Upper Liard Hot Springs

4-17-2015

     There's a place in Northern British Colombia, along the Alaskan Highway, where everyone must stop. Or so we were told, by truckers who drove the road regularly, and by locals in the small towns we stopped in. Everyone was talking about how great the Upper Liard Hot Springs were, so of course we stopped. 

     Across the road from the Liard Hot Springs Lodge there's a campground. At the back of the campground is a dirt parking area, open to the public, which is where we parked. Right by a big sign, of the kind we typically see at trailheads. Sure enough, the sign was about the hot springs, and we could see a trail lead off through the bog and into woods. We followed it for about a half mile before we could see a building. It was small, two stories tall, with no windows. It looked more like a really nice maintenance shed. As we got closer, we could see there was more off to the left. Two separate wood buildings that shared the same roof, with a deck in the middle, that turned out to be changing rooms. They were light and open, and clean. They seemed new. So did the deck that ran the length of both buildings, along the steaming river. Stairs led down into the river from every inch of deck near the water. 

     The whole river was the hot spring. The head of it was the spring itself, just past the stairs at the North end. It was really hot at that end, but it got cooler the further we went downstream. At the end of the deck was a man made wall, even with the water level, which made a man made waterfall. Stairs also wrapped around from the end of the deck to right below the waterfall. That part of the river was cool on the bottom, but warm on top. It was refreshing after the heat of the upper part of the river. 

     We spent the better part of an hour there, maybe a little more. We met some really cool people from Chicken, Alaska, and had some good conversations. They told us they stop there every time they pass through, which is usually twice a year, and I've heard the same thing from many Alaskans ever since. Everyone asks us if we stopped there, and I'm glad to say yes. It was a great place.