Wrangell St. Elias National Park is the largest national park. It covers 13.2 million acres. Yellowstone NP is about 2.2 million acres. Now this 13.2 million acres for a park has only 2 roads. Both dead end in the park so it is an in and out trip. The road from the southern entrance (near Copper Center) goes about 100 miles into the park thru Chitna then on to McCarthy and Kennicott. The road is extremely primitive, meaning it is dirt, mud and potholes, very narrow, with no guard rail and in very bad condition. RVs are not allowed, but you can drive your car. Even the park service has a warning that you will need 4 wheel drive and will probably get a flat, so have a good spare tire. There are no services after Chitna and it is a long way to McCarthy from Chitna. We decided to wimp out and pay for a tour in a van. The tour takes 14 hours. About 4 hours each way with the remainder of time in Kennicott. After seeing the road we were both very glad with that decision.
Alaska and the Park service have done an amazing thing throughout the state. Many of the National Parks have privately held land within the park boundaries. All along the road you pass thru park land and private land, but mostly park land. Kennicott was a copper mining town. Now it is mostly a tourist spot, that has done a great job of preserving its history.
The ride in was beautiful.
Once in McCarthy you walk across a foot bridge and you can walk the 4 miles to Kennicott or take a shuttle. Like many smaller towns in Alaska the streets are dirt. The views are amazing as you are up on a mountain side.
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| This is not tailings from the mine. It is moraines from the glacier. This is all glacier underneath the gravel. |
When the mine stopped producing copper they just left everything there. It is just too expensive to move things out. So the town and the park service really have a historically accurate operation. We toured the building where the copper was separated from the unwanted material. It is very run down but the views were great.
A note about he footbridge over the river. Two glacier ice dams up stream had broken that morning. The water was very high and moving very fast. It was very cool being able to see that. Our driver said the rush will last 2 to 3 days then the river goes back to normal.
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| A bridge over troubled waters |
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| Troubled waters |
One of the bridges we crossed going in and out was 1 lane wooden. On the way out we got to walk across it.
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