PWAC Victoria: Lyn Hancock, Writing Sample

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Lodge in a Miner Key

by Lyn Hancock © 2001

Lyn stalks caribou at a unique lodge housed in an abandoned gold mine on the barrenlands of the Northwest Territories. An unusual marriage of mining and ecotourism, this lodge caters especially to naturalists and families. Published in Up Here, Jan./Feb. 2002.

I flew to Treeline Lodge at the end of August hoping to film thousands of Bathurst barrenground caribou as they migrated south from their wanderings on the arctic tundra to spend winter in the subarctic taiga. I was among the first guests at this new facility run by Boyd and Monique Warner near the site of the abandoned Tundra gold mine on Matthews Lake, a traditional caribou pathway between Mackay and Courageous Lakes, 150 miles northeast of Yellowknife. We had trekked eskers, cruised lakes, clambered over boulders, and battled through bushes to look for caribou but it seemed that the main herd was walking to a drummer different to our own.

Unlike the previous week's guests who had happily substituted reeling in 150 lake trout in four days, our group did see lots of caribou, and all such encounters were memorable. Our sightings were mostly single bulls in advance of the main herd. My personal highlight was a stalk of Sitting Bull, in fact two Sitting Bulls.

I had spent the day with my companions bumping into dozens of single caribou as they ran wildly over the tundra, climbed onto eskers to escape bugs, or trotted in front of our truck along mining roads easier on their feet. Now back at camp, my companions were headed for their rooms and Chef Jane's lavish afternoon tea when I noticed a magnificent bull caribou drinking out of a puddle in the shade of an adjacent outbuilding. I used the wall of the shed as a blind to sneak closer to the caribou and then as a tripod to take a roll of pictures. As I clicked him to full frame, taking shot after shot of perpetual movement--twitching, shaking, shivering, bobbing, nibbling--I sympathized with the sorry lot of a caribou in summer besieged by bugs. Suddenly, the bull posited himself in the puddle. He yawned, his head fell to his chest, he closed his eyes, he fell asleep. I shared his relief.

I stood up and turned around to see Boyd, his father Glenn Warner, and their buddy, guide and camp manager, Sam Kapolak, leaning out of the truck window. "Want to come for a ride?" asked Glenn. Always ready to take advantage of the moment, I grabbed my pack from the ground where it had been unloaded from the day's foray and scrambled into the truck.

Back we drove along the eight-mile road to the Tundra mine site. Glenn dropped Boyd and Sam at Glenn's new Super Cub parked on Matthews Lake for an hour's aerial reconnaissance of possible canoe routes and caribou locations, then he and I slowly patrolled the road (and its airstrip) looking for wildlife in the roadside puddles and tailings pond.

Lapland longspurs and white-crowned sparrows darted among the bushes, red-necked phalaropes twirled in the tailings ponds, loons and tundra swans sailed on the lakes, arctic hares hopped among the willow thickets, ground squirrels chittered from upthrust boulders, and parasitic jaegers harassed gulls from the skies.

"There's a bull sitting in that big sand patch. Do you want to stalk it?" Glenn asked casually as he parked at the airstrip.

Before he finished his sentence, I was out of the truck, camera in hand, mossie hood on head and bent double for a low-profile stalk. When the fuel drums and finally the bushes ran out as effective blinds, I dropped to my knees. For the next hour, I stalked my prey on my knees, inching forward when my quarry turned his head, freezing when he looked my way, clicking as I closed on him. At times, we traded eye contact but amazingly, he took no notice, not even when the gap between us narrowed to a few yards. Crowned with a massive rack and sitting serenely on his sand patch throne, the caribou looked like a king and I, still on sore knees, his subject. I leant back to get a final shot of his antlers against the sky, and finally he took notice. He turned his head to me, slowly rose to his feet, and, still regal, strode away. I did too, counting 165 strides (metres) back to the truck. By this time, Glenn was asleep.

Ironically, most of our encounters with caribou took place while driving along 12 miles of all-weather roads including a 5,000-foot airstrip, hiding behind fuel drums and boxes of core samples, and fossicking around mine buildings. Here, in structures built by humans, caribou sought shade, wind, shelter from predators, and comfort from insect pests; wolves and grizzly bears sheltered in the mine's processing plant, ravens nested on the headframe and communications tower, and peregrine falcons nested in Peggy's Pit, a canyon-sized gold sample excavation.

Although it seems incongruous, Treeline Lodge would not have been established without such a marriage of industry and ecotourism. Naturalists around the world know well Bathurst Inlet Lodge, the longest running ecotourism lodge in Canada's north set up in 1969 on the site of an historic Hudson's Bay Company trading post and Oblate mission by retired RCMP Glenn and Trish Warner in conjunction with the local Kingaunmiut of Bathurst Inlet.

