Denali to Valdez

We left Denali by the same route we’d arrived – the Denali Highway – which we had really enjoyed the first time. We again found boondocking spots along the way and enjoyed the fantastic scenery. It was also a great route to head east on – towards Wrangell St. Elias National Park – the largest of all the US National Parks and one of the least visited. Why? Because the road there is not the nicest!

At the end of the Denali Highway, we turned south towards Glenallen where we stopped at a very informative visitor center – and saw this rather amazing little truck camper that had come up from Ushuaia in Patagonia.

The route to McCarthy took us via Chitina (chitnuh) on a fairly decent road. Chitina used to be a hub for the transfer of copper from the mines at Kennecott to the port of Valdez. These days Chitina is a sleepy little village mostly tourism oriented. Immediately after Chitina the road goes through a very narrow passage through the bedrock signaling a significant deterioration in the quality of the ride! The next 61 miles would be a pot-holed gravel ‘road’ laid over the old railway tracks to the Kennecott mines.

Just outside Chitina we found a great boondocking spot – right beside the (very quiet) road – overlooking the expansive Copper River.  We made our way the following day to McCarthy – a funky little town which catered well to the tourists with a couple of pubs and restaurants, a general store, small museum and a flightseeing outfit from which we could get a sightseeing tour of the spectacular Wrangell Mountain range and some of the thousands of glaciers that call Wrangell their home.

You can’t actually drive to McCarthy unless you’re a resident, but they provided a large boondocking campground at the river crossing just before the footbridge. From there it was a 30-minute walk to town. We found a spot in the campsite that gave us an excellent view of the Root Glacier, and included sound effects as the ice dropped into the lake.

Four miles up the road from McCarthy lies the remnants of the Kennecott Copper mine. We could see the mine from our campsite, and while the buildings themselves looked impressive, the multiple massive piles of tailings that had been left behind from the mining activity was hugely depressing.

The following day we took a shuttle ride up to the mine to look around the buildings. The National Parks Service has done a nice job of restoring some of the impressive buildings and they had an informative visitor center which fortunately corrected our assumption that all the rock piles were not in fact tailings, but a glacial moraine created by the receding Root glacier. While all you can see in the valley is rock piles everywhere, there’s ice underneath – sometimes several hundred feet deep. Wrangell was going to give us an education on the structure of glaciers.  Some buildings have been restored; others have been made to look like they used to and gained a coat of paint. We gained something of an understanding of how the mine came into being and how it worked. The copper ore here was immensely rich, but mixed with Limestone. The whole exposed 14 storey mill structure was used to concentrate the copper as much as possible before shipping it by train – on the railroad specifically constructed to take the ore to Chitina where it would be transferred to sternwheelers to take it to Valdez. The ore is concentrated by gravity – separating the lighter limestone from the denser copper. Further refining was done with a unique ammonia leaching plant. In it’s short (1911 – 1938) lifetime, it produced nearly 600,000 tons of copper. It was financed initially by JP Morgan and the Guggenheims – who later took full ownership.

We walked back to McCarthy along the old wagon trail and got back just in time for our Flightseeing ride which was a real thrill. The scale of Wrangell is immense, with many of North America’s highest peaks and a huge number of immense glaciers (albeit rapidly receding) – complete with moraines (not tailings!) which make them all pretty dirty looking! https://youtu.be/4itqlUveEms

Having seen all the glaciers, we decided we had to walk to the Root Glacier – where it wasn’t cover in rock(!)… the only problem was that between us we only had one set of mini-spikes for our feet (not even crampons) so we decided to share them!  Initially all was good but as we got onto the cleaner ice, things changed somewhat and it got rather challenging! We both ended up slipping down a steep bit and dunking our feet in the frigid runoff! It was great fun – and a decent walk.

We left McCarthy taking our time on the shitty trail – which included a magnificent canyon crossing on the old railway trestle – so we crossed it multiple times, trying to get some decent drone shots – see what you think! https://youtu.be/W5ld00r0SME

On our way from McCarthy to Valdez, we found an awesome boondocking spot at the confluence of two rivers. A motorcyclist joined us with his tent and it was interesting hearing of his travels on the Alaskan ‘roads’ (including the Dempster). Mindi insisted on giving him some of our delicious pulled pork – for which he was very grateful! Freeze dried food does get somewhat monotonous!

Next step: Valdez!