Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (so named because it's at the confluence of the Wrangell and St. Elias mountain ranges) is the largest park in the system at over 13 million acres. By comparison, Yellowstone is just over 2 million acres.

This park was unique for us because we visited it twice, more than a month apart. That's how big the park is... it has two entrances that are hours apart.

Our first visit was through the northern entrance, which is by far the lesser used of the two. The Nabesna Road is an old mining road (with copper being the mineral in question), and it is not maintained in parts, which means it's only suitable for 4 wheel drive vehicles.

This excited us because we hadn't really had an opportunity to put our new Jeep to work yet. With rough gravel and multiple stream crossings, this sounded perfect!

Stream crossing

Our first destination was a trail up to an old mine shaft at the end of the road. The trail was short but had fairly significant elevation gain.

The mine itself wasn't anything special. The shaft was gated off (old mines can have dangerous build up of gasses), and there was rusted equipment scattered around. But we were rewarded with a lovely view, so it was worth it.

We stopped to play in a river on the way back down, because... well, it's water with rocks. If there's one thing I've learned about our kids on this trip, it's that they can't resist water, rocks, or even better, water and rocks.

We decided to camp in the park for a night, so our next step was to head to the campground, find a site (first come, first served), and get set up. To our surprise and delight, each site had a huge pile of firewood at it! For those that have camped, this is not normal. Normal is having to visit the camp host and pay $7 for a small bundle of wood.

As it turns out, a tree had come down in the campground not too long ago. Rather than haul the wood out, I guess it was easier to split it and distribute it amongst the campsites. Hey, works for me!

The campsite was great. It was well maintained, remote (and therefore quiet), and we only had a few neighbors. The only downside was the mosquitoes. There were many of them. We loaded up on bug spray, did our best to stay near the fire, and did our best to tolerate them. Other than going to bed at 5 PM (remember, it gets darkish around midnight), that's about all you can do.

Our campsite friends

Julie and Asher got up early the next morning to try to see some wildlife. They saw some ducks and an eagle, which by Alaska standards is not terribly successful. But it was a beautiful morning regardless.

After breaking camp, we headed back to the park where our RV spent the night, about 45 minutes away.

At this point we spent a few weeks visiting every other park in Alaska. Four weeks later... we came back, this time through what could be considered the main entrance. 

The main attractions through this entrance are the historic Kennecott mine (also copper) and the Root glacier. We were skipping the former but had a tour booked for the latter.

The mine, past which we had to walk to get to the glacier

As turned out to be the theme during our time in Alaska, the weather was dreary. It turns out that cloudy weather is preferable for a glacier walk because it brings out the colors better (and doesn't blind you), but I would have preferred a few degrees warmer!

The glacier is accessible to anybody who wants to walk to it, but going through an outfitter provides a few benefits for first timers like us. The outfitters provided us with crampons (spikes) for our boots and a guide to educate us and make sure we saw the most interesting parts.

Our guide was a college student working in Alaska for the summer. In addition to crampons, she also provided us with "glacier straws" (you may know them as red vines candy) to sample the pure water.

One of the stops was at the so called "blue pool." Pretty much any pool on the glacier is blue, but there was on in particular that was sizable and within reasonably walking distance. In was in this pool that certain brave souls choose to do a polar plunge. We all abstained, but I'll be honest, I was very close to going for it.

Two things held me back, neither of which were the water temperature. First, I didn't know about this opportunity and therefore did not bring a change of clothes. Second, the air temperature was simply too cold. Our guide said it feels great getting out of the water on a warmer day, but at 40 degrees and drizzling, this day wouldn't have brought much relief.

Next time...

The blue pool

The intrepid band of explorers!