The first trip this year was with Don and Josh Hancock, a CU senior.  Josh was a great partner, along with his well-trained lab.  Josh was a professional grade climber and used his climbing skills to varnish all the high rafters and beams in the cabin.  He was also a great story teller with many interesting adventures to relate.  Josh helped install the kitchen cabinets, the water tank on the hill and much of the cabin plumbing.  Unfortunately, no pictures survive of that first trip.  This photo is typical of the rape seed that grows in Canada but this shot would be later in the season when it was in full bloom, like in July.

The Churchill River, looking up stream.

The Churchill River looking down stream at the “Devils Hole”.

Don and Cary (another CU student) on the way to Dancing Loon Island.

Dancing Loon Island.

Approaching the beach at Dancing Loon Island.

Cabin front.  Notice the generator “coop” on the left side of the deck.  Just lift up the green flap and you could run it in the rain.

Cabin “workshop”, note the packets of windows destined for the mud room (just left of the thickness planer) plus the rough top of the kitchen cabinets, acting more like a work bench.

Unfinished kitchen and the old barrel stove.

View from the loft.  Note the openings in the front wall, good spots for cold air and mosquitoes to enter the cabin.

View through the new front windows, not yet trimmed properly, but much better than clear plastic or nothing at all.  Pretty much the way the whole cabin progresses, by little steps every year, year after year.

Young grouse.  Can you find the second one??

Bill Watts lifts a stringer of walleyes caught at the “Honey Hole”. 

     The story of the rest of the summer follows:

   Monday, June 1, Don, Josh Hancock and Josh’s black lab “trapper” drove north in my “new” 1996 Suburban . See green log for much detail of this trip.   Dick Berreth and Dick Ohnstad came to the island at 8:30 PM, June 18 and left on Wednesday, June 24.   They built the log cover to the septic pit. See yellow matrix for some more detail.   We left the island on Sunday, June 28 and arrived in Boulder on Tuesday, June 30.

On Friday, July 10 I took Betty to DIA, packed the truck with help from Frank Watts, ate at Chilli's and proceeded to lock all my truck keys in the truck. It cost me $35 for a lock man to spend at most 10 seconds opening the truck..   I took Frank’s advice and hid an extra key under the rear license plate bolt. Saturday, July 11 was hot and clear as we drove to Sidney, Mt., Don and Cary Peter driving my truck and Frank and son Bill Watts driving Frank’s truck. Their dogs “blue” and “______” accompanied them. Bill had just given “blue” , a young mostly black lab with blue eyes to his dad as a present .The next day we drove north, gassed in Plentywood and continued north. We encountered the tail end of a forest fire north of Prince Albert and wondered how many more fires we would see before the trip was over. It is always a push to get from Sidney to our destination of BrabantLake in one day of driving so we never spend too much time along the way for such luxuries as eating and rest stops. BrabantLake is the last bit of civilization north of LaRonge. It is the last place to get gasoline, so you need to get there with enough time to gas up before they close for the night. Not making it there in time means that you will have to wait until they open at 8 AM the next day and that precludes an early start of that “going in” day. Of course, it would be nice to also get there in time to get a cabin and take a shower. With all this in mind, when we pulled into LaRonge at 7:30 PM with 2 ½ hours of gravel road yet ahead of us, I decided to gas up the trucks and move on up the road, not even looking for a restaurant.   Besides, we had packed sandwiches and snacks for just such a circumstance. Frank has a different eating style however and prefers to eat in restaurants and often. He may not eat a lot at any one sitting but he eats frequently, really nonstop. Only his nervous, perpetual motion and an inefficient body keep him slim and trim. Finally, when Frank gets hungry   he just plain get ornery and irascible. So when we got to BrabantLake, Frank was not a happy camper. Chris, the owner, told Frank “I am sure you won’t mind keeping the dogs outside the cabins, I don’t allow dogs inside”. I was relieved at this policy, not being a dog person. I was also a bit surprised because there were so many dogs in and about the camp. Mostly Indian dogs of every description, looking ever as much like someone opened all the doors at a dog pound.

