People have debated the exact location of the headwaters of the Yukon River for a long time. While some have thought that it was located at the source of the Teslin River, other people said that a glacier above Lake Lindeman fed the headwaters.

In 1985, the Canadian Encyclopedia weighed in with another version, saying that the river rises in the mountains above Tagish Lake. People have floated other theories as well over the years, but no one had ever had the resources to fully investigate the matter until 1997, when National Geographic magazine set out to do a feature article on the river.

The writer and photographer working on the article wanted to document the full length of the river, from its unnamed source to its mouth at the Bering Sea. The Yukon is the fifth largest river in North America, drains about three-quarters of the territory, and has many major tributaries. With a waterway this big and complex, trying to pinpoint the single drop of water that sets the whole works flowing downstream is no easy task.

Writer Mike Parfit and photographer Jay Dickman turned for help to Rick Janowicz, a hydrologist with the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in the Yukon. When Janowicz agreed to help them look for the source, the first order of business was deciding how to determine the headwaters.

The criteria hydrologists consider for this job include stream length, stream order, elevation and geographic location. "Technically, from a hydrological point of view, I feel most comfortable using stream length," says Janowicz.

"Intuitively it makes sense to go to the farthest and most remote tributary of the river. Appyling this criteria would take us up the Teslin River, however we were only considering the Yukon River tributary."

Using this criterion, he narrowed his search to the Llewellyn Glacier, which is part of the Juneau icecap, at the south end of Atlin Lake. But even with the search focused on one glacier, finding the actual headwaters would still have been a major effort without the backing of National Geographic. The magazine's support eased logistical matters considerably.

Janowicz motored to the south end of the lake with the photographer and writer. They spent about three days total flying by plane and helicopter over the glacier, and hiking in the area. The air time allowed the group to scan different parts of the glacier and enabled the photographer to fire off roll after roll of film.

At first Janowicz focussed on a nunatak high up in the icefields, located near the divide that separates the Yukon River drainage from watersheds that drain directly to the Gulf of Alaska. But the National Geographic crew wanted a shot of flowing water, not a hunk of rock sticking out of the glacier, so the search continued.

Finally they found what they were looking for; a small stream fed by the glacier which flowed down through a series of small lakes into Atlin Lake. "It was perfect because it was a full-fledged stream coming out of the glacier. That was quite exciting," says Janowicz. The spot met several criteria besides stream length. It was high up and as far south as one could get on a tributary of the Yukon River.

Janowicz is satisfied that he had found what he was looking for -- the true source of the river -- and that if other hydrologists have a different point of view, he would be happy to debate the point. But in some ways, the history of the upper Yukon River has never been in step with hydrological criteria.

One often hears that the word Yukon comes from the aboriginal word Youcon meaning Great Water. Robert Campbell, who later established Fort Selkirk, traveled down the Pelly River to its confluence with the Yukon in 1843. He was the first non-native to reach the upper Yukon River, but he named it the Lewes River, and thought that the Pelly was the larger of the two waterways.

The Lewes River was officially renamed the Yukon River in 1949, four years before the territorial capital was moved from Dawson City to Whitehorse. Janowicz says that it must have been a political decision, as the politicians wanted the new capital on the banks of the grand Yukon River, not the obscure Lewes River.

Some hydrologists might not have agreed with the name change, as the upper Yukon River is smaller than one of its tributaries, the Teslin River. The Teslin River has a bigger volume than the Yukon, and from the confluence of these two rivers near Carmacks, the Teslin is also longer than the upper Yukon River.

If one were to follow stream order criteria, the Yukon River would have the same source as the Teslin River. It would be up in the Pelly Mountains, where snowmelt feeds tributaries of the Teslin River. According to stream order criteria, every time you come to a confluence of two waterways, you follow the largest tributary upstream until you reach the headwaters.

Janowicz says that maybe the politicians were right to follow their own motives in naming the upper Yukon River as they did. After all, a trickle of snowmelt in the Pelly Mountains is not nearly as spectacular as a stream gushing out of the Llewellyn Glacier. And for people in Whitehorse, living on the banks of the Yukon River does have a certain mystique -- even if it is not quite hydrologically correct.

The Yukon River article is in the July, 1998 edition of National Geographic magazine. For more information on the hydrology of the Yukon River, contact the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development at 667-3100.