snowmobile

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.

Feb 05 2012

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.

Feb 20 2010

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.