     Now Frank was really unhappy. The mosquitoes were out in force and “Blue” was so young and “citified”, he didn’t know how to protect himself and so this situation really frustrated Frank. The cabin had two bunk beds and an extra single bed, so it could accommodate 5 people. I had been driving most of the day and was dead tired. After filing the various gas cans, paying for the cabin, buying Cary a fishing license and showering, I crashed in a bunk and never woke until morning. Not so Frank! After lying awake in his bed for half an hour, unhappy thinking about “Blue” and the mosquitoes and listening to Chris hammer, grind and saw in his workshop nearby, Frank got up and paid Chris a visit. In what I can only imagine was a somewhat strained voice, Frank said to Chris “I am sure you won’t mine stopping all this late night racket so a paying customer can get some sleep!”

     The next morning I made the mistake of cheerily asking Frank how he was doing. That’s when I got an earful of all the “fun” I had missed the night before. After a quick breakfast at the café, Frank was back to a full stomach and his normal, pleasant disposition and we all headed north to the WathamanRiver, full of anticipation. It is a slow drive on a gravel road with many undulations and curves that we share with and occasional “local” driving way too fast or the 34-wheel monster mining haul truck. Meeting either of these while driving up the crest of a steep hill, and having them appear suddenly in the middle of the road directly in front of you tends to keep you focused on the road ahead of you and your hands frozen to the steering wheel, which of course contributes greatly to your fatigue. A steady rain and the resulting sloppy road further hampered this trip.

     Our four wheeler trail was very wet, making the slab rocks quite slippery. Luckily we were going mostly downhill over these rocks this trip. The mosquitoes love this kind of weather and the swarming pests saturated the portage. I found my boats as they were left a couple weeks earlier and also my green rope bag left on the over turned Indian boat. Everything and everybody got a little wet, but the rain was more of a drizzle so nothing really got soaked. Among other things, we had 90 gallons of new gasoline for the island and a new supply of perishable food. The boat trip took 3 hours and 40 minutes, slightly slower than normal, but we had some choppy water to cross. I was worried about the large open water beyond IceIsland, but after plowing through the usual swells at the entrance, we were able to cross that stretch with no problems. We quickly opened up the camp and had a supper of Dinty Moore Stew, corn, bread and milk left from my earlier trip. My permafrost cooler can keep fresh milk for about a month, but even I was surprised that this milk brought in by Dick Berreth a month earlier was still good. Don had cooked so Frank washed. We were in bed by 9:45PM.

     Tuesday was rainy and very cold. One of those days after a long trip that you are just satisfied to do nothing as long as you stay warm and dry. Staying dry on a Canadian island is really what building the cabin was all about, at least it is the excuse I most often give for such a crazy endeavor. But on a really cold, wet day you appreciate staying dry and warm, especially if you have experience being cold and wet in a tent. Bill and I played cribbage, each winning a game, and thus setting up a championship game later. About 5 PM, we bundled up and went fishing at the rapids, after all that was why we were there. We brought fish home for the fish box only because Frank had brought steaks for one meal and we thought we needed to eat them at their freshest.

     After supper, Frank started telling stories. No one knows more stories than Frank and no one can tell a story as well. I truly think Frank could tell 1,000 different stories by himself and if he was alternating with another good story teller, he could tell 2000 stories, because the other person’s stories would help him recall another 1000.

