“I had to leave a couple days after... but otherwise I think I would have done a backpacking skating trip. The Windy Arm of Tagish Lake is 20 kilometres long and it looked like it was all frozen pretty even everywhere.” – Gabe Rivest
Is this heaven?
Skating The Windy Arm of Tagish Lake
Five years ago, Whitehorse outdoorsman Gabe Rivest happened upon a hockey player’s dream. Passing Tagish Lake on a drive home from a snowboarding trip that was cancelled due to strong winds, he spotted clean, unspoiled ice he’d only seen form atop smaller lakes. The local weather had been weird that week: the temperature dropped below freezing, then it rained, and then it froze again. “The snow never became heavy enough to create slush,” he says. “It’s a really windy spot, so the wind kept wiping out the snow, which is the reason why it was perfect.” Keep an eye out for your own Yukon paradise starting in late November.
