Scoop Lake, Northern BC

17 July 2004 - 22 July 2004, my Father, Bill, and I head off to the great white north. We flew from Harvey Field (S43) up the Rocky Mountain trench to as far north as Watson Lake, YT and back via Ketchikan, AK. We spent most of our time at a hunting/fishing outfitter called Scoop Lake Outfitters.

Owned by Darwin and Wendy Cary, Scoop Lake Outfitters features some of the friendliest and most interesting people on the planet.  The landscape around it provides excellent scenery, wildlife, fishing and hunting.  The setting is old time frontier, with a cookhouse that produces some of the best frontier style home cooked food I have eaten.  The main camp is based at Scoop lake, but that is only 1/100 of the story.  Scoop Lake Outfitters is a series of hunting and fishing camps dristributed throughout a 100 mile x 150 mile section of land in the Nortern Rocky Mountain Trench.  I am not much of a writer, so you should go here and find out for yourself.

Tips:

RV aircraft should leave wheel pants at home.

Land on the east side of centerline.

On 17 July, we departed Harvey field at 1645 weighing in at 1900lbs with the CG in the middle of the envelope and headed to Prince George arriving at 1850. After clearing customs and topping off the fuel we then flew non-stop to Scoop Lake. 

On 22 July, we departed Scoop Lake and stopped at Watson Lake for fuel.  From Watson we flew non-stop to Ketchikan, AK for fuel and food.  Other than the short leg from CZST to PAKT, this was a fairly safe leg due to the existence of Highway 37 and 37a.  From Ketchikan we flew non-stop to S43.  At 3.7 hours on the hobbs, the last leg proved a bit hard on the butt.  Furthermore, I most likely will not do this route single engine again due to the extreme exposure over completely undeveloped terrain which is steep or over salt water.  From Prince Rupert to Bella Bella there is absolutely no safe place to land on this160nm leg. 

Route of Flight

My dad.  Fish On!

Typical Pike, they get much bigger though

There are over 100 horses at Scoop Lake

N232TB wishing its wheel pants were left at home.

Our ride to Denitia

Or Cabin at Scoop Lake. The "garbage" on the bed are my un-yet unpacked lures.

Random bush whack hike in the wilderness

Flowers along stream on random hike

(me) with a typical Rainbow Trout caught on Denitia Lake

Lake from nearby peak

River connecting Denitia and lake to left

Denitia from nearby peak

Another bush whack

Aeroplane Lake, BC

These next series of Photos depict what we saw from somewhere near Deas Lake (CYDL) to just a few miles from Ketchikan.

Notice huge glacier "flowing" into river valley.  There are a lot of these.  Unfortunately, I never got a good enough photo that depicts the magnitude of them.

Huge Icefield

SE AK is just over these little hills.

Hmm...Big hills.  Wish there was a road through these hills.  Notice the massive ice field/glacier directly off the wing tip.  FANTASTIC!  That thing is probably 20 nm wide.

Ketchikan on very long final, Civilization never looked so good.

N232TB on the ground in Ketchikan, AK