To Wrangell-St.Elias...through sixty miles of gravel

Along Glenn Highway

On Friday we said our goodbyes to the river and the friendly group of anglers and wished them luck on their trips home to the lower 48. We departed Soldotna after taking care of the usual RV tasks and headed east on the Sterling Highway. Despite rumors of rain, the day was gorgeous from the beginning. We drove back past the Turnagain Arm and could see the entire Alaskan Range in the distance, including Mt. McKinley, albeit waaay off in the distance. As we drove through a sun-drenched Anchorage (finally), we took in the pretty views of the mountains all around.

Matanuska Glacier

We continued on the Glenn Highway through Palmer and past Hatcher Pass. Beyond there we were awestruck by the sight of the Matanuska Valley with the braided river at the bottom. Just up ahead we came across the Matanuska Glacier, a stunning vista of ethereal blue ice set among the dark green of the spruces and the black of the cliffs and glacier moraines.

Along the Glenn Highway

We drove on, but only in leaps and bounds as we stopped to take pictures of the scenery, seemingly every few miles. After rounding the junction at the tiny town of Glennallen to make our way south, the awesome Mount Drum stood looming over us with Mount Sanford standing guard to its left and Mount Zanetti and Mount Wrangell to its right. These four snowy peaks form the north end of the Wrangell Mountains where 9 of North America's highest 16 mountains are located.

Willow Lake and Wrangell Mountains

The Wrangell-St. Elias National Park encompasses these mountains and the surrounding 13 million acres, making it the largest park in the U.S. Beyond the inspiring impression of their size, their majestic summits and steep slopes look painted onto the blue sky behind them. What a sight.

Along the Glenn Highway

We pulled into Copper Center to find a restaurant recommended to us by the friendly guide at the visitor center back in Glennallen. Copper Center, seemingly no larger than a handful of log cabins and a few businesses, proves to have a great restaurant and a little welcoming committee of two silly pug dogs, one of whom met us at the coach to check us out. Though casual in appearance, service and speed, the Copper Center Lodge delivers a very tasty selection of barbecue. Ken chose the daily special of beef brisket with mashed potatoes and corn, and I tried the pork barbecue sandwich with a side of cole slaw. Both dinners were excellent, and the pugs saw us off as we left. Perfect!

Wrangell Mountains

We continued south on the Richardson Highway with the gorgeous Wrangell Mountains off to our left. We stopped for the night at a scenic overlook with Willow Lake just beyond the trees at our feet, doubling the beauty above with its reflection of the view. Wow.

As the evening wore on and the sun lower in the sky, the peaks glowed with the setting sun's pink and orange rays. We admired the scenery until the sun dipped below the horizon. What an improbably gorgeous view.

Liberty Falls

On Saturday morning, our blue skies clouded over, we set off down the road. We headed for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, down one of only two short roads that enter this 13 million acre wilderness. The Edgerton Highway heads 90 miles east into the park, beginning with the small community of Kenny Lake and then past Liberty Falls before continuing. We stopped to check out the falls but only briefly since our first donation of blood (of many today) was well underway as soon as we left the RV.

Back on the road and swatting wildly at the mosquitoes that managed to get in with us, we pulled into the town of Chitina (pronounced: CHIT-nuh), where the 30 miles of the paved Edgerton Highway ends and the gravel of the McCarthy Road begins. The term 'highway' in Alaska, and for that matter in Canada as well, does not equate to the same word in the lower 48. Here, a 'highway' could be paved or gravel (or both, intermittently), may or may not have marked lanes, may only be a summer road and could be occasionally, virtually impassable. With the melting and freezing of the permafrost under much of the state, the roads also develop a roller coaster effect as well, sometimes in rapid succession resulting in shaking and bouncing that feels like the whole RV will come apart at the seams. Fun, fun.

Along McCarthy Road

Chitina is an old railroad town, a stopover for the railway that used to traverse this part of the country from the mines at Kennicott down to the coast at Cordova where the copper ore was loaded onto ships headed for a smelter in Tacoma, Washington. Nowadays, the town, about 3 blocks long and one block wide, consists of a few businesses in old buildings and a handful of houses. We stopped into the National Park Service ranger station for some information about McCarthy and Kennicott before getting on the McCarthy Road, a 60 mile long spine-rattling, teeth-jarring adventure at a snail's pace over the gravel and dirt path of what was once the railbed of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway (CR&NW). The railbed traverses several rivers and small creeks, and a few tiny streams even cross over the road.

