On Sunday, July 31, 2016, we set out to explore Watson Lake (the actual lake) on our bicycles. The town itself, sits on the Alaska Highway. The lake for which the town is named is about 7 miles northwest of town. We found a rudimentary trail guide in the Watson Lake Visitor’s Guide. Most trails in the Yukon are multi-use trails. However, most of the use is by ATVs making a challenge to bike them.
The first few miles were parallel to the Alaska Highway. We waived to all the RVers going by. We were surprised to see so many RVers still going north. The two lane Old Alaska Highway Trail quickly turned rocky and rutted. We ended up biking a couple miles on the highway to avoid the rocky parts.
We had hope to intersect with the Beacon Trail, but feared it would also be rocky and rutted by ATV use. As we came to the end of the Old Alaska Highway Trail, we passed a sign for the Yukon Government Campground on Watson Lake. We decided to take the campground road toward the lake. Here is Kathy at the entrance to the campground.
As we rode into the campground, we took some time to explore the different camping areas. The park is spacious with lots of room between sites, but very primitive. The water at the filling station must be boiled for 10 minutes and the park has no dump station for holding tanks. However, if you are fully contained and come into the park with empty tanks, you can camp next to a lake instead of a highway.
We had our picnic lunch next to the boat launch and promised ourselves we would get kayaks as soon as we get our Jeep!
When we biked into the campground, we passed the trailhead for Telegraph Trail. We decided to give this trail a try. If it worked out, we would cut the corner on our return trip and give us another view of Watson Lake. If it ended up being too rocky, we could always turn back and return to the campground road. Nothing ventured - nothing gained!
The first part of Telegraph Trail was pretty overgrown. There were several fallen trees we had to lift our bikes over. In the end, we just ended up hiking and pushed the bikes through the forest.
We didn’t see any bear or moose, but we did rustle up some ptarmigan.
After about a half mile, the overgrown hiking trail turned into a regular two lane woods road.
After bike-whacking our way through the forest, we found ourselves at the top of a very, very steep grade.
After gently leading our bikes down to the lakeshore, we were rewarded with a nice view of a quiet little cove.
Our return trip back to the Alaska Highway would take us on the Raven Lunch Trail. We’re not sure how this trail got its name, but it probably had something to do with an ATVer getting their lunch stolen! Apparently, lunches aren’t the only things stolen on this trail. There is not much left of this old car.
The trails in this area are not very well marked. We were aiming for a parking lot off the Richardson Highway, but ended up coming out of the woods behind the old lumber mill property.
We returned to the campground just in time to watch a 21 rig caravan pull into the park. Another good episode of Camp TV!
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