Liard River Hot Springs
British Columbia Provincial Park On The Alaska Highway; The Second Largest Hot Spring In Canada, With A Boreal Swamp That Stays Ice Free All Winter And Supports Plants Found Nowhere Else This Far North · Liard River, British Columbia
Halfway along the Alaska Highway, at a point where the next town in either direction is hours away, there is a boardwalk half a kilometre long running out over a warm swamp to two pools of naturally hot water in the forest. LIARD IS THE SECOND-LARGEST HOT SPRING IN CANADA and the pools are the real thing - gravel bottomed, fed from below, built up only with a low dam, a changing hut and steps. The Alpha pool is the developed one and runs somewhere in the low forties Celsius at the hot end, cooling as it flows. The heat does something strange to the ecology: the swamp under the boardwalk never freezes, which has left a pocket of species stranded far north of where they belong, including ostrich ferns and lobelia, and over a hundred bird species use the warm ground. For anyone driving the Alaska Highway it is the best stop on the road. In winter it is better still - steam, snow on the spruce, and forty degrees of water at minus thirty.
Mile 497 Alaska Highway, Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, Liard River, British Columbia, Canada
THE PARK AND THE POOLS ARE OPEN YEAR-ROUND, which is unusual this far north and is a large part of the appeal. Day-use hours are posted at the gate and are typically limited to daylight-ish hours rather than round the clock; THE CAMPGROUND OPERATES SEASONALLY, roughly May to September, with reservations through BC Parks and a smaller first-come operation outside those months. A DAY-USE FEE APPLIES PER PERSON - it has been in the single-digit to low-teens CAD range - and camping is charged separately. THE POOLS CLOSE AT SHORT NOTICE FOR BEAR ACTIVITY; this is routine, not exceptional, and the closure is absolute. There is no food service in the park. The Alaska Highway here is paved and maintained all winter, but services are hours apart in both directions.
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