Town of McCarthy

We jerked and bounced for more than 3 hours before reaching the end of the road where we parked at a shed-sized log cabin (with a deck!) that houses the McCarthy Information Center. As neither McCarthy nor its neighboring town of Kennicott are accessible by vehicle, we crossed the footbridge over the raging Kennicott River and walked the half mile into McCarthy. We stood in the middle of the six or so businesses that comprise the 'downtown', three guide services, a hotel, a gift shop and a bar. With the puddles in the muddy street, it wasn't hard to imagine how little this town has changed since it was founded a hundred years ago or so.

National Creek

We bought our tickets for the shuttle to Kennicott. Once aboard the van with several other folks, our driver took us all to the south end of Kennicott, a former mining company town now mostly owned by the National Park Service. The town is built on the side of a mountain in a straight line, like a galley kitchen, with buildings on either side of the train tracks down the middle. We could even see pieces of the old rail sticking up through the gravel and dirt that has since buried the railbed.

Hospital and bunkhouses

In 1900, two pros- pectors spotted on a steep hillside near here what would become one of the richest copper deposits ever found. In 1906, the Kennicott Mine Company formed and the Copper River & Northwestern Railway began construction in Cordova on the coast. The 196 mile CR&NW railway from Cordova to Kennicott (nicknamed the "Can't Run & Never Will" by its doubters) took 5 years, 6000 men, and $23 million to complete. In the meantime, the mine and mill buildings were constructed. When workers sent the first load of copper ore, worth $250,000, down the new railway, its detractors were finally silenced.

Kennicott Copper Corporation mill building

As a company town, Kennicott had over 600 miners and mill workers and offered wholesome entertainment in a recreation hall as well as a company store where they could buy anything they desired from anywhere in the world. McCarthy was established 5 miles away and offered the less wholesome forms of entertainment with pool halls, dance halls, saloons and even a red light district. Later renamed the Kennicott Copper Corporation, the company built over 100 buildings by the time it closed in 1938. Managers and skilled tradesmen could live with their families in one of the cottages while the single men were cramped two to a room in one of the bunkhouses.

Power House

We toured the Refrigeration Plant, where the latest technology was employed to store meat and other perishables, as well as the Power House where the vast amount of electricity needed to run the mill and the other buildings required an unimaginable feat of engineering in such a remote wilderness.

We walked through the manager's office and one of the cottages, both nice homes for valuable mine employees with hot water and electricity. The cottages used outhouses built 10 or so feet from the back of the home. To illustrate the extent of the Kennicott Glacier's shrinkage, a guide pointed out to us that the outhouses were built on the glacier which has since retreated nearly a mile up the valley since the 1920s.

Leaching Plant

Normally open for touring, the red 11-story wooden mill building is the largest wooden structure in the U.S. After so many decades of accumulating decay, the National Park Service closed the mill building only a few weeks ago to begin a 2 year restoration effort on it. The mill building, however, is not the only one requiring or currently undergoing restoration. The National Creek runs through the middle of the campus, providing water and a power source, but also, occasionally, torrential flooding. The last flood event, in 2006, washed out the Assay Office completely, severely damaged the train trestle over the normally mild creek, and filled the bottom floor of one of the bunkhouses with gravel nearly to the ceiling.

Root Glacier

Mill building with Kennicott Glacier moraines

We continued our tour of the open buildings and snapped pictures of everything. Toward the north end of town a trail to the glacier begins. We hiked the rocky path almost a mile where we could see the toe of the Root Glacier close by and the toe of the Kennicott Glacier beyond. The retreat of the glacier has left behind a vast field of moraines, giant piles of gravel and rock gathered and ground up by an advancing glacier only to be left in place by a melting one. We could see the gravel atop the still frozen ice underneath and we could hear the ice melting and cracking down in the deep crevasses between the moraines.

Hiking back
from the Root Glacier

We hiked back to Kennicott and up the steep hill behind the top of the mill building. We peeked into the Company Store, now the National Park Service visitor center, before wandering back to the shuttle bus stop at the south end of town. Crammed in with 20 other folks on a van designed to hold 12, the driver returned us all to the footbridge where we walked the 1/2 mile or so to the RV.

Along McCarthy Road

After a quick dinner, we were bouncing and jerking our way along the McCarthy Road the three hours back to Chitina, during which time the sun began to shine through the clouds and straight into our eyes. It made for even slower travel. By the time we found the pavement of the Edgerton Highway, the moon was out just above the mountains to our south. We continued until we turned south on the Richardson Highway. By 11pm we found a pullout along the road next to the roiling Triekel River, where we stopped for the night. What an exhausting but really fun day!