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The High Arctic Lodge base camp is located on Merkeley Lake.  To get there, you must first drive or fly into Edmonton.  From there, you catch a flight to Cambridge Bay.  Cambridge Bay is 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle and ~400 miles north of tree line.  Then, to get to High Arctic Lodge, you take a sea plane an additional 86 miles to camp.  En route there, we saw small herds of musk ox and an occasional caribou.  We also saw lots of seals when we were crossing the ocean. 

 The camp itself is a collection of cabins plus a central dining/social area.  Dawn has done a terrific job in making the cabins comfortable and cozy.  How about mini-blinds under the curtains to keep out the arctic sun at 2:00AM?  Each cabin has an oil burning stove which heats the cabin and a caldron of water for freshening up.  Dawn and her staff are always great about lighting the stove before guests come in the for the day so you walk into a warm cabin.  There is a hot shower off the dining room building.  Boy it feels great, especially after a few nights in the outpost camps where only a very brave individual will try a solar shower there.

The camp has three key female staff members who assist Dawn.  Mary, the chef, keeps everyone happy with great meals and delicious desserts.  Tanya and Margaret help Mary with meal serving and clean-up plus take care of the cabins.  In addition, there are 2-3 males in camp who handle latrine duty, assist with fueling planes, etc., etc.  There’s always work to be done to establish and maintain a top-quality camp like High Arctic Lodge.

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This year we had lots of wildlife at the base camp.  There were the usual lemmings and seagulls.  However, the highlight at camp was on Tuesday when three white arctic wolves appeared across a short waterway.  They were incredibly beautiful and not put off by seeing people.  So, we all got to observe each other for quite a while.  Neat!

When visiting the outpost camps, your hosts are the two guides who are resident there for the 4-week season.  Not only do they guide you, but they also prepare your tented cabin (tent tarp over a wooden floor) and cook your meals.  These are definitely resourceful individuals!  At North Camp, Colin & Cleve, both from the Halifax, Nova Scotia area, took great care of us.  We fished with both of them last year as Cleve was at Hadley Bay Camp rather than North Camp.  Our hosts this year at Hadley Bay were Henry and Chris.  They too are great hosts and excellent anglers.  We must admit, however, that Henry’s blueberry pie isn’t as good as Mary’s (just kidding Henry since we know your lovely wife, Mary made both & shipped one to you via the float plane).

As noted in FISHING, we had great musk oxen viewing at Hadley Bay Camp.  While we fished in the afternoon, a herd appeared only about 100 yards away and stayed there.  We got both great video and photographs.  Then, that evening a herd bedded down directly behind camp.  Still move photo opportunities.  We also saw and photographed caribou.

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When leaving Hadley Bay, we postponed fishing to fly north over the ice pack of the Arctic Ocean in search of polar bear.  We first saw lots of seal and then along a lead in the ice was one of those elusive polar bears.  We swooped down to about 100’ above the ice to get a good look.  It was incredibly majestic and quite the treat to be seen from our plane.  Seeing the polar bear was “the icing on the cake” to a great week of fishing in this unspoiled place.

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