Not So Lucky at Lucky Lake - But Lucky Anyway

One thing we wanted to do more of, but have not, is to fish our way through Canada and Alaska on this trip.  There have just been too many things to do.  However, today we had a chance to go fishing, and, thanks to lots of Yukon tourist information on fishing, we discovered Lucky Lake, a small kettle lake about a mile in circumference, which is stocked with rainbow trout and kokanee salmon:

Lucky Lake, as other kettle lakes, was formed when a retreating glacier left a very large piece of itself in a depression it had carved.  In this case, the base of the depression was high in clay, which helped seal it and prevented melting ice water from draining down through the moraine.  Having no inlet our outlet, Lucky Lake depends on rain water to be replenished, and has survived for eons this way.  Luckily, the water is clean and is the right environment for healthy plant life, which nurtures insects that, in turn support fish.

No one knows for sure the origin of the name of Lucky Lake; however, the interpretive sign at the lake relates that, during the World War II construction of the Alaska Highway, some enterprising woman set up a tent at the lake to "service" soldiers who were off-duty from road construction.  It was said that those soldiers said their "luck had changed" at the lake, and so the name was born.

We were hoping to get lucky in a different way and catch at least one kokanee, which are "landlocked" salmon that spend their mature lives in lakes before swimming up tributary streams to spawn in the place where they were born.  Kokanee from Lucky Lake are said to range as big as 24 inches, so one would be a hearty meal for the two of us.  Historically, we've only caught and released trout, but we decided that, if we caught any trout or kokanee today, we would try to clean the fish and cook it for supper.

This really motivated Kathy, who jumped right into the lake and started fishing:

Our information told us that we could catch fish wading the shore of the lake, because the fish like to cruise the shoreline snarfing little worms and other terrestrials that may have fallen in the water from overhanging vegetation.  There was plenty of vegetation on the lakeshore, and the bottom was shallow and sandy at the margins, so this made for nearly perfect wading:

Alas, a fish dinner was not to be.  It has been quite warm and sunny in Watson Lake the last few days, with temperatures nearing 80F/27C, and, although we got a decently early start in the morning, it was already so warm by noon that the water along the shore nearly felt like a bathtub.  Furthermore, we wonder whether, this late in the season, much of the lake hadn't been fished out.  It is clear that the lake is popular with the locals and easy to fish.

In any event, we quickly forgot our sour grapes because Lucky Lake also boasts the trailhead for a beautiful 3-mile hike down to Liard River Canyon.

Liard River rises in the Pelly Mountains in southeast Yukon and flows 693 miles, further southeast through British Columbia and then curving northeast back into the Yukon and Northwest Territories before draining into the Mackenzie River.  It is a beautiful river and we were eager to have a chance to see it before making our next stop further down the river at Liard Hot Springs.  Thus, it was with great anticipation that we started down the beautiful forest road:

The forest was filled with lodgepole pine, spruce, quaking (those funny Canadians say, "trembling") aspen and birch trees, all swaying gently in the sweet afternoon breeze.  The spruce here are the tallest of anywhere in the Yukon and, indeed, have their own name:  Liard Spruce.  Yet, as tall as the spruce get, the aspen will not be outdone.  In the photo below, an aspen is holding its own with one of the local spruce:

After a descent of nearly 300 feet in a mile or so, we stepped out onto a beach of smooth round rocks and gravel, to see the beautiful, blue-green Liard River - much wider and wilder and clearer than we anticipated.  We gazed downstream --

-- and upstream --

-- and across some rapids and riffles toward the opposite bank:

Our side of the river was graced with flat formations of volcanic rock and shale that had been upended so that its layers spread out under our feet and made patterned routes for our feet.

We took one last look at the river --

-- to hold it in our memory as we turned to hike back up the canyon cliffs to the plateau above Lucky Lake and then across to our truck.  It isn't often that we get such a special day:  fishing a beautiful lake in grand weather, and a beautious hike to a wild and scenic river!  So we guess that, despite having no luck at Lucky Lake, we were lucky anyway.