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Yukon Territory - North/Black/Liard River Canoe Trip,
Trip Report
Chapter Four -- Fire Lake to the Falls
(To a 56kb Text-Only version, no pictures)
Day 5. Thursday, 3 July, 1997
Up at 7 am again, cloudy, so no frost last night. Breakfast of
the last of our eggs and toast.
Pushed off at 8:45 and paddled
slowly, so as to check for birds and mammals. A big creek came
in on the right just below camp, then the meter stick on a
recording gauge above the river emptying into the lake indicated
a water level of 0.46 meters. I need to try and see who keeps
the records for the gauge, and if the data is available. We
reached Fire Lake about 9:20.
(Fire Lake Area Map)
We stopped on the sand spit at the mouth
of the river to peruse the
area. This lake is also three miles long (5 km), but about twice as
wide as North Lake (2/3rds of a mile, 1 km). The base camp for the
exploratory mining
going on in the area is visible on left shore, half way down the
lake. We had seen it flying in. These are probably the folks
maintaining the river gauge. While at the river outlet, one of
the mining helicopters
looked to us as if it was chasing 6-8 caribou on a ridge to the
north east. Could have been just on its route and the pilot
didn't even see the animals. Good lake trout fishing directly
out from the stream mouth.
We slowly traveled along the east shore
towards the other end of
the lake. The mining camp consists of several buildings with
stacks of lumber for what looks like more. Could be for use in
constructing remote buildings at drilling sites, also.
There was a big generator going, a sauna building, two satellite
dishes, motorized Zodiac boat, canoe, folding boat, ATV, and a
helicopter or two (one seen earlier was still away), plus a Single
Otter aircraft we had seen flying around that also wasn't there at
the time. A large "Welcome" sign was spray painted on a
sheet of plywood. We waved at some people as we paddled by, but
didn't stop. I decided later that we should have stopped and asked
about future mining plans, river gauge info, how much and what kind
of recreational river and lake use they see, and other area info.
In the bay on the east shore, just north
of the lake outlet, is a
very nice hunting/fishing or vacation camp of some kind. Four well
maintained log cabins, horse corrals (but how do they get horses
in???), a small floatplane dock, two outhouses, and a remote bear
cache for food storage. The cabin doors were all nailed shut so
we didn't enter them, though we could see in a window of one.
Most windows were also heavily boarded over for bear exclusion.
Shortly after leaving the lake was another
river gauge on the
left bank, but no recorder. The meter stick indicated .35 meters,
and Hank guessed a thousand or so cfs (28 m³/s). A little less than
a mile from the outlet (1½ km), through several easy rapids, we came
close to the
first of several drops we didn't want to run. This section had
looked pretty serious from the plane, and the first big drop puts
paddlers into a narrow steep-walled canyon that might make it hard to
scout and portage at river level. At least some drops might be
runnable in suitable boats (and traveling empty), but one of them is
a steep slide into
a large hole. It may have been sneakable, but others also looked
very marginal from our high above water level scouting vantage
points.
We did our scouting hike on the right
bank as it was the
inside of the bend, and also easy to get out of boats on that side
of the river. Hiked downstream after scouting and found a suitable
reentry point,
then went back and started portaging boats and gear. Some light
rain as we started the portage at 12:30 pm.
We followed animal trails,
which is tough when
carrying a canoe, as such trails are always narrow and usually
discontinuous. The walk was about a half mile long (800 m)
with very little climbing, and the last little bit to the river
was a downhill bushwhack. John's
GPS said the line of sight distance was about .35 miles
(563 m). Three trips for everyone except two for John, who took
some pictures of the rapids. Finished at 2:30 pm and ate some
lunch. After repacking the boats, we only paddled a little over
another mile (maybe 2 km) on very fast current, then camped at
3:30 pm on the left river bank. Distance paddled today was short,
only about 7½ miles (12 km), and almost half of it was easy lake.
The day was quite warm. It rained again about 5 pm while some of
us rinsed portage dirt off with river water, which made us scramble
to get a tarp up and things under cover. The rain was
intermittent and not hard, just light thunder showers, which were
the normal precipitation for us the whole run. Spaghetti for dinner.
Mosquitoes bad enough that everyone was in their tents about 8 pm.
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Next Chapter |
| Getting There |
On North Lake |
On to Fire Lake |
Fire Lake to the Falls |
| Falls to Black Lake |
On Black Lake |
Black Lake to the Liard River |
| More Liard and on to Whitehorse |
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