Video: Blachford Lodge
Canada's subarctic North: Yellowknife on Great Slave Lake, boreal lakes reached only by bush plane, and Northern Lights on more than 240 nights a year at Blachford Lodge.
Now in Northwest Territories
From Choose a departure city Approx. flying time, non-stop equivalent
Canada · Yellowknife & the Aurora
The Northwest Territories reach from the boreal forest to the Arctic Ocean, a country of granite, spruce and lakes beyond counting, home to the Dene and to the bush pilots who have flown it since the 1920s. Yellowknife, the capital, stands on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, and directly overhead runs the auroral oval, which makes this one of the surest places on earth to see the Northern Lights.
Twenty five minutes southeast by bush plane, on a seventeen kilometre lake with no road to it, Blachford Lodge keeps a log lodge and five lakeside cabins, a cedar sauna and a hot tub under the southern sky, with aurora on more than 240 nights a year.
Why visit
Featured properties
Houses we know by name, the ones we would open for this landscape.
The house
A first reading of the stay: rooms, light, and the quiet between them. Each still is a note, not a catalogue.
When and how
Each season keeps its own calendar. We plan the transfer around it.
Best time to visit
Aurora season runs from mid August to mid April: autumn brings the first dark nights and the lights reflected on open water, and January to March the longest nights and a frozen, snow-bright land, often minus twenty to minus thirty degrees Celsius.
Seasonality
June to mid August is the season of the midnight sun, with nearly twenty hours of light, paddling and fishing. The festive weeks and the deep winter aurora months fill first. Your advisor confirms Blachford Lodge dates and flight days when you inquire.
Airport / logistics
Fly to Yellowknife (YZF), served by Air Canada, WestJet, Canadian North and Air North from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto. Blachford Lodge is a twenty five minute bush plane flight from the Old Town docks in summer and the airport base in winter. Plan a night in Yellowknife either side, as northern weather sets its own schedule.
Month by month
Seasons follow the notes above. Average daily high and monthly rainfall for 2015 to 2024 from ERA5 reanalysis, via Open-Meteo.
Luxury experiences
Ways of traveling
Begin with the collection that holds these houses and shores.
Collection
Blue water, clear rivers and the far edge of the map: marlin off Fiji, trout on the Ahuriri, bonefish on South Andros, salmon by helicopter in Alaska and roped days on the Antarctic ice.
Open the collectionCollection
Weddings, vow renewals, milestones, reunions and retreats at the houses we know best: a forest wedding in Phuket, a Tuscan hamlet, a lodge beneath the aurora, or an island with no other guests.
Open the collectionCollection
Stays at the far edges of the map: Antarctica’s interior with White Desert, the Maasai Mara with Cottar’s, the Okavango and the Namib with andBeyond, the southern Kalahari at Tswalu, the Ngorongoro highlands at Gibb’s Farm, Ranthambore, the Utah desert, Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains, the aurora skies of Canada’s Northwest Territories, Moyo Island, and New Zealand’s Ahuriri Valley at The Lindis.
Open the collectionFrom the Journal
Where we write about this place: the seasons, the houses and how the days are best arranged.
Related destinations
Landscapes that sit well beside this one.
Destination
The great North of the Americas: the Alaska Range and its glaciers, salmon rivers without roads, and Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, a short flight west of Anchorage.
Destination
Antarctica with Exclusive Villa Collection: the continent’s interior, reached by air from Cape Town, with White Desert’s three camps in Queen Maud Land, the South Pole and the emperor penguins.
Destination
Iceland with Exclusive Villa Collection: the Golden Circle of waterfalls, geysers and rift valleys, opened through Torfhús Retreat, turf-roofed houses with geothermal hot pools beneath the northern lights.
Plan My Trip
Tell us the season, the company, and the feeling you want to keep. We will write back with a considered path, not a link to a search.
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