Horsefeld

Last week we flew into the backcoutry to Horsefeld, which is a hunters’ camp fairly close to the Canadian border. We were flown in on a beaver plane, which is a pretty large plane as bush planes go. The flight was about an hour long and it took us through some really beautiful country with a lot of glaciers. Upon arriving in Horsefeld you could see two fairly small runways that were basically just clear cut ground. The pilot circled around and we started to land on the larger of the two runways, but when we were

almost touched down he decided he didn’t like that one and took off again. He moved to the next one and started to land, then he decided he didn’t like that one either. Finally he moved to the original runway and started to land again. I’m not going to lie at this point I was getting pretty nervous, just saying that wouldn’t be an ideal way to die. We landed and the plane jumped up several feet then hit again and bounced once more. It was fine in the end, but still it wasn’t really a great landing for my nerves.

Peter and I unloaded our things from the plane and started to hike to the camp which was about a

15min hike away from the runway. We met the owner who was only about 25; he had inherited the camp from the previous owner. He was supper nice and offered each of us our own little cabin, which was nice because that means we didn’t have to tent camp.

For work we hiked around and mapped the various horse trails that braided the land surrounding the camp. Most of the horses that were at the camp were not really used to new people so there sort of avoided us, but there was one chestnut horse that actually let me pet him. Plus during our work hikes we saw a cow moose.

The return trip from Horsefeld was less nerve racking because the pilot landed by himself on the small runway and the runway on the other end was a nice gravel strip. Plus I was able to sit in the front of the plane this time and got to see whole new perspective.