Arctic Lodges on Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan lures moneyed anglers in summer, and is left open for emergencies out of season.
The Twin Otter's engines had struggled for three hours in the strong winds above Saskatchewan's Reindeer Lake before spotters onboard saw the first sign of what they hoped were five teenagers reported missing days earlier.
It was Saturday, four days after the teens had cast off from their home in Southend, Sask., in a small aluminum boat, supposedly to go moose hunting. Instead, the five had holed up at a sprawling fishing lodge, closed for the season, that catered to moneyed anglers.
There, at the Arctic Lodges, is where spotters saw two boats tied up by the docks and were certain the missing teens were below. But the crew of the Twin Otter had no way of contacting them. And Kelly Littlechilds, the lodge's owner, says the RCMP told him that a number of people on the ground below – far from waving to their rescuers – ran into the lodge buildings.
"Those people obviously didn't want to be found," Mr. Littlechilds said.
Two days later, after the youths had set out on stormy waters and were plainly in trouble, they were finally found and brought home, allegedly leaving the Arctic Lodges damaged and raising a host of unanswered questions about how a teenage adventure had gone so terribly wrong.
When the teens left home on Tuesday, they were expected back the following day. Clayton Morin, whose 13-year-old grandson Brayden was one of the group, says he wasn't worried: His grandson had been on many hunting trips and had reassured him that the party was headed to a nearby river, isolated from the strong winds and rough weather.
But when they didn't turn up by Thursday, Mr. Morin reported them missing to the RCMP. Then, because of his extensive knowledge of the area, he joined the Mounties in their search, ranging far from the stated destination, north over Reindeer Lake.
His heart was heavy as he looked out of the Twin Otter on the innumerable bays and islands of the sprawling lake in northern Saskatchewan. While large sheets of ice had built up on the waters below, the frigid winds whipped up whitecaps as far as he could see. On the second day of the search, spotters saw no tracks in the fresh snow below.
The incident at the fishing lodge, on the fourth day, only deepened the mystery. The lodge, 100 kilometres north of their isolated community, has more than 30 wood cabins and dozens of small support structures. The centre of the complex is a large wooden building with wide windows and is appointed with leather couches and other amenities for fishermen flown into the area.
The doors of all the cabins had been left unlocked with dried food for the winter – part of the code of the North.
The owner, Mr. Littlechilds, had already dispatched workers to go to the property to help with the search. Hours after the Twin Otter flew over the lodge, the first workers arrived to find the complex deserted. While officials initially reported that some survival gear was missing from the cabins, the full extent of the damage only became known later.
"This was beyond breaking a window for survival," Mr. Littlechilds said. All of the exterior doors of the buildings in the complex were kicked in, chainsaws and other equipment were missing, an aluminum boat and lodge clothes had been stolen, and a number of all-terrain vehicles had been removed from winter storage and tossed about.
As it turned out, after the fly-over by the Twin Otter, the four boys and one girl tried to leave for home, despite high winds. According to Tanisha Cook, 17, they were out of food. With two boats – their own and one that belonged to the lodge – they set off onto the lake as the temperature sank below -15 C.
Soon afterward, ice began building up on the carburetor of the outboard motors. One of the boat's engines died and, almost immediately, the swells swamped it.
"The waves were eight feet high, maybe bigger," Brayden told his grandfather. "There were times we couldn't even see each other. The swells were so huge. Sometimes we couldn't even see land."
According to Ms. Cook, the boat filled with "icy water" immediately. "We all ran to the top of the boat while it was sinking, and my boyfriend's friend came just on time to save us," said Ms. Cook, who was on the boat with her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tyler Bear.
The remaining boat was barely able to make it to a nearby island before its motor began to ice up.
Soaked, the teens built a fire and dried out their parkas and snowmobile pants. "We were frozen, we couldn't even move because of how cold it was," Ms. Cook said. With a tarp they saved, the teenagers blocked the wind and huddled around the fire. Sparks burned holes in their clothes. The next morning, they found an old cabin with a working stove a few hundred metres away.
Search efforts on Sunday were hampered by poor visibility. "It was a total whiteout, we were navigating by GPS," Mr. Morin said.
On Monday morning, Mr. Morin took to the sky again in a small Cessna 182. The visibility was better and the aircraft headed north to a cluster of cabins around the Arctic Lodges. "We were zig-zagging around there, but there was no sign of them," he said.
The plane began to follow the east shore of Reindeer Lake back toward Southend. "We had passed over a few cabins and I told the pilot that there was one more."
As the airplane crossed over a frozen bay, Mr. Morin spotted the teenagers on the beach. "They were all waving," he said. "I counted all the heads and I saw five of them, I was positive it was them. That was a very happy moment."
Within hours, the teenagers were back in Southend and healthy, except for one minor case of frostbite. In pictures of Brayden after his return, he is wearing an Arctic Lodges sweatshirt.
Speaking with a throng of reporters after he arrived in the remote Saskatchewan community, Mr. Bear said the experience was "something scary."
The RCMP confirm that they will be questioning the teens and their families about the extent of the reported damage at the Arctic Lodges. The owner of a neighbouring lodge reported its complex was broken into a few weeks earlier. "This isn't a romantic story," the owner said.
Mr. Littlechilds says he won't press charges until he gets a sense of the scale of the damage and what's missing. His greatest concern is about the impact on a lodge complex that has been operating for 60 years.
"There are a lot of locals around there who don't want to speak ill of their own people, but they've got issues with these kids," he said. "We have a nice lodge and it's taken a long time to build it up to that point. We're almost 90 miles up the lake so it's a lot of time and money to build that. If someone goes up there and starts to wreck your place, that's concerning, whether they are kids or not kids."
Three days after the teenagers returned, Mr. Littlechilds had not heard from any of the families and doesn't know whether his boat was the one that sank. Brayden's grandparents say the boy confirms the doors to the cabins were unlocked, but says he only took items for survival.
Justin Giovannetti