We flew into Wrangell-St.Elias National Park on Thursday, June 8, in a couple of small airplanes, leaving Chitina and landing in McCarthy on a 3,600 foot gravel airport. Wrangell Mountain Air flew at 5,000+ feet, so we had spectacular views of the mountains and glaciers…and this certainly beat the bone jarring 65 mile gravel road alternative!
At 13.2 million acres, this national park is huge, larger than the country of Switzerland with taller mountains, and it has the largest combined collection of ice fields and glaciers in the world. The brown in the glacier below (taken from our airplane ride) is not dirt, but ice with rocks settling on top as it moves downhill. Here, two glaciers meet, and push each other around!
This park also had the largest and purest vein of copper in the world, so after lunch at the Kennicott Glacier Lodge, we took a 2.5 hour guided tour of the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. It stopped operating in the 1930’s but the remnants of their amazing industrial machinery and scale of operations are just jaw dropping. The mill to crush the rock and separate the copper goes up the hill 14 floors and operated 24×7 in summer and in -40 degree winters.
This was a wonderful day to see history, glaciers, and Alaskan mountainous beauty from low flying prop planes.
On Friday, we drove back to Anchorage during this last day of our vacation. We saw even more mountains and glaciers with every turn. We sure enjoyed being with Mike and Joanie on the vacation. It’s been a wonderful trip.