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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2016
BUILDING IN THE WILD
Luxury lodge
rising deep in
the wilderness
By TIM TRAINOR
East Oregonian
hen the Minam
River Lodge was
built in 1950, live-
stock hauled in most of the
equipment.
A sawmill was constructed
on site to build the lodge and
cabins, but mules provided
the muscle when a 400-pound
refrigerator needed to travel
up and down the mountains
to its new home deep in the
woods.
Now, 56 years later, as
the crumbling lodge and old
refrigerator is being replaced,
some things have changed but
many have not.
The helicopters are new.
Construction manager Ben
Gates, of UP Architecture in
Portland, conscripted copters
to make 97 supply drops into
the 127-acre inholding that
is surrounded entirely by the
Eagle Cap Wilderness. Every-
thing from timber to glass
touched down at a small air-
ield within sight of the main
lodge. At a cost of more than
$2,000 an hour to rent a heli-
copter, just bringing in sup-
plies cost “six igures,” said
lodge owner Barnes Ellis.
Ellis is a former reporter
for The Oregonian turned
investment banker who lives
in Portland. He vacationed at
the property growing up and
purchased the property at auc-
tion in 2011.
“There is no forgetting this
place,” he said.
W
E.J. Harris/East Oregonian
Crews work on rebuilding the Minam River Lodge in the Eaglecap Wilderness Area east of La Grande.
Needed work. Lots of it
But it needed work. Lots
of it. Decades of erosion
had rendered the main lodge
unsalvageable, and a smatter-
ing of cabins and outbuildings
needed major renovation or
outright replacement.
For the past ive years, that
work has slowly progressed.
But this spring, after the slow
melted, it hit high gear. The
business has been closed for
all of 2016 as the main lodge
was destroyed and a new one
erected.
“This has grown into a
major, major project. If I
knew when I started how
much work it would take I’m
not sure I would have started,”
joked Ellis. “But now we’re
into it and we’re going for it.”
The plan is to build a
4,000-square-foot
luxury
lodge in the middle of the
Eagle Cap Wilderness, where
visitors can enjoy high-quality
food, running water, showers,
electricity and numerous ame-
E.J. Harris/East Oregonian
Jacob Stevens of Elgin strips the bark off of logs that will
by used to rebuild the barn at the Minam River Lodge east
of La Grande.
nities. Electricity is currently
supplied by a combination of
solar power and gas genera-
tors, though Gates said when
construction is complete,
solar could supply nearly all
the necessary power.
The cost will be steep —
roughly $500 a night to rent
a large cabin — and that does
not include the cost of get-
ting there. Ellis expects he
will help many of his custom-
ers charter a plane from Enter-
prise, Joseph or La Grande to
ly into the lodge.
Others will hump it. The
closest trailhead is Moss
Springs, about 8.5 miles
away, and some will travel
the route on horseback while
?
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others will use their own two
feet. For the more economical
traveler, Minam River Lodge
will offer raised platform beds
with linens, in a teepee or wall
tent, for roughly $100 a night.
That allows customers to
make use of communal show-
ers and a wood-ired hot tub.
Enjoying the
natural world
Ellis imagines the lodge
as a place where both types
of people will meet, con-
verse, dine together and enjoy
the natural world arrayed in
front of them. The Minam
River can be seen from the
currently-under-construction
deck, water that both threat-
ened salmon and bull trout
call home. Hunters will be
another main customers base
since they have nearby access
to elk, bear, cougar, deer and
more.
Ellis envisions visitors
forking over $500 a night to
ly in from places like Port-
land or Boston and stay for a
week, while others will arrive
sweaty and hungry and look-
ing for a place to rest their
head for the night.
But irst they’ve got to
build the thing.
Isaac Trout has served as
an on-site construction super-
intendent, living and work-
ing at the site for much of
the year. An avid outdoors-
man, he used his bow to bag
a mammoth elk within hik-
ing distance from the property
last year.
He said the opportu-
nity to live and work in such
a beautiful, wild place has
been incredible, as is build-
ing “something that will be
historic.”
It hasn’t been easy. Trout
and Gates have had to igure
out how to erect their lodge
without the use of cranes
and lifts and other beneits of
modern construction. Getting
the main joist in place with
just a few hands and little
more than an ATV took some
planning and ingenuity.
But that has brought
another kind of beneit.
“It has forced us to plan
in the way that contractors
always want to do, but never
have time for,” said Gates.
No running to the store
There is no running to a
hardware store for an extra
box of nails or sheet of ply-
wood — and the waste of
hours that entails. Everything
had to be accounted for and
planned in order to get rigged
up for a helicopter ride and
then its inal place on the con-
struction site.
“We’ve been pretty good
and pretty lucky,” Gates said.
“We don’t have a lot of waste
and we don’t have much
extra.”
Sweyn Wall, of the U.S.
Forest Service recreation pro-
gram, said the lodge has been
good neighbors with the For-
est Service. There are a few
other inholdings within the
361,000-acre wilderness area,
including a few in the upper
Minam area.
Wall said Barnes and
the lodge have been “part-
ners on a variety or proj-
ects, and we consider our-
selves good neighbors.”
He said there are important
issues that the lodge and For-
est Service must stay on the
same page on, especially the
water system that originates
on Forest Service land and
the sewage system, as well as
how they operate along a Wild
& Scenic River.
But Wall sees beneits to
inholdings and commercial
operations such as the Minam
River Lodge.
“One of the main chal-
lenges we face as an agency is
trying to keep folks vested,”
said Wall. “The more we can
encourage people to use and
appreciate wilderness, the
stronger the argument we
have for it.”
Halfway complete
The construction project is
halfway complete, and crews
expect it to be open next
spring. It is unknown if the
lodge will open year-round,
but when it is operating it can
house up to 30 guests and will
employ 11 to 12 people full
time. Other contractors will
see beneits from the business,
including pilots and horse-
back outitters who will help
ferry and entertain guests.
The massive project is a
inancial risk, Ellis admitted.
But once people see the view
from the lodge — and the
lodge itself — he thinks they
will have a hard time leaving,
especially after they contem-
plate that 8.5-mile hike back
out to civilization.
Save our Subarus
f they ever take our beloved beaver off the Oregon lag, we nominate the
Subaru as a suitable replacement.
Sturdy and sensible, the Subaru has served us pretty well. That’s why we
think the dude in the Hawaiian shirt who attacked a blue Subaru with a baseball
bat in Astoria was probably not local.
I
Follow reporter Kyle Spurr on his 9-1-What? Twitter watch, where a few of
the sometimes head-scratching calls to area dispatch take center stage. The full
feed is at www.twitter.com/9_1_WHAT.
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