lodge

Aug 07 2012

My time at Yellow Dog Lodge

As a kid I flew by bush plane to some of the most remote places in the north and I absolutely loved it. This past weekend my joy of flying and adventure was rehatched as I spent the weekend at Yellow Dog Lodge.

Yellow Dog Lodge is about a 15 minute flight or 30 kms north of Yellowknife, on a point between Graham and Duncan Lake. The lodge is beautifully situated with viewing points of both lakes

Upon landing on the cleverly named “Rainbow Dock” I had the pleasure to finally meet the lodge owner and operator, Gordon Gin. Gord has been operating the lodge for over 6 years and has done many improvements since I last visited back in the early 2000’s.

Right off the bat I was given a tour of all the facilities, and there is a lot going on. The main building houses the kitchen, dining room, lounge, and sitting room on the main floor. Then there are staff quarters below and guest rooms above, featuring spacious double beds or singles. There are then two winterized cabins and another full service cabin, which acts as the winter lodge. Of course there are then all the extras, like the wood burning hot tub, sauna and Internet.

The one facility that really stuck out to me and makes Yellow Dog Lodge unique was the dock house. Imagine a barge with Astroturf, railings all around the edge and a 12×14′ prospector tent on it. If you haven’t guesses yet, it is a floating campsite, fully equipped with a BBQ, stove, generator, camp supplies, canoe and an onboard lou.

While many people travel to these lodges for great fishing and meals without having to worry about anything, some are looking for that great outdoor adventure. They are wanting to experience the Northern Frontier and the dock house is perfect for them.

When I first arrived at Yellow Dog Lodge a couple, originally from Russia but living in the USA, were heading back to Yellowknife after spending an entire month on this dock house. They couldn’t have been happier I heard them saying to Gord as they boarded the plane.

It is pretty simple to stay on the dock house and Gord will help with logistics, like food and getting to it, but it can be completely a self-service operation. The dock house is also equipped with an outboard motor so if a person so choose they could have a different view each morning, move out of bad weather if it appeared or even move to where the fish are biting best. This truly is a unique northern outdoor adventure you are not going to find anywhere else.

To me Yellow Dog Lodge isn’t a place to go trophy fishing, although the fishing is amazing, it is a get away vacation spot where you come to bond with your friends and family. It is where you would go to have a special time with those you are with. I imagine a father and son coming to the lodge and spending the weekend fishing and hiking together or an office get-together to unwind after a big project is complete.

It is also a place to make new friends and swap stories. I spent many evenings and meal times conversing with Gord, the cook Heddy and another guest Lisa from California. We all came from different walks of life, different experiences and had different stories but now we are all connected because we were all at a remote lodge in the middle of nowhere together.

Yellow Dog Lodge is right in my backyard but when I was there I felt like I was a million miles from anything. It was without a doubt peaceful.

*Disclaimer: Yellow Dog Lodge is a client on mine through my day job. I was flown to the lodge by the owner for a meeting. I was not asked to write this article.

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

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

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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.

Nov 13 2010

Flying Through Northern Skies

The first time I remember flying in a float plane was when the family went to Watta Lake for a Dillon Consulting fishing trip back in 1998. The Fishing Lodge is still to this day one of my favourite places. The place was owned by Trevor’s mother, who was/is a Dillon engineer of some sort. Cool, guy, always had purple glasses and long blond hair. Later about 6 year later I saw him and he had shaves his head.

This is not about that trip though. This is about one of the first memorable timesI flew in a float plane. My mom, brother and I were flying Bathurst Inlet Lodge to meet up with my father and spend a week as tourist. Dad, was up there for a good portion of the summer working with clients.

We were flying in a Turbo Single Otter. It was blue and owned by the company. It was just the three of us on the flight and the rest was cargo. There is an old saying that is still true to this day, never fly a plane in the north empty. There is always something going somewhere. Folks always share a plane, to get the moneys worth. The trip to Bathurst is 360 miles as the crow flies, but this we had to make a couple stops first.

Me, I love flying, and could do it without any sweat, my mother and brother on the other had, not so much. Needless to say by our second stop we had to dispose of some little baggies. Our first stop was, I think, Treeline Lodge or the old Salmita Mine, on the shores of Matthews Lake, which is on, you guessed it, the treeline. It is one of my favourite places in the world and where I learned to drive, but that story will wait. The second stop was at, arguably, one of the best fishing places in the north, the Burnside River Camp.

After many hours of going up and down we finally landed in Bathurst Inlet, an Inlet of the Arctic Ocean. Ironically one of the first people to meet us at the plane, who was also flying back to Yellowknife, was Archie Johnson, who was an elementary school councillor. I later came to learn that many of my school teachers also worked up at camps during the summer.

I don’t have many memories of actually being at the Lodge that week. I remember the Blue Lou, which was a homemade pontoon boat which was named after the blue colour outhouse that was situated on the back of the boat. I also can remember Susie’s cooking, amazing. She and her husband Sam, members of the community of Bathurst Inlet have become good friends with our family over the years.

So concludes another memory. Wait until I tell you the time we flew the Turbo Single Otter to Pilote Point Lodge. That was fun.