May 16th, 2011: Hectic!! Today is Monday, Saturday we had 10 Caravan flights into Bolton Lake from Norway House with 50 plus propane, plus about 20,000 lbs of other goodies like the beer, pop, water, outboard motors, a new ice machine, beans, corn, canola oil, potatoes etc. We also had the fuel plane in 11 times between Saturday and Sunday bringing in almost 10,000 gallons of fuel, a mix of Av Gas for the float plane, straight gas for the boats etc, and diesel for the generators. On one of the last Caravan flights on Saturday I flew out to Norway House and drove like a mad fool to Winnipeg and made it home in the middle of the night. On Sunday I drove out to Kenora to do my flight training and write a bunch of tests. This morning, I finished my tests and flight training, picked up some miscellaneous supplies in Kenora and the pilot and I flew to Bolton Lake. Then we flew into Joint Lake because we have guests coming in tomorrow morning and we needed to get the camp ready. It’s looking good, just a bit more clean up in the morning and we’ll be all set for the guests. When that’s done, we’ll get over to Aswap to get that camp ready because the next day we have a group of guys going to that camp. The dock took a beating last fall so I’ll need to bring a couple extra hands to get that camp ready. I could see Aswap on our way to Joint Lake and noticed that there’s still ice on part of the lake, the incredible weather we’ve had over the past few days has really beat that ice up and will continue for the next few days. Joint Lake still has ice on the main lake but the river is completely open and the water is pretty high so it will be easy to get to the rapids up river.
We can almost land the float plane in front of the lodge, I’m betting that by tomorrow we will be able to as the ice goes out, now we just need to get the dock in good enough shape to handle the float plane, that one took a beating as well last fall. More staff will be arriving daily as we get our camps ready, boats in, water running to all the cabins, repair the docks, bring wood to the shore lunch spots, mark rocks, train the new guides, and just get everything set up and cleaned for our first lodge guests arriving on May 24th. Still lots to do, but it’s coming along.