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Day 2 – Journey to Homestead Lodge
Journey into “The Thirty Mile”
Wake up to the sounds of nature amidst the fabled ancestral lands of the Ta’an Kwachan Council. Before a gourmet camp breakfast, take in the glory of the morning paddling a canoe along the shores of Lake Laberge, or try your hand at fishing for pike, arctic grayling, or lake trout - or go for a refreshing early morning hike in the solitude of our northern forests. Board the Shakat riverboat after breakfast and make your way downstream to the “Thirty Mile”. Narrow channels run through dramatic high cut bluffs – the cause of many a paddle wheeler disaster. Stop to visit the huge shipwrecked shell of one such vessel and imagine challenges of the era. After a gourmet picnic lunch, board a private floatplane for a bird’s eye view of the immense and perilous Five-Finger rapids. Disembark at Homestead Lodge, settle in and hike to Pelly Farm, a thriving wilderness homestead. Meet the resident family and explore the blacksmith shop, gather fresh vegetables from the garden and collect fresh eggs for a hands-on demonstration of the the lost culinary art of homestead cooking.
Now a completely uninhabited and reclaimed wilderness preserve, the “Thirty Mile” was once one of the busiest and most treacherous stretches of the Yukon for steam-powered paddle wheelers. Heavily overgrown but still visible are the remains of the log cabins that served as homes, Mounted Police detachments, telegraph stations and wood camps. Several huge paddle wheelers remain largely intact where shipwrecked—or hauled out and abandoned—over 80 years ago.
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