Beer in hand.. Northern Lights for company
Back on the lake beach, my guide Nap top and tailed the fish, ready for the fire
vessels of the Franklin Expedition, an Arctic venture that ended in disaster 170 years ago. British explorer Sir John Franklin vanished on a mission to find the Northwest Passage.
Then it was off to Gangler’s on that tiny plane – the lodge has its own gravel landing strip. Remote is an understatement: it’s 233 miles from the nearest road, 55 miles from the nearest shop, and the only transport is a 50-year-old De Havilland sixseater floatplane, which hops around the lakes and settlements like a bus. The lodge is owned by Floridian Ken Gangler, who has run the five million acres with a passion for 21 years. My accommodation was a very comfortable two-room cabin close to the main lodge, which sleeps up to 24 people. It opens for only four months a year due to the weather. Ken’s core clientele are hardcore fishermen from the USA looking to beat the 52in pike record and catch many other species in the rivers and lakes.
As well as the fish, Ken has another passion – this land is unbelievably isolated but rich in culture, history and heritage, and he wants to share it with visitors.
He shows me around just a few acres in his allterrain vehicle – basically a golf cart on steroids.
The landscape may be flat, but it’s fascinating. It holds many secrets from years past, as the quartz arrowheads that I found just lying in the gravel testified.
Ken estimates they are some 2,000 years old, created by the ancient ancestors of guide Nap, a descendent of the Dene and Cree Nations, who have lived on this land for 8,000 years since the ice glaciers retreated.
The big melt revealed giant boulders and a peculiarity called eskers, which are great dunes made by the rivers running from the bottom of the glaciers as they melted.
There are 13 major ones in this region – some are up to 400ft high, and were astonishingly formed under 2.5 miles of ice.
Now the tree-less gravel dunes are used by animals such as caribou on huge migration routes – and us, as we explored them on ATVS. We trundled past wetlands and through dense forests, all the time looking out for wildlife.
There are 13 major eskers in the region surrounding Egenolf Lake. The Robertson Esker is the longest at more
than 180 miles. Archeological artefacts, commonly found on the eskers, indicate that ancient indigenous peoples have used the eskers as travel and hunting routes since the glaciers left the region around 8,000 years ago.
The first Europeans arrived here with explorer Henry Hudson in around 1611 and founded a very profitable fur trade.
This went on to become the Hudson Bay Company, one of the most powerful traders in North America.
What followed was 250 years of civil war and native conflict, and the men that eventually settled here were hardened trappers used to the intense cold and isolation.
When I visited in August, it was unusually warm. There was nothing better, being so far from civilisation, than spending the evenings sitting around a campfire, beer in hand, with the Northern Lights for company.
The dancing lights really are the most beautiful phenomenon. I was awestruck,
They certainly made up for the winter temperatures, which can plunge to -50oc.
A getaway to this remote part of the world isn’t cheap – absolutely everything, including visitors, has to be flown in from miles away – but if you’re yearning to get away from it all, this is your place.