Alaska Day 11

Last night, after the ice hike and climb, I slept hard. I can’t remember the last time I fell into such a deep sleep. My dreams were weird and disconnected but I don’t remember them well enough to make sense of them and write them here. I woke up at six and tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t get comfortable. So I packed up my sleeping bag and moved to the car to read.  If not for the swarms of mosquitoes and the drizzle, I would have set up a chair and read outside, but I had no desire to be tortured. It rained all night. Some rain got into the tent and the foot of my sleeping got wet. It is always a miserable experience packing up a wet tent. Add to that the relentless mosquitoes that attacked uswhile we were breaking camp and it was awful.

Since the Caribou Grill is the only option for food we went there again for breakfast. The bugs and rain made eating at the campground an unappealing alternative. We were more selective in what we chose to eat and so the food was not as bad as our previous breakfast there. Today we are taking a long three and a half hour drive to McCarthy, a town surrounded by Wrangell-St.Elias. When we got on the road it was still raining. Disappointingly, there is a great deal of rain in forecast for the remainder of our trip. I am hoping by the time we reach the park the rain will stop.

The rain did stop and as we drove the clouds started to disperse. There is only one road in and out of McCarthy and it is a sixty mile unpaved road. It took more than two hours to traverse it and it was not a smooth ride. Kati woke up with a bad headache and the road exacerbated it. Halfway to McCarthy, she asked me to take over driving because the pain was so sharp. McCarthy is not accessible by private vehicles. You need to park your car—which of course you can’t do for free because price gauging is a way of life out here—just outside the town. The National Park usually provides parking. That is not the case here. They let the locals have at it making the visit more expensive for tourists. After parking, you have to walk across a footbridge. McCarthy is another three quarters of a mile further away. But that’s not even where you can access the National Park. The Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark and the access to a few trails that go into the park is in the town of Kennecott, which is another four and a half miles up the road. Since you are forced to leave your car behind, you now have to catch a shuttle to Kennecott. A round trip ticket to go not even ten miles is fifteen dollars. Again, national parks provide free shuttle services elsewhere, why not here? It seems the national park opened a visitor center here to do nothing other than draw tourists who wish to experience the beauty of America so that local Alaskan’s could take advantage of their fellow Americans. Even the mine which is a National Landmark is only accessible via a tour through a private tour company and the prices are outrageous. Instead of tax money being used to support this national park the tour companies should be supporting it.

Since we drove all this way, G3 and I did head into the park to take a hike. Kati stayed in the car because her head was in agony. G3 and I crossed the footbridge and walked into McCarthy where I bought two multi-day tickets for the shuttle to Kennecott. A round trip ticket is fifteen dollars but a multi-day is 20. Since we have to come back tomorrow it made sense to buy the multi-day. Tomorrow we will be doing a tour of a glacier that Kati booked before we learned about the stranglehold tour companies have on the national park. The ride into Kennecott was ten minutes on a very bumpy road. Once we got there, we walked from one end of the town to the other—that took all of ten minutes—to reach the trailhead for the Root Glacier. It’s marked as a trail, but really it is just a continuation of the dirt road, at least for the first half.

The hike to the glacier is relatively short—two miles out and then two miles back. Most of the trail is relatively flat. It’s only the descent to the glacier that is steep. The view from the road/trail is pretty, but it’s essentially the same view from start to finish. The Wrangell Mountains are steep and impressive and one massive glacier looked like a massive waterfall that had frozen as it poured over the side of a mountain. It may have been the Kennicott—the town is spelled with an e but the river and glacier are spelled with an i—Glacier but I’m not sure. I am hoping to find out tomorrow. For a while we followed the Kennicott River and a couple of waterfalls and rushing streams bisected the trail.

G3 was bored with the hike. He grumbled about having to walk to a boring glacier after having ice climbed on a cool one yesterday. It seems he only likes the high adrenaline activities. Hikes to relax and enjoy the landscape are pointless. There is so much beauty to see and experience it saddens me that he can only appreciate it if it is attached to an expensive adrenaline rush. However, I do agree the Root Glacier was not as pretty as the Matanuska Glacier. We could have walked on it but we did not have micro-spikes. Besides, we were a bit pressed for time because we did need to make sure we caught the last shuttle back to McCarthy. We essentially touched the glacier with our toes, took a few pictures, and then turned around.

The historic mine in Kennecott used to be a copper mine. Copper was discover in 1900 and almost immediately a camp, mine, mill, and railway were built. By 1911, the mine was fully operational and extremely lucrative. Its life, however, was short. By 1938, there was no copper left so the mine shut down. The mining town essentially became a ghost town until the eighties when efforts began to preserve the mine. That’s probably all I will learn since the national park surrendered tours to a private company.

After a nap, Kati was feeling better so she met us in McCarthy for dinner. We ate at The Potato. G3 had a cheesesteak that he liked and Kati and I shared a small pizza. It was okay but nothing like House of Fire. The cheese was a bit over cooked and the crust undercooked. The three of us also shared a basket of rosemary and garlic fries which were good.

It appears G3’s phone is working despite the brief swim it too yesterday. He was able to turn it on and it seems to be charging properly.

Tonight, we are boondocking again on the McCarthy road. There is no room to set up a tent so it looks like another night of sleeping in the car. Since it is still relatively early, G3 is reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King and I am blogging. When I finish writing, I too will read National Geographic. The mosquitoes are once again on the hunt for human flesh so we can’t hang out outside. It would be so much better if we could sit on our camping chairs and enjoy the cool evening air but the price to do so is too high. I’d rather not be feasted upon. We can’t have a fire either since there is no fire ring. Oh well. There are worse things.