Hi All

Hope everyone is well and looking forward to another great summer with family and friends.

Awhile ago I had a fellow call who was one of the guys who helped build Kluane Wilderness Lodge. We had a long conversation, and I learned a lot about the history of the lodge along with conversions with Waren, the original owner of the lodge. People are always asking me questions about the lodge and now I think I have enough of the history to put something together.

They started in the fall 1979 clearing a spot, with no equipment on site, they flew in a coot which is probably one of the first ATV’s built. They strapped it onto the floats of the beaver and headed for the lake. In the spring of 1980 they started flying in all of the building materials in with a Beaver and a DC 3 on skies. Being 200 miles in the bush it was no easy undertaking. For all of you who have been to Whitehorse, at the airport that is a DC 3 that they have for a windsock.

Living in wall tents and building the lodge and cabin’s, I wonder who got to use the first cabin that was completed. The lodge and cabins were built using a lot of cider as it is lighter and they were able to get more in the planes before they became overloaded. With no way of just going to town because you forgot something, every trip had to be well planned out until the next time.

Looking at all of these pictures I can’t help but notice how much the trees have grown and what a huge undertaking it has been to get it from the barren lake shore to what it is now. I think of know what we have there with the sawmill, backhoe and atv, how much less work it would have been for those guys. But as long as you enjoy what you are doing, the hard work doesn’t really matter as there is always the reward at the end. 

Owning a lodge in a remote location such as this, it is a lot of work but the rewards and smiles on peoples faces make it all worthwhile. Its not always about the fishing but the relocation and enjoyment that people get from coming to a place like this and being able to total unwind. Something that we can’t do here at home with everything that is going on in these mixed up times. No news is a great thing in a place were the only thing that matters is what happened today. For anyone still thinking about getting away from it all for a few days we still have some opens and don’t worry I wont put you to work as everything is almost dune

From Brian and the staff at Kluane Wilderness Lodge, have a great summer and we look forward to seeing you.