Wrangell - St. Elias is the biggest National Park and it butts up against Canada's Kluane National Park. At 20,587 square miles, it is larger than Switzerland and has taller mountains. At the center of the park is the Bagley Icefield, which is nearly the size of the state of Delaware at 1,900 square miles.
Despite its size, the park only has 2 roads into it: the McCarthy Road and the Nabesna Road. Both roads are almost entirely gravel. The McCarthy road is the more traveled of the two and the one we took on this trip. It is about 60 miles into the park to the town of McCarthy. Vehicles have to stop at a river about a mile short of the town and people can walk in over a foot bridge. There is a car bridge that residents of McCarthy, and the National Park Service (NPS), can use but it isn’t open to the public.
We took two days to drive in, partially because we had to take it very slow on the road (averaging about 10 mph). Most of the road was severely washboarded. While our truck had no problem with it, the house on the back wasn’t a big fan. At some point we lost the hose clamps on our black water tank and had to tie it up with bungee cords. Good thing we didn’t use our black water system anyway…
We also wanted to take it slow because there was so much to see along the road. The visitor center in Copper Center gave us a guided audio tour CD for the road in. It has about 10 tracks to play at various mile posts that tell you a bit about the history of the railroad that originally ran along this route, as well the natural environment. It was very interesting.
We also stopped to walk around in a couple of places. The longest excursion we took was the old Kuskulana Bridge around mile 17. The old railroad bridge runs across a steep gorge, 238 feet above the bottom. It also has a terrifying catwalk underneath it, which offers some amazing views.
On Tuesday afternoon we made it to the end of the road and decided to walk in and check out McCarthy. McCarthy has several restaurants, hotels and wilderness guide companies. However we were at the very end of the season so a lot of the businesses were closed. It didn’t take us very long to walk around the town but it was quite cute. There were several very friendly dogs that followed us on our walk, and Aiden was a little unsure how to react to them.
After walking around McCarthy we still had a little time for a short hike back on the other side of the river. It was gorgeous.
Wednesday we wanted to use the full day to get a little deeper into the park. Five miles up a road from McCarthy is the abandoned Kennecott mine. NPS runs a shuttle up to Kennecott for $15 a person, each way. We elected to walk it. There is an old wagon road next to the road which is a great walk up.
Kennecott is primarily a National Historic Site run by the NPS, but there are a few tour companies and a hotel that operate there as well. NPS has renovated and maintains several of the old buildings from the mine with lots of information about what it was like to live at the mine. The whole town was run by the mining company including a school and a hospital. However the mine had very strict rules, so the “lawless” town of McCarthy popped up down the road to give the miners an outlet. All of the information was really interesting.
From Kennecott we also did a short hike up to Root Glacier. It was beautiful and the first glacier we got to walk on.
We walked on the glacier where the Root Glacier met the Kennicott glacier. The Kennicott glacier was covered with layers of rock and silt, but Root Glacier was exposed ice. It was interesting to see the difference. It is also interesting to note that the Kennicott glacier, named after the explorer Robert Kennicott, flows next to the town of Kennecott which had a clerical error in the original naming of the town.
Aiden got super excited as we got close, and it took us a while to figure out why. But she got on the glacier and tried to dig and eat and play in it the way she plays in snow, which she loves. She was a little confused by how hard it was but she enjoyed herself none the less.
By the time we made it back to the RV we had gone about 15 miles and were all three pretty worn out, but it was one of our best days yet. There are definitely lots of options in this park for different guided, or unguided, ways to explore.
