Wrangell St. Elias National Park

Last weekend another traveling OT, named Shuling, and I went to Wrangell St. Elias National Park. We stayed in Kennecott. Kennecott is the site of a historic copper mill that is the main feature of the park. It has been standing there through the Alaskan weather and floods for over 100 years. All of the buildings are in some state of disrepair. The operation had two components: the mines where ore was extracted from the mountains, and the mill town where the ore was processed. From 1911 to 1938, nearly $200 million worth of copper was processed. This is a ton of money and even though the operation only lasted only 27 years it made the Kennecott Copper Corporation a huge international company. The mines, where the majority of the employees worked, were far up on the mountain side. There were 5 mines: Glacier, Erie, Jumbo, Motherload, and Bonanza mines. The mining conditions had to be absolutely insane. I hope they got paid a lot! They said that the miners would stay all day in the mines in the winter because it was warmer in there then outside. Four of the mines were connected by long tunnels straight through the mountain. Quite a feat.

 

Erie Mine

When we got into the area we had to park across a foot bridge. We walked our luggage across and a shuttle picked us up on the other side to take us to the Kennecott Lodge. We had to take shuttles from then on, but it was not a big deal since there was only one other place we could go, a little town called McCarthy that was about 15 minutes down a dirt road. Both of these small towns are pretty secluded. The only way to get cars across is a privately owned bridge that costs ~$100 to cross! The people who go over usually plan to stay a while.
The Kennecott Lodge was really cute with all these old ledgers, artifacts and historical documents from the mines lining the walls and decorating the bedrooms. We spent a little time walking around the copper mill and that was that, we had seen the whole town. ;) We decided to head over to McCarthy that evening on the shuttle to go to the Golden Saloon. This was a really nice bar with excellent food! They had a band playing that night who I really enjoyed listening to. The town of McCarthy was no bigger then Kennecott with only one hotel, one bar, a few gift shops and some run down cabins. Everyone in the bar knew each other because they all worked in one of the two towns. I would say 75% of the people were employees and 25% were tourists.

 

On Sunday, we went hiking on the Root Glacier. It was a cool experience. We got to wear crampons and try to do some scaling of an ice crack. It was harder than it looks. The walls of the ice crack were slick and cold and I was not 100% confident that my crampons would hold me. Once the guide showed me where to step I eventually made it through. Some of the crevasses made by the melting ice were huge and went hundreds of feet deep. It was scary trying to look over the edge and see how far down they went so usually I would just stick my camera out real far and take a shot. I can't say that it worked real well, it was too dark in there.

 

 

That evening we headed back to McCarthy to go to a concert that was in a quaint log cabin. We watched Michelle J. Rodriguez who is a singer/songwriter and plays the ukelele. It was kinda quirky music and she just had hand written music with lyrics that she did not always get right. She was not a professional, but because some locals and her had been working together all summer they had good harmonies and multiple instruments which made her songs sound great and it filled up that tiny log cabin with an ambiance that was wonderful.
On Monday morning we did another flightseeing tour and it was just as good as the last one I took only this time it was not over mountains, but glaciers. I was thrilled I got to sit in the co-pilot seat!!

 

 

After that we stopped in at the McCarthy Museum and ate at "The Potato" which looked more like a shack then a diner, but what else would you expect from Alaska. I have learned to expect the unexpected.