Million Dollar Falls Ice Fishing
The Road Chose Me Volume 2 OUT NOW!!
The Road Chose Me Volume 2: Three years and 54,000 miles around Africa
All government campgrounds in Yukon are closed for the winter, and they also have identical “shelters” or “cook shacks” – which are a big wooden cabins with open windows. They always have a great roof and a BIG wood stove. With a big sheet of plastic and a little effort, these can be turned into amazing places to stay in the winter.
It’s a beautiful sunny weekend on Haines Pass as we drag our gear in the 500 meters from the highway to the shelter we call home for the three day weekend. After a couple of hours and a hundred staples or so our plastic is hanging nicely, and we’ve got a decent pile of firewood.
The shelter we converted into our winter home
Icicles on the shelter roof
It doesn’t take long at all to heat up the inside considerably, making us warm as toast as we cook our meals on the wood stove and settle in for the night.
Sunset on the mountains near Million Dollar Falls
I’ve got a hot tip on a great lake for ice fishing, so we load up in the morning and strike off for this unknown lake. A few hours later we’re standing on a beautiful lake, and set to work drilling holes through the ice. After 3 attempts, it appears the lake is extremely shallow, and we barely have any liquid water before the muddy bottom. An unlikely place to catch fish, it seems.
Drilling through the ice is hard work
Ice fishing is hard work
Our ice fishing mini camp
Somehow, it seems, I’ve taken us to the wrong lake. Maybe next time I’ll bring a map.
We play around for the day loving the sunshine, exploring and looking all around the area.
It’s a Million Dollar view
The feast of fish and chips we had planned turns into a mountain of chips and very little fish.
OK, if I’m being truthful, there were no fish.
-Dan
