Coghill Lake Cabin

Cabin very good and clean, In the boat house the boat is left right side up instead of upside down (hull up) and boat house littered with PFD's not cleaned or hung up inside boat house! This isn't your problem but occupants from previous stayes. A little litter, (water bottles) left in and around boat house. My group cleans up everything and straightens up boat and boat house before we leave! Still a good enviorment at Coghill Lake! Had a great time dispite a few days of rain! Thank you!

The cabin and its surrounding nature is beautiful. The view is simply magnificent.

We were interested in fishing for Coho Salmon and Dolly Varden. Unfortunately, we were only able to catch three coho and one dolly in 9 Days. All in the river. In the lake itself we fished hard and tried many systems, times and depths without catching a single fish.

We came by plane and hiked the Coghill trail to Port Wells to get to Whittier by boat. This trail has a high difficulty! We are both experienced hikers in the Swiss Alps but this trail demanded everything from us. The path is heavily overgrown and very boggy. There are many fallen trees in the way. The signposting is sometimes difficult to find and sometimes non-existent. If you have the same plan, I recommend coming by trail. In the direction from Port Wells to Coghill Lake, the trail may be a little easier to find. Don't take too much luggage with you and good shoes and rain gear.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Great simple cabin with an incredible view. The last half of the trail to the cabin is pretty overgrown, but it's not hard to find if you have the GPS coordinates, The lagoon in front of the cabin is pretty shallow. Float planes can still land in the deeper section of the lagoon but taxi-ing to the cabin might only be possible during high water conditions. Unlike some of the other cabins, there aren't any foam sleeping pads so be sure to bring a bed roll. The kerosene heater warms the cabin up quick and is a great help in drying out wet gear. It burns about 1 gallon of fuel per three hours on the low setting.

The cabin was really in great shape, except for the boardwalk leading from the lake up to it. (I spent some hours clearing the overgrown brush that had blocked easy passage.) We had read that Coghill Lake was a good place to find Coho, but it turned out quite the contrary. Coghill is primarily a sockeye spawning area, so although we searched every inlet and smashed our way downriver as well on the outlet stream, there was virtually no coho. Among four of us over a week, we landed just three, fishing heavily every day.
Apart from the poor Coho fishing, the scenery was fabulous. Spectacular glaciers, soaring peaks, colorful fall foliage and beautiful streams, it was a great place to experience Alaska. Just don't expect to eat fresh salmon.