Blachford Lake Lodge & Wilderness Resort

Rooms

The main lodge offers comfortable rooms that share spacious and spotlessly clean nearby bathrooms. Even though the rooms are rather simple, they are cosy and functional, and designed to emulate a traditional northern Canadian home. In addition to the rooms in the main building, there are five atmospheric historic cabins in the grounds. These come with wood-burning stoves, a washbasin, and an en suite composting toilet.

Location

The lodge is situated in pristine wilderness, around a 20-minute flight away from Yellowknife. You will depart on a twin-otter (or similar) seaplane from Yellowknife's Great Slave Lake. The flight itself provides a wonderful bird's-eye view of the scale and remoteness of this untouched landscape. You’ll land on Blachford Lake, right in front of the lodge, where you’ll be welcomed by the lodge's friendly staff.

Food and drink

The cuisine at Blachford is inspired by northern recipes and ingredients, and all the dishes are made with seasonal vegetables and a variety of fresh fish, chicken, and beef. Everything is made at the lodge by the talented chef and kitchen team, from freshly baked bread to delicious desserts. Many of the fresh vegetables are grown in the lodge's kitchen garden. There is also a full-service bar on site.

Facilities and activities

The lodge opens from June until mid-October and also from mid-December to mid-April. Whatever time of year you visit, a stay enables you to experience the silence of true wilderness, an immersion in nature and a respect for the Dene — the Aboriginal people that have lived in this part of the Northwest Territories for thousands of years. The lodge is simple but perfectly comfortable, and facilities include a hot tub, a cedar sauna, and a tipi with a firepit. The lovely classically Canadian log-built main lodge building houses a comfortable lounge with a telescope, full service bar, library area and the dining room. During summer months the many activities on offer include fishing, hiking, birdwatching, plant and animal identification walks, fat-tire biking, stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing, kayaking, and swimming in the lake. During winter, activities include cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice-fishing, fat-tire biking, hiking, ice skating on the lake, kick sledding, plant and animal identification walks and igloo building.

This is one of the best places in the world to see the northern lights, which can be seen in these unpolluted dark skies from mid-August to April. The lodge offers an overnight aurora watch service until 3am each day where you can be alerted and woken up when there is auroral activity. You can watch them from one of the viewing decks, the hot tub, or from under the warm duvet in your room. The clean air and peace of the wilderness here are conducive to adventure.

Environmental and social responsibility

Blachford Lake Lodge has a goal to live environmentally and sustainably on the land, and they do this by using solar and wind energy, with their own solar panels and wind turbine. The property also purifies all their drinking water, uses phosphate-free products, grows fresh vegetables in their own greenhouse and only offers locally roasted fairtrade organic coffee. There are many more environmental initiatives in place at Blachford regarding laundry, dishwashing, and recycling.