Today, with the elder Warners winding down to their second retirement, a second generation, Boyd Warner and his wife, Monique, in association with some of the second-generation Kingaunmiut such as Boyd's childhood buddy, Sam Kapolak, have established Treeline Lodge, a new kind of tourism outpost with a longer season, better weather, cheaper more convenient access, and a handier infrastructure, all of which appeals to broader and more family-oriented interests--nature viewing certainly, but also rock collecting, esker trekking, fishing, paddling, swimming, berry picking, painting, photography, aurora watching, mountain biking, Dene and Inuit culture, and the study of mining. As Boyd's father says, "When I go south on holiday, I choose to tour old mine sites myself so I see it as a good thing to preserve some of our abandoned mine sites in the north as living museums and tourist attractions."

There are three mine sites in the vicinity of Treeline Lodge: Tundra Mine, which produced gold between 1964-68, Salmita Mine, a gold producer between 1983 and 1987, and Noranda Mine whose deposits were not mined. Boyd and Monique bought the Salmita/Noranda camp in 1989, rented it to exploration crews through the 1990s in response to the diamond rush, then opened it as Treeline Lodge in 2000. Although Salmita and Noranda mines have closed and infrastructure removed, Tundra, last used as a mill in the 1980s, remains as a monument to those who pioneered mining in the severe subarctic conditions of the barrenlands.

One of our five days at Treeline was spent exploring the Tundra site situated 8 miles from the lodge. Most excited was our guide, Ryan Silke, a self-described "weird teenager" whose passion is making inventories of old mine sites. "It is one thing to research these old mines in Yellowknife, it's another thing to actually see them in person."

Each of us found something of particular interest as Ryan escorted us with headlamps, hard hats and flashlights through the entire gold mining process from the headframe where the ore is hoisted from the ground, to the crusher, the mill and the refinery, to the assayer's office. Ted, an electrician who had been bored by the birds that enthused the rest of us, was entranced by the massive diesel generator in the power house. He was to spend much of the rest of his days at Treeline studying the generator (which bored me) and poking around abandoned vehicles in the junkyard with farmer Mike. Cas, a former biologist whose mission is now to show the impacts of humans on the land, returned often to the mine to paint the penstock and headframe.

Personally, I prefer caribou, but I found lots of picture opportunities in cylindrical drill core samples, lined up in neat rows in flat core boxes or scattered like paving stones between buildings and along the beach. Core samples were so abundant we competed with each other in devising new uses for them. Once I thought I glimpsed a snake on a lichened boulder but it was a twisted piece of steel. I had my camera at the ready when we entered mine buildings. Page, our naturalist guide, reported occasions when she had walked in as caribou or grizzly were walking out.

Monique, the mother of two girls, Victoria, 5, and Hope, 1, envisions Treeline Lodge as a relaxing place for families or a weekend getaway for Yellowknifers and other northerners. Despite the prevalence of bears, wolves and caribou, safety is assured by an electric fence that surrounds the camp, and Sultan, a Karelian bear dog specially bred to hunt bears but docile enough for guests to take on walks. The other dog in camp is Esker, a lovable but rambunctious Malemute pup being trained by Page to take guests on scooter rides.

There's much to do if you want to be active. We hiked the eskers or used these elevated sandy ridges to provide grandstand views of the lake-splotched tundra. We braved the bugs by descending into the shrubbery and squishing around the bogs. We cruised Matthews Lake in bug-free comfort in a modern 44-foot-long fibreglass pontoon boat that had luxurious soft armchair seats and, to my delight, a TABLE that I used for my notebook, field guides and cameras. We went swimming, kayaking, canoeing, and berry picking, especially for cloudberries that carpeted whole peninsulas. We went fishing. We planned fly-out trips to Winter Lake and Fort Enterprise where Sir John Franklin wintered in 1820-21 and 1821-22, and fly-over excursions to the Ekati and Diavik diamond operations on nearby Lac de Gras. One day Sam showed us how his ancestors used the lunar landscape of rocks, some of the oldest on the planet, to fashion fox traps, meat caches and kayak stands.

Evenings were spent in discussions with our guides--Page on geology and the diamond industry, Simon on paddling and traditional uses of plants, Craig and Ben on fishing. We sang around the campfire and waited for the northern lights. Ted got to fly his kite in conditions he called "ultimate"--lots of wind and no trees, buildings or power lines.

Boyd says Treeline is a "work in progress" but already he has proved his vision--there can be a marriage of mining with ecotourism.

Lyn Hancock
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Last updated: November 3, 2003 http://www.islandnet.com/pwacvic/hancoc08.html