Surviving the Semchuk May 28, 2011

The next morning we were up by 5:30, anxious to make deadline of 6:00 p.m. for getting to the Cluff Lake Mine site. We needed an employee escort to cross three kilometres of road that crosses the north end of the mine site. And they go off-shift at 6:00.

We packed and ate quickly, spurred on by a very healthy and voracious mosquito population. Our little convoy of three vehicles headed back through Green Lake and then north, passing near Beauval where we stopped to refuel and learned with some alarm that after leaving La Loche, there would be no place to refuel for the 270 km. north of that community and the 270 km. back. The 540 km. was way out of the range for John and Ginny's truck and dicey for ours even with a 5 gal jerry can of gasoline. At the Beauval station, they had only one small jerry can, but we were assured that we would be able to buy more at the Northern or Home Hardware in Buffalo Narrows, so we trekked on.

We arrived in Buffalo at 9:30 to find both stores closed. The only action seemed to centre

around a large aluminum-sided building called The Snack Shack. While John and Peter went to chat up the local constabulary to glean all possible information regarding the Semchuk Trail and refueling possibilities, some of us decided to explore that story behind a super-sized snack shack. It turned out that it did indeed offer quite a wide variety of snacks, but was also a full grocery store and offered a variety of other wares- including fishing gear, DVDs, a huge assortment of bug sprays, and several pair of orange coveralls. There were no jerry cans, however. Undaunted, our crew decided to fill in a few other gaps in their packing emerging with three travel mugs, a flashlight, a toothbrush and a supply of toilet paper.

At around ten o'clock, the aforementioned Northern and Home Hardware stores opened and yielded a collection of nine jerry cans in two sizes. While these were being filled at a local gas station, Peter followed a very helpful local resident who was interested in our adventure to meet the owner of a fishing camp on Carswell Lake. This turned out to be very fortuitous as we got permission to park our trucks at the camp.

Thus reprovisioned, we headed north again to La Loche location of the infamous 19 km Methy Portage that was a critical part of the fur trade route. For those who want to know more check out http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/portage_la_loche.html.

In La Loche, we refueled one last time before turning north again up the Semchuk Trail - a winter road created to take supplies to Uranium City and now maintained (sort of) up to Carswell Lake. We had been warned that the road was very rough and that we should have multiple spares for each vehicle. The trail lived up to its reputation - 270 of rough gravel punctuated by sharp protruding rocks, bone-jarring "rough spots" and patches of soft sand that periodically threatened to pull us off the road and into assorted roadside water bodies or deep ditches. We averaged less than 60 km per hour for the first 150 km and even less on the balance of the road. We DID however, arrive at the mine site by 5:00, phoned the mine staff and were escorted over three kilometres of quite decent road . On the other side was about a twenty-minute ride to the south end of Carswell Lake on a road which compared to the first 240 km seemed fabulous.

We stopped first at a campsite comprised of several wall tents, an over-sized generator, a karaoke machine, a liquor board store supply of alcohol, and several over-sized trucks bearing Alberta plates. We sauntered down the road a little and found the fishing camp where we were to leave our trucks. It had been badly ransacked by bears, but otherwise seemed a pretty spot. We returned to our vehicles and met the Alberta fishermen who turned out to be very generous giving us several pounds of fresh pickerel with which to supplement our already lavish supper of moose tenderloins, boiled potatoes, corn on the cob and salad.