Cathers Wilderness Adventures
Lake Laberge to Carmacks (3 days)
Boating
Our Yukon River boat trips are designed for guests who love wilderness and history. Most trips begin from our wilderness home and sled dog kennel at Lake Laberge. (Guests are picked up in Whitehorse.) We travel the Yukon River from Lake Laberge to Carmacks or Dawson (3 to 7 days), following the route taken by most of the gold-seekers who rushed to the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898. While these adventurers mostly used homemade boats and rafts loaded with all their worldly goods, you can travel in a comfortable covered boat. At night, we camp out by the river and go to sleep listening to the sound of the water.
Optional Pre-trip Day
Pick up in Whitehorse mid-afternoon. Drive about 45 minutes to Lake Laberge. Boat trip to our wilderness home and sled dog kennel (about 30 to 45 minutes). Lakeshore supper. Overnight at home cabins.
Days 1 to 3
Boat trip Lake Laberge to Carmacks. The first 20 miles (30 km) are on Lake Laberge before we reach the abandoned telegraph station and police post at Lower Laberge. From there we follow the Yukon River as it winds through the beautiful "Thirty-mile" section, and eventually is joined by the Teslin River, the Big Salmon River, and the Little Salmon River, which all add their water to the mighty Yukon. The river takes us past old wood camps where the paddle-wheelers used to pick up firewood, the trading post at Hootalinqua, the old shipyard on Hootalinqua Island where the remains of the S.S. Evelyn (Norcom) lie in dry dock, the First Nations villages of Big Salmon and Little Salmon, the cabins at Lakeview.....The area is rich in history from the Gold Rush, and the paddle-wheel steamboat era, and the countless years that it was inhabited by First Nations people who hunted and fished along its river banks. Relics and stories remain from all of these eras and you recapture the spirit of those bygone times as we stop at many of the historical landmarks along the way.
Day 3 (afternoon)
We are picked up in Carmacks. Guests may wish to visit the excellent First Nations museum in Carmacks before we head back to Whitehorse.
