Yukon Territory - North/Black/Liard River Canoe Trip, Trip Report

Chapter Seven -- To the Liard River (To a 56kb Text-Only version, no pictures)

Day 9. Monday, 7 July, 1997

A warm night, and heavy clouds when we got up. Granola for breakfast. Time to get back on the water and head on downstream.

There was a light sprinkle for a couple of minutes about 7:50, then a cow moose walked up the east lake shore, saw us, and turned into the woods. John and Dennis caught three lake trout on a slow troll of the 1¼ miles (2 km) to the Black Lake outlet, which we reached at 10:20. A five mph current (8 km/hr), and few easy rapids before crossing the 2900 foot topo map contour (maps below Black Lake are the older, non-metric versions).

Black River view 1 enlarge me (28kb)

There's a good campsite after the second dark cut-bank on the left, but it's too soon for us stop. It's a big gravel bar on the right with grayling fishing in the large eddy. This is the first campable place we remember seeing since leaving the lake nine miles back (15 km), despite several gravel bars indicated above here on the topo map. There might have also been a usable site soon after the lake outlet. It started raining at 12:40, while Dennis was fishing, and got progressively harder. Bigger rapids started just below the potential campsite, and persisted for about five miles (8 km). Still some good rapids after that, but much more occasional. A small hanging snowfield on a right bank cliff about 50 feet (15 m) above the river was interesting.

High dark cliffs were pretty, but the rain and current speed again precluded pictures. We started looking for a campsite, and finally found one about 2:45 pm. It was immediately after a left bend where the topo map indicates a sand bar. Immediately below is a very sharp right bend in the river with another sandbar indicated just below it. Checking the next morning showed this second bar was not usable as a campsite. This first camp was plenty good enough for us. It was still raining pretty hard, and there was plenty of firewood here. John's GPS said 4.1 miles (6,597 m), line of sight to the mouth of the Black. Distance paddled today was just a bit over 19 miles (31 km).

Rainy campsite enlarge me (46kb)

Tarp up, fire built, hot chocolate, hot soup, and your choice of a hot or cold lunch. The air temperature is not really cold, but very damp, with some breeze. Dennis hauled in a few small grayling after the rain slowed down. After it quit, Hank and Dennis modeled John's spray deck next to the rapids in front of camp. Instead of cooking a real supper we just ate more lunch type stuff at 8:00 pm. We kept a smoky fire going to discourage mosquitoes, which were very thick. Rain started again about 9:30, so off to bed.

Day 10. Tuesday, 8 July, 1997

Up at 7:00, cloudy, and threat of rain again. Pancakes for breakfast. Pushed off at 10:00.

Decked canoe enlarge me (31kb)

John and Dennis still have the spray deck on so Laurie took a couple of "action" pictures of them. Later in the day they decided that they should have put it on earlier in the trip. We finally got some pictures of the canyon walls, and now we think we know why it's called the Black River -- a lot of oily black bedrock. Downstream a bit, a potentially bad rapids John had noted from the plane turned out to be no problem, the river is wide enough for us to easily miss the rock wall. After reaching the Liard River at 11:15, we decided that the lower Black River course had changed a bit, putting us into the Liard a couple miles (3.2 km) downstream of where it's indicated on the map. (Black/Liard Confluence Map)

Black/Liard River junction enlarge me (25kb)

The current is fast on the Liard, and the river has cleared up a lot since we flew over it over a week ago. It had looked real milky from the air then. We arrived at Hasselberg Creek at 1:00 pm, and ate lunch there. There is an old cabin on the high bank across the river, and we saw another more recent one upstream of here.

Liard River campsite enlarge me (46kb)

We paddled over another hour, then started looking for a campsite. The first potential site checked was rejected, but several subsequent ones were much worse. We finally found another at 4 pm several miles/km downstream, this one almost as good as the first. Patches of blue earlier had closed up and given us some light sprinkles. Tarp up, tents up, and a fire going. John was hitting the bottle of Yukon Jack, which was getting pretty low.

Few rapids on the Black today. Just some waves and rocks to dodge. Several rock sieves to avoid, even some on the much bigger Liard. The Black looked to be about ¼ of the flow of the Liard which was about 10,000 cfs (280 m³/s) below the confluence. Distance paddled was about 28 miles (45 km). It's easy to make miles on the big Liard with few obstacles and good current.

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