May 14th, 2012: The ice is all gone from our lakes and we’re almost ready to start another great season at Bolton Lake! Our freight haul was finally finished yesterday, we had to bring in a different airplane because the one we were using had problems with his flaps and needed to leave for maintenance but I luckily happened to be in the air when our friends from Keystone Air were passing through the area. Their plane wasn’t busy for a couple of days so they gladly helped us out. The only problem was that my quad didn’t fit into the plane so we had to ship it back to Winnipeg. I can try to put it in Perimeter’s Dash 8, they have a huge door or I can work on that helicopter to fly the Polaris Ranger into camp. The Ranger is only 12 miles from Bolton Lake, but at this time of year all the open water between us and the Ranger makes it impossible to get unless we use a helicopter to sling it into camp.
The fuel haul is still taking place, there were delays due to high winds but we’re back on track to be finished by tomorrow. We are using a Crop Duster again to fly in the fuel again. It hauls over 800 gallons at a time and we empty it with a pump in about 15 minutes. A lot nicer than the old barrel method of hauling fuel! 6 loads of Premium unleaded gas, 3 loads of Diesel for the generators etc, 2.5 loads of Av Gas for the float plane and half a load of Jet fuel for planes that need to be topped up before heading back south.
It’s an exciting time of year getting geared up to start! Now we just need to finish our training with the float plane and get back to the lodge to open up the outpost camps that are opening on Sunday!!