Lake Athabasca

Where is Lake Athabasca?

Countries on its shores: Canada.

Middle of the lake: 59.20° N, 109.00° W

The story behind it

Lake Athabasca is a long lake in the far north of Canada. About three quarters of it lies in Saskatchewan and one quarter in Alberta. Its biggest river, the Athabasca River, meets the Peace River in a huge wetland called the Peace–Athabasca Delta. The lake's water leaves through the Rivière des Rochers and then travels on by the Slave River and the Mackenzie River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. On the southern shore lie the Athabasca Sand Dunes, the largest active sand dunes in the world north of 58 degrees latitude: a small desert right beside a northern lake! Some dunes are about 30 metres high. The village of Fort Chipewyan began in 1788 as a fur trading post. The lake is also famous among anglers: in 1961 someone caught a record lake trout here that weighed 46.3 kilograms.

Find it on the globe

Lake Athabasca is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.