The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)
On Friday a friend and I left Yellowknife and headed north. In my Jeep. We jumped onto the Ice Road that heads to the Diamond Mines and just kept driving.
The lakes got longer, the trees shorter and then all of a sudden they were gone.
We saw birds…
The landscape changed…
There was a sign…
And dead caribou…
Finally we ended up on the tundra.
Bob Heath is a pilot who has flown the skies of the Inuvik region for 25 years. That is longer than I have even been on this earth. As he described himself, he is a short fat man with a beard and less and less hair each day. So naturally he sounds like a great guy to me and someone who doesn’t take himself to seriously.
I suppose if you fly around the same place for 25 years you have to find humour in something.
Upon arriving back to the Inuvik Airport and meeting Bob, I also met a couple who were also coming over to Tukoyuktuk for the ride. Graham and Carolyn Downer are from Rockwood, ON and fly all over Canada and the north in their little Cessna aircraft. They have traveled extensively through the NWT and Yukon throughout the past twenty years and have no thoughts of changing that.
As the 4 of us stood at the Twin Otter and waited for the reset of the passengers slated to join us on this sched flight Bob starts telling us about everything. This is an example of a true northerner, a person who has not only been around for a long time but also loves talking about it and sharing it with other people. In my opinion this man should be a tour operator as well as a pilots.
Bob starts off by saying “the first thing you will notice about this Twin Otter is the giant tires we have on it…” The Tundra Tires, as I call them, are over sized tires for the Twin Otter that hold air but not up to the same pressure as a standard aircraft tire. What makes the tires so great is that combined with the Twin Otters ability to land and take-off in very short spaces Bob can land and take-off almost anywhere on the tundra at anytime. He goes on to explain how the tires actually come from a big DC3, like Buffalo Joe flies, but they take several layers of tread off them making them lighter.
While in the plane, Bob hooked us up with headphones so we could listen in to the commentary, which was when the tour really started.
On the way to Tuk we followed the river and Bob told us about everything we saw. The seismic lines where testing of minerals happened, where all the giant trees on the river came from, who and where the reindeer herders are and my personal favourite, how Pingos are actually formed. In the entire 30 minute flight he never stopped.
When we landed in Tuk and had a few minutes before having to leave again, Bob told us about the community. More about the Pingos, the community freezer and how in the 80’s oil companies had a huge presence in Tuk making the community double its size. The town of 900 on the Arctic Ocean Coast even had regular flights to Edmonton and Calgary.
Our way back to Inuvik took us over a lake that spans 150 miles. I don’t remember the name of the lake but it is one of the most popular in the area. It is unique because at the north end of the lake salt water from the ocean comes in and mixes with the fresh water. So one part of the lake is salt water, one part is fresh and the middle is a mix. I guess this makes for some of the best fishing and even more strange is that on the odd occasion whales have even come into the lake. The lake has several seasonal cabins on it for hunting and fishing season. Bob was even able to name almost off of them.
After landing back in Inuvik and parting ways with Bob, Graham and Carolyn, I was still in awe at how much I had just learned about the area in a short amount of time.
The thoughts that were racing through my head were, how do I market this guy. He is a hidden gem of the north but he also represents what the north is all about. Maybe that is what makes him such a gem for those who meet him, he’s not a tourism operator, he is a pilot of the area and maybe that the way he wants to keep it.
Either way, it was an honour to me Bob Heath.
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.
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.
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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.
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.