Wrangell- St. Elias Nat. Park....AKA The Himalayas of North America

This was my favorite of our trip, we were completely in the backcountry and farther away from civilization and life that I had ever been. This National Park is east of Anchorage. It is a different type of park as well. There is only one road that goes in and out of the park, a dirt road that's 60 miles long that goes to a town called McCarthy where the only way to get into the town is to park your car on the one side of the river then take the bridge over to the town on the other side. All along the road is private land, the town is all private as well, but beyond the private land is all Nat. Park. This meant that the National park service has very little influence in the area, which I liked ;-) (you'll know why when we go to Denali)

We had contacted a local business at McCarthy for a bush flight out to the middle of the mountains. We were dropped off just below the Russell Glacier, then 5 days later we got picked up at the bottom of the Nizina Glacier...about a 30 mile backpacking trip.

K, so if you think this is a lake, think again... the Copper River... it was huge!

This was a sweet old mining bridge we had to cross, one lane... old and about 300 ft. high up in the air. I have to admit I was a little nervous.

The river gorge below

The Flight Into the Backcountry

A pilot of 38 years, needless to say we felt like we were in good hands.

Unfortunately as we flew in, the air was very "smoky", because of a wild fire, making picures not very clear. This is a glacier we flew over and the two pictures below are of icebergs that have calved off of this glacier into the lake below.

Ice calving into the dirty lake below! Not too many places you can see that in the world.


We survived the flight in!!! The smallest plane I've ever been in and just behind us is the landing strip, the patch of red dirt.




The plane took off again while Greg and I watched. It was a weird feeling watching the plane go. We felt pretty alone... a lot of miles of mountains back to civilization. But that feeling left pretty quickly when we decided to explore the area. There was a canyon that looked fun to go up about a mile away; so we dropped our packs, took snacks, water and headed out.

These next pics are of the hike and area we were in the first day.

There were a ton of really cool rocks, the area is all volcanic which means alot of geodes and quartz crystals (to me that means shiney, pretty and sparkly :-)


Greg making sure we don't get lost! Such a good husband;-)


We wanted to do a little bouldering, but the boulders were as big or bigger than a house!

The canyon we went up turned out to be a receding glacier, so about 3 miles up I saw this pond and there was ice all around it. We then figured out that we had been walking on ice and didn't know it. The farther into the canyon we went, the more obvious it became.

As you can see the ice is covered with a layer of rocks and dirt giving you a false sense of security, but luckily we didn't have any slips :-)

This place was amazing... there are two little peaks in this picture, but in the canyon it kind of curved around and you had about 9 peaks surrounding you with glaciers and rivers coming off them. We nicknamed it the "Cathedral of the Gods" needless to say, it was very impressive.

This is the valley we were dropped off and stayed the first night.

The Russell Glacier just behind Greg.

The lighting was amazing for this picture! This was our first camp. There were signs of bears all over the area... it was a long night. We didn't see the bears til the next morning though. On our way up the pass I heard a very loud, but far away "growl". I looked down into the valley and saw 3 big grizzly bears running around and playing with each other. We watched them for a bit then kept heading up the pass.

We loved this area so much that we camped right on top of the pass. This ended up being a great decision because the scenery was magnificent, we were able to go explore a glacier, and we were right next to a herd of caribou and a herd of dall sheep!


This is the glacier we hiked up to. We actually went out onto it til we found a cravasse... didn't want to fall in to our deaths so we made our way back to solid ground.

It was propably the vastness or hugeness of this place that really impressed me. You get on top of a hill and you can see for miles up and down a deep canyon that is lined by GI-normous snow and ice capped mountains. It makes you feel small ;-)

If you click on the pics, they will enlarge and you'll be able to see the dall sheep on the cliffs (above) and the caribou herd across from the lake (below).

Day 3, we were off again. We had to cover a lot of ground because the past 2 days we stayed in the same area, but we needed to catch our flight out so we threw on the packs. We hiked about 12 miles this day over tough terrian with no trail, just a map.

We had river crossings and huge bloulder fields to cross




We had about a mile of scree slope to cross. It was pretty sketchy, but we made it fine :-)

If you enlarge the pic you'll be able to see the faint trail going through the side of the mountain.




I had just came from what's behind me... sweet huh!




If you follow the yellow band of rocks... that's where our trail was. That paper was our map/guide of how to get through it.




We made it!!!










On the 4th day, we finally saw some tall ice covered mountains! 15,000-16,000 ft. tall. Greg was so excited and wants to go back to climb them!



Look at that grizzly bear print! Bigger than my hand!!! These were very common to come across throughout the two weeks we were in AK.

On the 5th day, we reached our destination! A lake with icebergs all over!!!! It was beautiful, but unfortunatly we only had a few minutes to enjoy it before we had to start looking for the landing strip. Sure enough, as soon as we found the strip the pilot came around the corner to pick us up!















This is a very large braided stream... very common with glacial rivers.

Whenever Greg and I go somewhere I swear we have like a 90% chance of getting a flat tire! So with about 25 more miles of dirt road we get a flat. We throw on the spare and head for the little town where the pavement starts. We find a "tire repair man" who told me off because I asked him if he could just plug the tire (it was a screw that went through the tire). "Ms. I am a tire repair man, I repair tires I don't plug them. If you want to plug it then go to some other big city repair shop." After that he was really off-ish til Greg paid him, then he plopped his arms down on the hood of the truck and wanted to sit and talk ;-) we started with the weather and the wild fires and eventually made it to the government. Here are some quotes from 'Dan the tire repair man'

"The government has it all out for us. They have some stuff up in Delta that can make people go bananas, all crazy and such"

"The reason the government said that lead paint is bad to paint in your house, is not because kids eat it, it's because with lead paint the government can't spy on your house from space with all there satellites and everything."

"Wild fires? No, it was the park rangers that started them wild fires, not lightning like they're saying. We shot thousands of dollars of fireworks in the woods growing up and never started a forest fire... it's them goverment forest rangers."

To say the least, it was the most interesting and funny conversation I've ever heard. It was so hard not to laugh at what he said. He was so serious about it too. I knew that after that talk, that we had had the true Alaskan experience with both the area and the people!