Exploring Our nation’s Largest National Park (07-02-14)

  Have any idea which national park is the largest one in the United States?  I, for one, had no idea.




It turns out that Wrangell- St. Elias National Park, at 13 million acres, is 6 times larger than Yellowstone. I had never even heard of it until we arrived here in Alaska.

There are only two roads into this remote park, and we explored one of them- Nabesna Rd.- on the way down to Valdez. Both roads are gravel, but Nabesna is the easier of the two roads to travel on, even though it did require us to cross several streams with the truck.

Once we had traveled most of the 40 miles of this road, we stopped to hike the Skookum Volcano Trail. This is a 6 mile trail that starts in mosquito filled woods. We wore our net hats on this trail. 

We are in Grizzly country and this is the first time I felt nervous about that.  This is prime habitat, and there were signs of recent bear activity on the trail.

The key to hiking in Grizzly habitat is to make noise, and we ran out of conversation, so I started singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.  By the time I got to 86, the lyrics had morphed into “86 Grizzly bears on the trail, 86 Grizzly bears- I push one down, onto the ground, 85 Grizzly bears on the trail.”  Paul didn’t join in.

Once we were out of the woods, so to speak, we came upon a creek.  The trail follows the creek, which is usually just a trickle of water, but the recent rains turned it into something that required some strategy for crossing.  Unfortunately we had to cross it about 24 times. A rough path is marked with cairns- piles of rocks that show you the trail- but they are hard to see, and I don’t think they were put in place when the water was so high.  There are cairns on both sides of the creek in this picture.

We had gotten a late start on the trail and actually gave up before we found the path to the volcano, but we still had great views from the top of the hill.

McCarthy Road

On the way back north from Valdez, we drove McCarthy Rd. into the park.  The decision to drive this road isn’t one to be made lightly.  It’s 60 miles long and  isn’t in very good condition. It takes at least 3 hours to drive it. Only the first mile or so is paved.  The rest is gravel and dirt, with deep ruts.

 

  The rewards made the drive worth it though.  Within the first mile, we came upon this family.

   

The twins were adorable and we were able to watch them for quite a while, with mom glancing over at us once in a while to make sure we didn't approach.

Soon enough we were on to the rough stuff.  We took our time, and in fact, we spent two days exploring this area, just pulling off the road to spend the night.

At the end of the road is a parking lot with a footbridge next to it that spans a river. Before the existence of the footbridge, people pulled themselves across the river on this contraption, which hung from a cable. It reminds me of the seats that can be found on a swing set.

Two small towns- McCarthy, and Kennecott, are across the footbridge (apparently there is another, larger bridge, but it costs a lot of money to cross it).


Kennecott is an old mining town that was funded by the JP Morgan and Guggenheim families. The copper ore found here is the richest in the world, with 85% copper content instead of the usual 10%.




After $100,000,000 in profits, the vein was played out and the town was essentially abandoned, as is. The national park service is slowly restoring the buildings.

Very close by the mine there are two glaciers.  The mounds of dirt in this picture are actually part of the glaciers that have been coated with enough dirt that you can’t see the ice anymore.

A couple of miles down the trail the dirt disappeared and ice took its place.  This is where we headed. We took a half day guided glacier hike on Root Glacier.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the people on the glacier.









Before we hit the ice, we put crampons on our hiking boots.  They are similar to old fashioned roller skates, but with spikes instead of wheels.













Paul and I were the only two on this trip, other than our guides.  4 would be the maximum allowed, per guide.  Killian showed us how to walk with the crampons and sure enough, we could even walk straight uphill!
Killian is a recent college grad with degree in environmental science and a passion for the outdoors, and he has tons of knowledge to share.

There is more to see on  a glacier than I thought. Small blue puddles….

and meandering rivers, with multiple waterfalls and tunnels.  It reminded me of a Disney World ride.

It’s definitely not as flat as I would think.

In fact, there were all kinds of hills and nooks and crannies to explore. We hiked on the ice for about an hour and a half, which made our hiking day about 6 miles long. We were really tired by the end of the day. 
Using  crampons added a new element to the hike.
You can rent crampons to hike glaciers by yourself, but I really felt that we wouldn’t have found all the neat features we saw if we hadn’t had a guide, so it was worth the money to me.

On the way back down McCarthy Road, headed up to Anchorage, we stopped along the river at a popular fishing spot.  These people are using fishing wheels to scoop the salmon out of the river.  There were dozens of sea gulls and Bald Eagles feasting on the leftovers.

It was one of those times where I wish I had a better camera (an enough knowledge to make a better camera worth the price!).

It was fascinating watching the every day lives of these birds for an hour or so.

 




 

Dawson Creek- *Mile 0* (06-07-14)

We could have bypassed Dawson Creek, British Columbia, but we wanted to start our trek to Alaska at Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway.

  We arrived early enough in the day to visit two museums and still have time to head to Dairy Queen.  We parked the camper and walked the two miles into town ( had to justify the ice cream!). That gave us the opportunity to walk past many of the murals that are scattered around town.

The main focus of this town is it’s history with regards to the building of the Al-Can, the Alaska-Canada Highway- now just called the Alaskan Highway.  As early as 1930 the United States government was toying with the idea of building a road through Canada to the Alaska Territory.  The idea stayed on the back burner until World War II. 

In 1942 the U.S. was, of course aware that Alaska was vulnerable to attack because of it’s proximity to Japan. To drive that point home, the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands and apparently weren’t planning on stopping there. 



The U.S. Military needed to get troops up to Alaska as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, 1500 miles of wilderness lay between Alaska and the closest major town in Canada. Initially, the U.S. tried to use its existing Canadian airstrips to “funnel” U.S. planes to Alaska, but most of the planes didn’t survive the trip.



 

In the end, the order was given to the Army Engineers-build a road from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks Alaska- through 1500 miles of wilderness that had never been mapped, and over some of the tallest mountains in North America.  Never mind the temperatures that range from 60 below zero to 90 degrees. And do it in less than a year.

 

11,000 troops and 16,000 civilians worked feverishly to build this road and 9 months after they started, the final stretch of road was completed. The Alaska Highway House Museum did a great job of telling the story of the men who built this road and the tremendous obstacles they faced.





In 1948 the road was opened to the public and immediately,  adventurous souls began making the trek to the beautiful, but still wild, Alaskan Territory.



  The ride north was more challenging than a typical vacation, with services, including fuel, few and far between.  So, in 1949 a guidebook, called the MILEPOST, was published.  It literally lists,  mile by mile, what you can expect to find along this ( and now, many other) roads in and around Alaska. Paul and I have the 66th edition with us.










I’m really glad we stopped in Dawson Creek and got a better understanding of this road, why it was important, and the tremendous accomplishment it was to get it built.