A season on Great Slave Lake
A plan for one person to last from September into winter on the east arm of Great Slave Lake, in the Northwest Territories, living on fish, snared hares and foraged food, in the shelter between three trees with the rocket mass stove.
The place
- Thin boreal forest of spruce, jack pine and birch on bare granite, about 400 km south of the Arctic Circle.
- Days shorten fast from September. Frost comes in September, snow stays from October, and winter nights reach −30 °C and colder.
- The lake is deep, clear and cold, with lake trout, whitefish, northern pike and burbot. Arctic grayling live in the streams that run into it.
- Snowshoe hares, grouse, red squirrels, black bears, wolves, foxes and wolverines share the shore.
- Small sheltered bays freeze first, often in November. The open lake freezes later. Between open water and safe ice there are weeks when you can fish neither way.
What you bring
- Tools: axe, hatchet, saw, hunting knife, multi-tool, drawknife, adze, auger, small shovel, sharpening stone, sewing kit, duct tape.
- Shelter and bed: tarp, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, bivy bag, paracord and climbing rope.
- Fire and cooking: ferro rod, pot with lid, steel frying pan, enamel bowl, spoon, water bottle.
- Fishing and snares: gill net, fishing line and hooks, snare wire. No hunting.
- Food: the carried food below.
- Clothing and safety: winter clothing, boots, headlamp, ice spikes, first aid kit and a satellite phone.
The camp
Laid out around the shelter, 23 m back from the water.
- Smoke rack just above the shore, with a slow fire of green wood under it and a bark roof over the fish.
- Cleaning rock at the water, 25 m from the shelter, so blood and guts wash away from camp.
- Fish weir across the creek just above its mouth: a V of stakes pointing upstream that leads fish through a gap into a round pen. It fishes day and night with nothing to do but empty the pen.
- Gill net set straight out from the creek mouth, where fish gather and move along the shore toward the creek.
- Net poles at the shore for drying and mending the net.
- Food cache hung 4 m up from a pole between two trees, about 30 m from the shelter.
- Winter cache of frozen fish under stones on a log platform, about 12 m from the shelter, once nothing thaws.
- Snare line of 15 snares along about 40 m of trail through young spruce and willow, with a skinning stump by the shelter.
- Ice gear carved from wood and kept by the door: a long pole, a slotted slush ladle and a gaff.
- Inside, pegs for the net, lines and snare wire, a drying line under the rafters, and a stone for boots by the door.
- Paths to the shore, the snare line and the cache, packed down once the snow comes.
How much food it takes
Working outdoors in the cold, cutting wood and hauling water, you burn about 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day. Plan on 3,500. The figures below are rough averages, per 100 g of the part you eat.
| Food | Calories per 100 g | What it gives you |
|---|
| Lake trout | about 150 | Protein and fat. The best single food on the lake. |
| Lake whitefish | about 135 | Protein and fat. Best taken in a gill net. |
| Northern pike | about 90 | Protein, almost no fat. Easy to catch in the weedy bays. |
| Burbot | about 90, liver far more | Lean flesh, but a large oily liver. Eat the liver. |
| Snowshoe hare | about 115 | Protein, almost no fat. About 1,000 calories a hare. |
| Beetle grubs, ants | about 150–200 | Protein and some fat, found in dead wood all winter. |
| Rose hips | about 160 | Sugar and vitamin C. Stay on the bush into winter. |
| Blueberries, lowbush cranberries, crowberries | about 40–60 | Sugar and vitamin C, late August to first snow. |
| Cattail roots | low | Starch. Dig them in the shallows before the ice. |
A fish is about 60% flesh by weight. So 1 kg of whole lake trout gives about 900 calories, and 1 kg of whole pike about 550. A full day on fish alone takes about 4 kg of whole lake trout or whitefish, or 6 kg of pike.
Eat the fat. Hares and pike are lean. Living mostly on lean meat starves you even with a full stomach, because the body cannot run on protein alone. Fat from trout, whitefish and burbot liver has to come with them. Eat fish skin, eyes, livers and roe, and boil the heads and bones into broth.
Food you carry in
About 8 kg of dry food, roughly 33,500 calories. That is ten days at full rations, or nineteen at half rations. Keep it for freeze-up.
| Food | Weight | Calories |
|---|
| Pemmican | 0.9 kg | about 5,900 |
| Chocolate | 0.9 kg | about 4,900 |
| Trail mix | 0.9 kg | about 4,350 |
| Beef jerky | 0.9 kg | about 3,700 |
| Hardtack | 0.9 kg | about 3,600 |
| Flour | 0.9 kg | about 3,300 |
| Dried lentils | 0.9 kg | about 3,200 |
| Biltong | 0.9 kg | about 2,300 |
| Sugar | 0.3 kg | about 1,150 |
| Rice | 0.3 kg | about 1,100 |
| Salt | 1.4 kg | none |
Your own fat
The shortfall comes out of your body. Each kilogram of body fat holds about 7,700 calories. Gain weight before you go. Arriving with 10 kg more fat than usual carries you through about five weeks of half rations.
How much to store
Freeze-up can run six weeks or more with no fishing at all. At half rations, 1,750 calories a day, six weeks takes about 75,000 calories. The carried food gives 33,500 of them. The rest is about 45 kg of whole lake trout and whitefish, more if much of it is pike. Without the carried food it would take about 90 kg.
The season
Start at The season. The season schedule shows when each job falls.
- The first days (to about 20 September): make the camp tools, choose the site, set the gill net, raise the frame and cover the roof, and spread moss to dry.
- Set up the fishing and the food store (to about 29 September): the weir, the snare line, the smoke rack and the cache.
- Open water (to early November): fill the store with at least 45 kg of fish, and build the walls, the stove and the bench around the fishing.
- Freeze-up (to mid-December): live on the store and the carried food, bank the shelter with snow, and start fishing through the ice.
- Winter: fish through the ice, keep the snares running, and keep warm on the bench.
The plan does not fit the daylight as written. The
season schedule shows the open-water fishing routine taking nearly the whole working day, with the walls, stove and bench still unfinished when freeze-up comes. Treat the build as the thing that slips, not the fish store.
Keeping food
- Smoked and dried fish keeps for months if it stays dry.
- Once the days stay below freezing, fish and hares keep frozen on their own.
- Hang every store high between two trees, well away from the shelter. Bears feed hard until they sleep in October, and wolverines and foxes raid caches all winter.
- Clean fish at the water, away from camp.
A normal day
Daily routines: the first two weeks, open water, freeze-up and winter, with the evening firing every day once the stove is built.
When to call for help
- Set your limit before you go and keep to it. For example, leave if you lose a fifth of your starting weight, or can no longer do a full day's work.
- Call for help at once for dizziness, confusion, fainting, a heartbeat that races or stumbles at rest, or swelling in the legs.
- Call for help for any break through the ice, deep cut or frostbite you cannot treat.
Safety
- Ice: stay off anything under 10 cm of clear ice. Grey or snow-covered ice is weaker. Carry a pole across your body when you go out on it, and keep off the ice near inflows and outflows, where currents keep it thin.
- Cold water: if you go through, turn back the way you came, kick flat onto the ice, and roll away. Get to the fire and into dry clothes at once.
- Fish: cook fish from this lake, because raw fish can carry tapeworm.
- Bears: keep food and fish waste away from the shelter until the bears den.
- The stove: keep the vents open whenever it burns. If you get a headache, dizziness or nausea, get outside.