May 17th, 2009: A crew of us made it into camp today to get everything opened up for the season. We were happy to see that most of the lake is ice free and that there’s only a large slab of ice on the main body of the lake that will not last long. We flew over Aswap and Joint Lake and Aswap is completely ice free but Joint Lake still has a large sheet of ice on the main lake. There’s a lot of open water around the ice so the wind will do the rest of the damage for us. Our lake is one of only a few that are open in our area, I’m not sure why but I believe that a couple of late snow storms missed Bolton Lake which has helped the melting process. Unfortunately there’s still no date set for getting a float plane here. We’re really hoping that something will be available soon because we need to get the outposts opened up and move guests into Aswap in a few days and Joint Lake next Sunday. Our freight has also been delayed due to weather, but we’re expecting to have the big Hawker in on Wednesday with all our motors, beer, pop, lumber and other supplies for the season. The water level is a bit lower than normal for this time of year and the ground is very dry so we don’t expect the water level to raise much but our runway is in great shape for this time of year!