Out & About: Luxury lodge going up in Eagle Cap Wilderness

OUTDIGS – Mules moved the equipment, materials, remote sawmill and even a 400-pound refrigerator for the construction of Minam River Lodge in 1950.

Helicopters will do the heavy lifting to restore or rebuild some of the historic structures and create a luxury lodge in the eastern Oregon wilderness, according to the Oregonian.

UP Architecture in Portland conscripted copters to make 97 supply drops into the 127-acre inholding that is surrounded by the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

Everything from timber to glass touched down at a small airfield. At a cost of more than $2,000 an hour to rent a helicopter, just bringing in supplies cost “six figures,” said Barnes Ellis, who purchased the property at auction in 2011.

For the past five years, that work has slowly progressed. This spring, it hit high gear. The business has been closed for all of 2016 as the main lodge was destroyed and a new one erected. The facility could open next season.

The plan is to build a 4,000-square-foot solar-powered luxury lodge in the middle of the Eagle Cap Wilderness, where visitors can enjoy high-quality food, running water, showers and numerous amenities.

These are the things most wilderness visitors seek to escape. But this sort of wilderness luxury has been spot-located in Canadian Rockies parks and wilderness areas for more than a century.

The cost will be steep – roughly $500 a night to rent a large cabin.

Customers can charter a plane from Enterprise, Joseph or La Grande to fly into the lodge. Others will come by trail. The closest trailhead is Moss Springs, about 8.5 miles away. Some will travel the route on horseback while 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, including use of communal showers and a wood-fired hot tub.

Ellis imagines the lodge as a place where both types of people will meet, converse and dine together in a natural world. The Minam River, which can be seen from the deck, holds threatened salmon and bull trout.

Sweyn Wall, of the U.S. Forest Service recreation program, said the lodge has been good neighbors with the national forest, noting several other inholdings within the 361,000-acre wilderness area.

The Forest Service and lodge must stay on the same page on issues such as the water system that originates on Forest Service land and the sewage system, as well as how they operate along a Wild & Scenic River.