheated many people and fled the north.

Peggy’s Pit was one of the first things I remember about Treeline because the pit is far from any lake but is full of water and has cliffs that reach out of the ground.  If memory serves right, the water gradually goes down 30 or so feet. It was a cool place to head in the evening and hang out.

Treeline

Treeline6

Treeline5

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Memories · Tagged: arctic, lodge, peggy witte, treeline, tundra

Apr 21 2011

Introducing Treeline Lodge

I haven’t been as active in sharing my memories as I wanted to when I started the category months ago. So today I want to introduce some of my fondest memories. Memories from a place in the middle of the tundra in the Northwest Territories called Treeline Lodge on Mathews Lake. Matthews Lake is about 150 miles northeast of Yellowknife, towards the Nunavut border.

View Larger Map

A quick history of the area would include the operation of two gold mines, Salmita Mine and Tundra Mine, between the years of 1945 and 1987. After the Tundra Mine was shut down and disassembled and Salmita Mine was shut down, part of the land was sold to an outfitter out of Yellowknife. The same outfitter my father worked for for almost 10 years. The camp that was on the land was used as an exploration camp in the 90’s until being sold. The camp was cleaned up and reno’d into a tourism/exploration lodge.

I spent the summer of 2003,2004,2005 and maybe a week in 2006, I can’t completely remember. I feel disappointed I didn’t take any photos, but digital cameras were quiet expensive back then and not on the top of my list. Luckily while crawling Facebook the other week I came across a old school mate’s photos of the lodge from 2009 after the lodge was shut down and only used as a small exploration camp.

Treeline Lodge NWT

I have 4 or 5 pre-thought of posts on the lodge that I want to share. This place is one of my favourite places in the world.

Written by kylewith · Categorized: Memories · Tagged: lodge, NWT, tourism, treeline, tundra

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