     Frank told the story of a Russian peasant, walking to his factory one very cold morning. As he walked along the country road, he noticed a small bird lying along the path. The bird was very tiny and appeared to be frozen. The peasant went over to where the bird lay and knew how bad it felt to be cold. The bird surprised him by moving a wing. The peasant was so happy that the little fellow wasn’t dead, he picked up the bird and gently placed him in his warm pocket. By the time he had walked the several miles to town, the bird had warmed up and was quite revived. As the peasant approached the town, he started thinking of the problem he had created. He would have to risk sneaking the bird into the factory where no pets were allowed or he would have to put the little bird back into the cold morning air and who knows what would happen to the poor bird. Finally he decided he must release the bird for he could not risk his job. The decision was made easier by an idea he just got while noticing a fresh steaming cow pie newly deposited by a farmer’s milk cow. He gently took the bird out of his pocket and carefully put him into the middle of the warm “pie”. He mounded the ”pie” up around him, careful to keep the little bird’s head clear.   Now the peasant said good bye to the little bird, feeling good that the bird would not only be kept warm but the bird would have a great feast on the corn sprinkled through the “pie”. And the little bird was indeed very happy and started to sing his happy song as the sun started to rise over the horizon. As the peasant walked on toward the edge of town he felt good and warm all over at the kind deed he had done that early morning, oh how wonderful it was to hear the little bird so happy. Unknown to the peasant, a wolf at the edge of the woods high up the hill had been watching the whole episode unfold. He too was cold and very hungry. As soon as the peasant disappeared over the knoll, the wolf ran out to the edge of the road drawn to the exact location of the little bird by it singing and devoured the defenseless bird in a single gulp. Now this story has several morals. 1. The person who puts you into shit, is not necessary your enemy. 2. The one who takes you out of shit is not necessarily you friend. 3. When you are in shit up to your ears, don’t sing, you could get eaten. We all laughed as we recalled how a boss we had had many years earlier used to tell that story as a prelude to announcing some unwelcome assignment.

     Frank tried lighting a mosquito coil before going to bed. It burst into a ball of fire and lit up the cabin as though a bright flare was ignited. Bill, who was in the loft thought we had turned on some new high intensity light. The cabin filled with what smelled like a very unhealthy odor. I rushed to open the door and windows and a breeze quickly cleared the air. How that happened I would never know. I have since tried to get one of those coils to ignite that way but to no avail. Frank must have some secret way with fire , we concluded. My practice of always burning a coil only over a large metal surface to avoid a fire didn’t seem too careful after this incident.  See the next photo for the rest of the story.

Don at the “Honey Hole”, just above Wilson Rapids. 

     The rest of the story from the prior photo follows:

Wednesday, July 15 we had a steak breakfast, stoking up for a full day of fishing. There was the usual rounding up of fishing gear, some putting on new line in anticipation of the big fish to be caught. I needed to get the gasoline prepared and went down to the beach to start my new gasoline testing routine that I had initiated in response to my engine “kill” with Betty last summer. I filled each of my three 6-gallon tanks with gasoline from various storage cans and then mixed in 16 ounces of outboard motor oil. Every tank was then tested by running the boat in three big circles in front of the beach to insure that each tank would not “kill” my engine. The first two tanks tested OK and I was feeling a little paranoid about wasting time and gasoline making circles in front of the beach. The third tank surprised me by “killing” the engine. Well! Maybe this was a necessary test after all!! Unfortunately, I wasn’t completely sure which storage can the gas had come from but I was fairly sure it was the last can from last years stash. That didn’t make any sense either, since   I was positive all the gasoline problems from last year had been taken care of. It is hard to be completely sure of anything you are about to bet your life on.

     After rowing back to shore I rounded up my toolbox and Frank rowed me back out in front of the beach and we anchored in 2 feet of water. It was obvious that the crew assembled on the beach ready to go fishing was more than a little concerned. After all, the motor that had so recently hauled them 26 miles down the lake was now out of commission and they really were not sure I would get it started. In the least, it was going to waste fishing time and at worse it could be a big hassle to get back to the trucks. There is no 911 number to call and any help is at least a day and $1200 away. The apprehension was thick enough to cut.

     First we blew out the hose line as best we could and reattached it to the motor and a known good tank of mixed gasoline. I then removed the 30HP motor cowling and unscrewed both spark plugs. A two-foot piece of plastic tubing was used to siphon a tube full of known good gas mixture and I inserted a couple thimbles of gasoline into each cylinder. After replacing the plugs, I started the engine. It would run for a few seconds and then “kill”. This was my way of purging the system of bad gas. This process was repeated time and again, each time the engine would seem to run a little longer. After the 8^th cycle, it made one final cough and then ran smoothly. To this day, I still “test” all of my gasoline in front of the beach but have not yet had another can of “bad” gasoline. Further, my small waterproof tool box contains not only a spark plug socket and wrench but also my two foot piece of plastic tubing, just in case.

