Chitina & Wrangell St. Elias (July 8-10)

As we left Valdez on the east side of Prince William Sound we were heading back into less populated interior areas. But come to think of it, all throughout Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula and on around to Valdez, we had encountered no crowds, no lines, and probably wouldn't have needed any of the advance reservations we made. It was so nice! Maybe tourism was down because of the 2008 financial disaster, or maybe this was just Alaska -- 586,000 square miles of land with only about 650,000 people.

National Park Service area map

Mike was especially keen to see Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest national park and part of a 24.3 million acre UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with Glacier Bay NP and Canada's Tatshenshini-Alsek and Kluane parks. But name recognition of Wrangell-St Elias is low and visitors few -- less than 50,000 a year. Most of the Park is backcountry and getting there is not easy. About 120 miles north of Valdez, you turn east onto the unpaved Edgerton Hwy (AK 10) for about 35 miles to reach tiny Chitina (second "i" is silent). Another 60 miles past Chitina on the slow-going gravel McCarthy Road gets you inside the Park at McCarthy (duh!)

But instead, we made a plan to fly to McCarthy from Chitina the next day, combining transportation with flight-seeing. In our entire hiking "careers" this is the first time we've ever taken an airplane ride to get to the trailhead. :-)

Juvenile bald eagles patrolling the fish wheels

That evening we were fascinated by all the fish wheels on the Copper River just east of Chitina and we stopped to watch juvenile bald eagles fishing. Then we headed out to sample the first 17 miles of the McCarthy Road, going as far as the Kuskulana River Bridge. Built with steel girders in 1910 for the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, it spans 525' across and 238' above the gorge carved by the Kuskulana River.

Kuskulana River Bridge in Wrangell-St. Elias

Our hotel in "downtown" Chitina

We stayed two nights at the historic Gilpatrick's Hotel Chitina. This is really the only choice in "town" for dining and lodging. Our room was small but very comfortable, and the restaurant was great! And, as most everywhere in Alaska, the people were very friendly and helpful. We were amused to be given a small yellow button that said, "Where the hell is Chitina?"

Early the next morning, we got up to drive the few miles to the tiny airstrip to catch our air taxi. Soon we were loaded up with one other passenger and were in the air, taking off in only a few hundred feet. Interestingly, the pilot who flew us in spent his winters not far from us near Ward, Colorado!

It's hard to get a good photo out of an airplane window, but WOW! What views we had from that little plane. Even with some haze from the fires, the views of the glaciers and mountains were still magnificent.

View from our air taxi to McCarthy; Mt Blackburn (16,390') in background

We landed on the unpaved airstrip in McCarthy, but our final destination was Kennicott Mill Town, a short van ride away. Kennicott was the site of the richest known copper deposit in the world. It was mined in the early 1900s until the late 1930s. Kennicott still has many standing buildings providing a rich historical perspective on the copper mining once done there. The town has been a National Historic Landmark since 1986 and most of the town site was acquired by the National Park Service in 1998.

Kennicott Mill Town

After we got to Kennicott we walked around a bit before we took a guided half-day hike onto the Root Glacier with the St. Elias Alpine Guides (SEAG).

Hiking toward Root Glacier (center). If you enlarge this, you can see tiny figures on the ice.

This was a much more serious adventure than the previous glaciers we'd visited, requiring crampons and poles.

Susan with our guide, Nathan, just arriving on ice and putting on crampons

Two professional guides kept us safe along the way and showed extraordinary patience with a needy and poorly prepared Belgian woman in our group. (I'm just saying, I wouldn't have hiked back to find her dropped sunglasses!) They also helped us coordinate our flight in and out. We would definitely use SEAG again.

A bluish icy canyon in the glacier carved by melt water

Our lunch spot where we watched ice climbers on the glacier

Final approach over fish wheels to the Chitina airstrip

After enjoying our SEAG-provided box lunch on the ice with our group, we began our hike off the glacier and back to Kennicott.

Back on the air taxi in McCarthy, Mike was amused that the pilot who flew us back to the Chitina airstrip was so small she had to sit on a booster seat to see out of the cockpit.

If we are able to go back, next time it would be fun to stay the Kennicott Glacier Lodge and have a little more time in Kennicott.

Here's a map of the Chitina and Wrangell-St. Elias area.

View Wrangell-St Elias in a larger map