Martin, Not to state the obvious, just an FYI. You mentioned 2 hard shell boats on the outside of an Otter.

I've been in an Otter with 3 Old Town Discos inside, with 6 passengers, plus the 2 pilots. None of the boats needed their thwarts or seats removed to nest as I recall.

We were full, but OK. Even better, everyone using bag boats like  DD's would allow for more passengers  up
I've gone that way too and you can easily do 8 passengers and gear. Better for adjusting the load in the plane.

The guides/pilots were careful the load wasn't tail heavy when we used hard shell boats..

Sounds like fun.

Marten wrote on Jan 31^st, 2013 at 11:46pm:


Marten -

I'm interested in doing much the same kind of trip as DentonDoc.  I'll be looking forward to seeing what Harlan can come up w/re: logistics & costs.

Do you suppose the trees are such to make it suitable for hammock-tenting? 

Hey, new park... new potential for practical jokes, eh?  I've long wondered what I was going to do with that small bottle of "wolverine scent" that I inherited from my great, great, great grand-pappy, the renown voyageur, cartographer, & explorer... Mssr. Jacques Le Strap.  I'm told that boy could trap darn near anything.

I'll be following developments on this thread.  I AM interested.

Later,

Jimbo      

Ok, so I've figured on some numbers of what you can expect to pay for a trip up to Opasquia.  These might fluctuate a few dollars here or there in 2014 as I have idea what fuel prices will be then, however for budgeting, here you go....

For a flight from our base in Red Lake, for up to 3 people, 1 canoe (external load), to East Lake, pick up another paddler(s) and a canoe and head back the cost would be $3,048 + 13% HST, roundtrip.  If this were to be just solo paddlers you can divide this by 2, so it'd come out to $1,524 + 13 % HST.  If there were tandem paddlers, then you can just divide up by the number of paddlers.

It is a staggering 293 KM (180 miles) trip each way to the park, so you can surely understand the expense involved.

If, as Martin first suggested, we can get a routine down with paddlers coming and going, sharing the costs, I think there would be some interest for paddlers getting up there.

Cheers,

Harlan

So about $860/person if two are going in, while two are coming out. What about the first two going in, or the last two coming out? It would seem that someone would have to bite the bullet on these costs, on each end.
Harlan, please let us know if you find it feasible to send a couple older canoes up there as rentals.
Thanks.

Thanks for the info, Wally!  I kind of thought that would be the case as I spent a good bit of this past weekend eyeballing every photograph I could find of the area.  I saw plenty of trees.  My two trips into Woodland Caribou Park mostly gave me confidence that tree cover in Opasquia would be adequate.  There WERE a few areas in WCPP, however, where trees were pretty thinned-out & scraggly looking and one might have been hard-pressed to find a solution that didn't involve large rocks (a hanging arrangement I haven't tried, as yet).

If I go up to Opasquia it will most likely be as part of this 2014 initiative that Marten is rolling out.  2013 would actually work out better for me in some ways but logistics & costs dictate that I coordinate my plans with others headed in that direction.

I look forward to discussing Opasquia & other canoeing adventures at Copia in one month!

Jimbo