My favorite place EVER! WSE Kennicott-McCarthy w/ Mom

And now onto my absolute favorite place in Alaska… maybe even the world for right now. Wrangell-St. Elias NP&P/McCarthy-Kennicott!

 The drive down the Glenn Highway never ceases to amaze!

Not only is it drop dead gorgeous, it is huge, not too touristy and everyone is nice. When I was in Costa Rica we stayed in this town down there that was a total Crunchy Groovy Surfer Hippy town… I loved it. This is a total Crunchy Groovy Mountain Hippy town.

 The town of McCarthy- Kennicott was the mining town therefore it was dry and all about business. McCarthy was where they came to sin- booze and babes.

Mom and I drove down early Friday morning after taking my truck in for an inspection. We rolled up to Chitina, where I got detoured last time, with a FULL tank of gas (suckers!). Through the rock wall we went and we were on our way to McCarthy. 

 The beginning of the road... a narrow one lane pass.

Chitina fish wheels along the river... too cool!

Now when they say that road is unmaintained… they were right. The first 10 miles were the worst and either we got used to it after that or it magically improved. After the LONG drive and a few stops… and a huge train bridge I had to drive over. We were there. I had a reservation in a campground for us and it was named Glacier View Campground… being the smartasses we were we bet on the fact that we wouldn’t be able to see the glacier and just get some bullshit fed to us about how you could see it here… 15,000 years ago. To my surprise… we could see it and it was beautiful. Insert foot in mouth now.

 THE bridge.

 The beautiful Kennicott/Root Glacier.

Now this is not actually in town. McCarthy is across 2 foot bridges, the first with a raging river under it and I am far from sarcastic here. One of the glacial lakes that is normally damned in burst and was flooding the river, the whole town was coming down to watch it hit flood stage and have a few beers (did I tell you how cool this town is?). The second is over a dry creek. Both though have see through bridges… and I had numerous panic attacks that weekend. Mom and I walked that night… around 3 miles just to get a case of beer. We then came back to our campground and cooking our brats over the fire… with a knife tied to a stick because I don’t seem to have adequate cooking utensils.

This entire weekend we were here was beautiful. Hot and no rain! We both managed to get some sun- Mom is already turning into fried chicken status and I am just exposing myself for the first time this summer in all actuality. That Saturday we headed to McCarthy to pick up the shuttle to Kennicott which is about 5 miles down the road. Cutest little mining town ever! The buildings stand out and are still so vibrant and the NP Service as well as basically the one guy who owns everything that the government doesn’t are doing a great job taking care of it.

All in all I am in love with Wrangell-St. Elias and will, no matter what, come back here in my lifetime. I met a few of the guides who work for St. Elias Alpine Guide Company and would love to come back and do some of their classes and hang around with them. They lead glacier hikes, mine tours and mountain climbing expeditions. WSE is so much more impressive than Denali in the sense that it is still completely rugged and outdoorsy and partially undiscovered. The mountains are mostly still nameless!! You can get so close to the action and its basically a "take care of yourself" situation instead of having the park service looking over your shoulder every five minutes. I loved it. I felt so at home here and now, since I can see the North end of these mountains/park from where I work, every time I see them I have a longing to go back there and just stay there. Ugh... I am done gushing over the beauty of it...

Well actually one more thing- WSE connects with Kluane National Park in Canada (pronounced Klu-Aw-Nee) which also connects with Glacier National Peace Park (Canda/US) making it the largest public lands in the world! THE WORLD! WSE also has North America's second highest peak- Mt St. Elias at 18,000 ft in elevation but since it is so close to the ocean it has immense vertical relief- higher than Denali and most of the Himalayas. WSE at 13.2 million acres just on its own is the largest national park and holds 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. It is of volcanic descent, and not exploding and violent volcanoes but slow and oozing ones. Mount Wrangell is the only volcano still considered active in the park with small steam and ash explosions in the past but it has been heating up significantly since 1950! It is also unusual- geology nerds- because it is a shield volcano that is made out of andesite rather than basalt-- andesite is typical of stratovolcanoes. Okay I am done- seriously.

All in all it was a great week with my mother here! I hope she enjoyed herself because I sure did!

Sorry it took me so long to update- my internet is so slow and I didn't have much time this week to wait for pictures to load.