April 17th, 2007: I just returned from a trip into the lodge over the weekend and have a few things to report. There were 8 foot high snow drifts around the camp and at least 36 inches of solid ice in just about every place we augured holes. On the bright side, since we arrived on Friday afternoon at least 16 inches of snow has melted and there isn’t much snow left on the ice. The weather report is very good for the next week and the runway is almost clear of snow already. Yvon, Winston and Tom are at the lodge finishing the new cabin and giving me daily snow and ice reports. There’s a lot of melting that needs to take place but if the weather stays warm like this then it won’t be a problem. Another cold snap or snow fall may delay ice out, but the weather looks good for a while. Once all the snow is off the runway and the sun has had a chance to dry it up a bit then we’ll get on there with the packer to make it a bit more solid for the bigger planes to land and bring in all our supplies. Our new motors, pop, beer, furniture, siding for the new cabin and 12,000 pounds of other miscellaneous items are all in Thompson waiting to be flown into the lodge when we have the runway ready. The fuel will also be flown in around the same time as the freight.
There was a group of 15 Caribou on the ice near the lodge that we spotted with the ski plane that flew Winston and Yvon in and took me out. That was the first time I’ve ever seen something like that before! Tom took some pictures after I left so I’ll have to get them from him next week when I go back to work on the airstrip.
Here’s a picture of the lodge on Sunday April 15th. Hopefully it will look very different in a month!