My name is Troy Reid and at 25, I had worked my way up to Forman and had saved quite a bit of money. Before starting high school, I wanted to be a mechanic. I work my way through high school and beyond with an apprenticeship at the local shop and two years after my apprenticeship, I earn my ASE truck master.
I decided I wanted to see some of the country, so I loaded my camper and pick up and took off for Alaska. I found a good job at one of the trucking companies and worked there for almost a year. During that time, I found that I like to fly and became friends with a Bush pilot named Bill Schuyler. I flew a lot with him while he was delivering supplies to the back country and remote villages.
The next summer work was slow at the shop I was laid off for a few months; I found a summer job at one of the hunting and fishing lodges in the back country. Not being experienced at being a guide, I did most of the grunt work of hauling supplies, setting up camps and cooking, it was something new, and I really enjoyed it.
That winter I went back to work for the trucking company. On a trip while flying with Bill, I have seen an old abandoned mining camp that sat beside a lake it had rolling hills and mountains on one side and downstream from the lake, a lot of swampland. Checking into the property, I found that it had been abandoned. Bill and I landed on the lake and checked out the property, on a trip to a remote village. The hills around the lake were full of game. The lake was teeming with fish; downstream around the swamp we found it loaded with moose. I managed to pick it up for a few years of back taxes that were due. So I now own the piece of property. As soon as work slacked off for the summer I loaded up my camping gear and enough supplies to last me for a month, along with my M1 Garand, my 454 Taurus, and my handheld radio and had Bill fly me in and drop me off. We made plans to contact each other by radio at six o'clock every night.
When the mining company abandoned the mine, they left most of their equipment intact. The buildings were in good shape, there was the cook shack and the bunkhouse and what I guess to be the workshop. Three hours later I had the cook shack pretty well cleaned up, and set up camp there. The doors and windows had been boarded up, which kept all the animals out. The shack was well insulated, airtight and had double pane windows. There were two rooms on the side of the building. One would've been the bedroom for the cook. The other was probably an office with an indoor toilet between the two of them. The place had been wired for electricity and there was a three holer, out back that was still workable. I brought enough wood in to last for a couple of days and made my bed in the bedroom. There was a can in the cupboard that's still had kerosene in it, I filled up two lamps and lit them and started a fire in the stove. It was smoking badly. I went outside and looked at the stovepipe, and it had a can over the top of it, which I remove, then the stove worked really well.
At six, Bill called and we talked for a few minutes. I filled him in on what I had done, and told him everything was okay.
I was up early the next morning and was exploring the camp some more. I removed the boards from the bunkhouse door. It was dirty, but in great shape it had 24 bunks and two potbelly stoves in the middle of the room with tables and benches. It had electric and three toilets and three showers. In the back, it had two rooms, with a bathroom between them. If I can get this stuff to work it's going to be a great hunting lodge.
I was beginning to get the feeling that they had not planned to abandon the mine. But only shut it down and plan to come back later, but never made it.
The workshop was very well built out of metal and still locked up solid. The two big sliding doors were locked from the inside, and the windows had metal shutters over them.
The small entry door had a good lock on it. Backing down the side of the building about 20 feet and pulled my 454 took careful aim and unlock the lock. It was dark inside, and I couldn't see anything I found the latch on the first sliding door and opened it. One surprise waited for me. There sat a Caterpillar 420E backhoe and D4 Caterpillar. They hadn't run for 10 years. It would take a little work, but I could get them running again.
All the machinery was still in the shop, including a good machine shop. On the other end of building was another door. I carefully opened it and with my small flashlight looked in, one more surprise. There sat an electric generator and a control panel. A water turbine turned the generator through a gearbox; fed by an 8-inch water pipe, with a diverter valve controlled by a governor and a shutoff valve, this was a real nice setup.
Outside behind the shed about 200 feet was the stream coming down off the mountain, going over to the stream, there was an old trail, going up beside the stream that was overgrown and hard to find my way, but eventually I found a cement building sitting beside the stream, which came out of a cave and a 8-inch pipe went into the cave. In the cement, building was a diverter valve that sent the water back out into the stream or to a pipe that was buried.
I oiled up the generator and loosened up the governor and oiled it. The shutoff valve was off. I went back up the mountain and turned the valve, which sent the water into the pipe. Down at the generator, you could hear the water running through the pipe. I slowly open the shutoff valve, and the turbine and generator started to spin; the voltmeter came up to 240 and held steady. All the lights in the power room came on; next to the generator set a very large air compressor. I thought what the heck and push the start button for the compressor. It came up to speed in about five seconds and 30 seconds later; the air pressure gauge was up to 50. I turned it off.
I turned on the circuit breaker marked cookhouse and open the water valve marked cook. The outside lights were all on to the shed, bunkhouse and cookhouse. Back in the shack the water was running in the sink, shower, and the toilets were full. I could hear the water heater filling up. There was a six burner electric range, two refrigerators and two freezers. I plugged in one refrigerator, and it started.
It was almost 6, and I called Bill. He was 50 miles north and heading back to base. I asked him if he had time to stop. I had something I needed to talk to him about. He said he'd see me in half an hour. A half-hour later, he made a pass over the lake swung around and came in for landing. As he pulled up to shore I could see he had another passenger with him. It was Kevin Ward, the game warden for the vicinity. I had met him last year when I was working at the other lodge. This was good timing because I needed to talk to him too. I showed them around, and they couldn't believe what I had. I talked to Bill about going into partnership with him to get people in and out of here and to Kevin to make sure everything was legal. Kevin told me the original owner, and his foreman had been killed by a bear one night, and the owner's wife wanted nothing more to do with the place. The mine had never produced anything.
I spent the next few days working on the cat. Bill picked me up and took me to town. I bought a lot of supplies and food and had a whole planeload with the parts and oil, lubes and paint. The next day I had the cat running and spent the following three days clearing all the brush and saplings from the yard. It really opened the place up. The next two weeks I spent cleaning and painting the buildings inside and out.
Bill was real busy bringing in other supplies; one refrigerator and one freezer were full. We brought in four boats and four trolling motors. The salmon was now running, and we were averaging four fishing parties a week.
The last time I was in town. I called my brother Eric to see what he was doing. He had been laid off and was not working. I told him to load my things that I left with him and to come up I needed his help.
