Walking on glacier ice

After spending a few days in the city, it was time for us again to retreat from civilization and head back into some wilderness. We heard about the Wrangell – St. Elias National park and Reserve, created in 1980. It is eight time the size of Yellowstone and the uniqueness of this park is that it preserves the lifestyle of the people who live in it. Nobody was evicted from the park and nothing changed after 1980 for the people who already lived in the park. There were not many of them but it was quite unique to see houses and privately owned stores in a national park.

Showering in mother nature

To go through the park, we again had to experience the fun of the gravel roads by traveling on one 60 miles from Chitina to McCarthy. We are now quite good at it. To break up the fun however, we chose to camp at one of the park ranger's place as he owns a campground/B&B half way on the park road. Him and his wife had moved to Alaska a couple of years ago as they fell in love with the rugged beauty of the area.

It is no easy task to live in such a remote place as a round trip to the nearest big town takes more than 5 hours. You'd better prepare your shopping list before taking the journey! They shared with us some of the challenges or “fun” of living there: no running water (they all have to take it from the river running through their property), limited electricity coming from the solar generator and trying to live off the land as much as possible. They grow vegetables in the garden in the short summer and hunt in the winter, enjoying their moose and elk meat. No phone of course but recently installed internet , which has made quite a change in their life. We got to experience some of this rustic lifestyle by showering in the woods, with a waterbag that had half cold river water and half boiled water on the stove. It was actually quite fun and nice to shower outside, protected by the trees and close to the river. We may just do it again!

Copper mining at the end of the world

The main attraction of the area was to drive to Kennicott, also the end of the road, where you can see an old abandoned copper mine. The story of the site was quite amazing: copper was discovered in the area in the early 19th century as the price of this metal was very high. The challenge was to transport the precious extracted metal to civilization. Nothing could stop determined pioneers as they build in 18 days the 60 mlies of tracks for the railroad, with multiple wooden bridges over the wild rivers, and nonetheless in by -60F temperature in the winter. As you travel the road today to the mine, you can still see the old tracks and some portion of the road use the bridges constructed back then.
Kennicott is also remarkable for its proximity to the Root Glacier. A 2 mile hike from the mine will take you there but beware, you have to go through bear country. As we walked on the path, we saw multiple evidence that bears had been around recently. On top of that, the path was bordered by plentiful of ripe berries, that these animals enjoy so much. We were definitively listening to any noise and made sure to be noisy ourselves in order to not surprise a bear. We reached the glacier without any encounter and took our first step on a glacier. The temperature dropped a lot as we were on it and since we did not have crampons, we did not make it very far. The edge was covered in gravel but you could see the endless beautiful blue ice underneath, like a hidden treasure covered by rocks. Just to think about how old this ice is makes it pretty special too.

We took the hiking trail a a little further that day and got breathtaking views of the glacier. It felt even more so mystic with the forest fire currently in the park, that had the surrounding mountains hidden in the fog. Our first walk on a glacier was quite special, and we were grateful it was not even more so special by meeting a bear that day. We promised ourselves to “meet” many more glaciers during our stay here as they are all retreating so quickly and may be sights harder and harder to enjoy in the near future.