For this trip I pretty much took the same route as one of my other trips. We went through Knife, Kekekabic, Fraser, Thomas, Ensign, and then back into base. Instead of rambling on forever, I'm just going to let the pictures tell the story. First Lunch of the trip. Evening Snack on Knife Lake Lake Trout at last! Berries Well, at least something ate it. Firs...
This last trip was surprisingly similar to my first trip. The crew was from Texas, and we did pretty much the same route, just backwards. So the first day once we got going we paddled up the Moose chain to Sucker Lake for the night. We got there pretty early and the crew wanted to go fishing, so we spent some time fishing. They caught a couple of smallmouth bass that we kept and cooked with dinner...
Fourth of July on base is a lot different than the fourth in town. A lot of people drove into town to see the fireworks, but instead, I and a few friends took a hike to a lake to do some fishing. We hiked about 2 miles down to Ennis Lake, did some bouldering down to the water and did a lot of fishing. Unfortunately the only things we caught were rocks, but it was still a great time and...
I just got back from another successful trip. This trip was unexpected because I got my crew at dinner on my day off. Their original interpreter wanted to be the interpreter for his home troop that was coming the next day, so we made a trade, and I get an extra day off! This crew drove all the way from Memphis, Tennessee for the trip and by the time I got them, they were pretty much ready to go. I...
I don’t think I could have asked for a better first trip or first crew. The crew I got flew in all the way from Tyler, TX from the East Texas Council. The first day of checking out all the gear went very smoothly and the advisor had all the paperwork organized beautifully so the check-in process flowed without any hiccups. They came here pretty much wanting to do everything: paddle, fish, see wate...
Yesterday was my first day off, and I managed to hitch a ride into town. Ely is really a cool city and there are tons of little shops here that make it unique. First we stopped at the coffee shop to pick up some free internet time (the internet on base is really slow). We pretty much just walked around for a couple hours, checking out Piragis, the surplus store, goodwill, and and ice cream place. ...
Swamper was absolutely amazing, so this post is going to be really long. We started out on June 11 on Moose Lake and on the first day we paddled through Wind Lake and across Basswood to Norway Island (Really close to where we skied to at Okpik). There we learned the basics of setting up camp, bear bags, cooking etc. Our cooking that night was absolutely amazing. We saved our apples from lunch and ...
Today was a loooooooooong day. So we decided that we would start our day trip withe a dawn paddle. This means that we got up at 3 in the morning and got on the water early to get a great head start and watch the sun rise as we paddled. Unfortunately there was a cloud cover this morning and we couldn't see the sun rise, but we did get to see some pretty sweet stuff. At about 5 in the morning we wer...
Today was Christmas in June. Its basically a day where the alumni association (a group of people who worked at Northern Tier in the past) come and teach various skills and then give us Christmas presents. They put it this way: the past week we have been taking our core training courses, and this day allows us to branch out and take electives for different skills for the trail. So, the first one...
I have survived a week!!! Today was a very interesting day. 20 alumni arrived on base, we got 2 crews in, we continued training, and finalized the rout efor our swamper. The training is finally coming to an end. Today we learned how to use the stoves, packs, put up bear bags, and navigate through the wilderness. Also today, we found out that we are going for a dawn paddle on Monday morning. Our sw...