     We went first to the Campbell River to check out the entrance where the walleye sometime congregate above the spillway. Today we could only catch small northern so we motored 3 more miles over to Wilson Rapids. Bill caught 29, Frank 23 and my notes don’t record my catch but it must surely have been at least 50, since I was in the back of the boat where everyone knows that is where most of the fish are located (no kidding, that is what everyone tells me).

     Thursday, July 16, was a day of work for Bill and Frank to install some steel roofing under the overhang above the front door. We had left that undone from last year since it was more for looks than necessity. Cary varnished the kitchen drawers while Don arranged tools and supplies on the tool storage rack.. We went fishing from 4 to 8PM at the rapids and the fish were still mostly at the back of the boat.

     Friday, July 17 we finished installing metal roofing on the water heater “closet” attached to the rear of the cabin, again more looks than necessity. The drawers got another coat of varnish. We swam at the beach and Don finished his clothes washing at the “bathing rock”. At 4:30 PM we went fishing and Bill caught the largest walleye I have ever seen in my lake. We didn’t have a measure or a scale, but it was 3 leaders long and must have weighed 5 to 6 pounds. The growing season is so short at 57 degrees north latitude that this fish was quite old indeed. I cleaned 7 Northern Pike for Frank to take out along with their limit of walleye. It was a late supper but quite good.

     Saturday, July 18 was overcast and rainy. Cell after cell of rain would pass over the island. This is normally better than solid rain since you can always hope that the cell that is currently dropping rain might be the last. Kitchen cabinet drawers were sanded and varnished and sanded again. Bill helped Don build the bathroom vanity from a disassembled kit of wood that Don had made back in Boulder. At 5PM the last rain cell moved on and we went fishing.

     Sunday, July 19, Don motored Bill and Frank back to the landing and to pick up Jay. It took about 1 hour and 45 minutes each way. The wind was light and out of the Northeast but no problem. Jay and Don swam and went fishing in the evening.

     Friday, July 24, was very hot. We hiked to EskerLake and the heat made me very tired. I slept several hours that afternoon and it just made me feel worse. I struggled to get the energy to go fishing for a couple hours about 5 PM and that plus the cooler evening revived me. We had fish supper #3 that night and were to bed by 10 PM. It was a good night’s sleep.

   Jay was returned to the landing and Cary and Don returned to the island for several weeks. Don showed Cary how to build a chair for his mother and it turned out very nice. We did more kitchen cabinet work.. Don fitted all the drawer faces and cabinet doors, then removed them all for transport back to Boulder where he would apply a 3/8 inch planked pine veneer for looks. The closing of the cabin for the season and the return trip to Boulder were uneventful.

Don and Frank Watts, father of Bill, at the “Honey Hole”.

Bill Watts with another large walleye.

Cary with a nice walleye.

Gord Hardlotte, James Cook and James Mackenzie, Indian friends from Stanley Mission came for a visit to see “Crazy Man End of Lake”.

Jay Niebur, Gord Hardlotte, James Cook, Don and James Mackenzie pose on the cabin deck.  The visit always ends with Don giving his now famous "Moose Blessing" that insures better hunting by its recipients.

View west from the island toward the landing 26 miles away.

A seagull skims the lake surface.

Sunset with smoke in the air.

Sunset above the “notch”, a natural break in the forest skyline, at the end of a late fishing trip.

Don at the “Honey Hole” with another walleye.

Jay caught a northern pike that had a walleye protruding from his mouth.

Cary and Jay on the Esker Lake hike.  The area had been burned over in 1993.

Don and Jay on the Esker Lake nature hike.

On the way fishing and betting that the storm on the horizon moves off in a direction that will not get us wet.  One is always making judgments on whether or not to alter your plans based on a guess at what the weather will end up doing.

Cary and a little northern pike.

Cary with a nice walleye caught on the always good lure, a blue and red jig.

Cary with a stringer of walleyes destined to make the trip back to Colorado.

Don with the same stringer of walleyes

A look toward the landing that we were about to depart from the island.

A final view of the island as we leave for the season.

Back in Bouylder, Cary shows off a chair that he built on the island for his mother.