Back in the late 1950s, my mom was teaching my younger brother and me the names of all the states. I recall a joke that used the names of states. It went something like this:
What would Delaware to the Ball?
Idaho, Alaska.
She wore a New Jersey.
My mother thought it was very funny, but I didn’t know what a ball or a jersey was and didn’t get it. But I was especially interested in the Alaska part. I’m the only one in my family that was born in Texas, and for my first four years, it was our largest state. But in January 1959, a very large, mountainous, cold place very far away became our largest state..
It would take another 40 before I finally visited Alaska. This August was my fourth visit.
Why we were there:
My partner Scott met the Klaus family in 2021 while staying at Ultima Thule Lodge, their remote Alaskan property in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park renowned for its wilderness experience, 100 miles away from the nearest road.
In 2022, the next generation of the Klaus family contacted past guests about their dream: building a second lodge near McCarthy, Alaska. The site overlooks two glaciers and a mountain range and is adjacent to the national park.
Scott joined the investment team to fund the project. Construction took nearly three years, partly due to the location—it’s a seven-hour drive from Anchorage, with the last 2.5 hours on unpaved gravel roads.
Getting There
We were lucky to fly non-stop from San Diego to Anchorage. And as I often do, I took photos out of the windows.
Our group was composed of Scott’s niece and nephew and their spouses and 2 other couples we’ve known for decades and travelled with before, plus a long-time friend of Scott’s. I had invited my younger brother as a 70th birthday present, but he had to cancel due to problems with his Achilles tendon.
After arriving in Anchorage, we rented 2 vehicles and drove to the small town of Palmer where we spent the night in a newish motel that had a great ice cream shop across the street.
The next morning we had a 4 hour drive to Chitina with some gorgeous river, mountain, glacier and bay scenery along the way. After Chitina the road is unpaved and mostly gravel.
In Chitina, we left one vehicle at the landing strip. Six of us boarded two bush planes, and the remaining five would drive. The views flying to McCarthy were truly amazing.
Photos from the fly-in:
Arrival
Once we landed at the tiny McCarthy airport, a shuttle took us to Great St. Elias Station. The friendly owners and staff were so happy to see us, and we were thrilled to be there! We had some light refreshments in “The Hall,” which was a cozy spot with an incredible view of glaciers and mountains.
Next, we were shown to our cabins. They were beautifully decorated with a giant picture window of the same stunning view. It was hard to resist just sitting down and staring out the window! But we started to look at the rest of the cabin too. The walls were a dark satin green that looked black depending on the lighting. There was a long bench in front of the window that invited us to sit down and just stare out at the river, glaciers and mountains. In the middle of the room was a king-sized bed. The mattress was so comfortable that we bought one for our home! There was a stub wall behind the bed that separated the bathroom area. The bathroom had a large copper sink, a walk-in shower, and a separate toilet. The shower tile was a lovely olive green with brown overtones that matched the copper and dark brown fixtures.
One of the most amazing things about the location was the absolute silence and privacy. It was like we were in our own little world!
Walk to the Moraine Lake
After settling in and waiting for those that drove to arrive, a few of us took a short walk to the nearby glacial moraine lake that forms the headwaters of the Kennicott River. The lake has many small icebergs and we did the adult of thing of throwing rocks into the lake from the steep glacier silt slope above the lake.
We didn’t know it at this time, but the far edge of the lake was a dam of ice and glacier silt that separates it from another lake. Water flows unnoticed through the silt to the lower lake. In a few days we would begin our white water raft trip in the lower lake and down the headwaters of the Kennicott River.
Little Einsteins
Around the station and most other places with glacier silt were large masses of white seed heads that picked up and refracted sunlight and glowed when backlit. Locals called them little Einsteins. Up close, the seeds have a white/gray disheveled look with a little bald spot. Their botanical name is Dryas drummondii, and oddly, they are a member of the rose family. Earlier in the season they had nodding yellow bell shaped flowers.
Root Glacier Hike
After watching the sunrise and having breakfast, we took the shuttle to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park headquarters at the Kennecott Mill to meet our trail guides for a hike to the Root Glacier.
They fit us with crampons. The hike starts with a walk along the old rail track that served the copper mill. It also crosses a couple of streams and waterfalls. About a mile in we turned off and headed down switchbacks to the glacier. The ground was mostly loose glacier silt, which took some effort to keep from sliding. The end part of the trail had recently been changed due to the previous trail collapsing.
Once we got to the glacier we put on our crampons. It was sort of amazing how they grabbed the ice and it was easy to climb up and down on the glacier. However, I had trouble with one of my crampons staying on the large Keen shoe and it kept coming off. Luckily our resourceful guide was able to take parts from one of her crampons and construct a better-fitting one that stayed on.
We observed streams of glacier melt, crevasses and small pools of blue water. We ate our box lunches on the glacier and headed to a larger blue pool. Only one in our group, an Oceanside lifeguard, did the polar plunge into the pool.
We learned that what looks like piles of dirt actually is glacier dust covering the ice underneath.
Walking Tour of McCarthy
That afternoon we had a photo walking tour of the tiny town of McCarthy. There was plenty of funky and odd things to photograph.
Aurora Borealis
We were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, but didn’t really expect it to happen. These natural light displays are usually seen in polar regions at night, and they’re caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The first two nights, we had clear weather, but the second night, Scott woke me up around 2 AM and commented that there weren’t any Northern Lights. I did what I always do in the middle of the night and got up to pee. But as I was getting back in bed, I noticed something strange. I thought the reflection of the room in the large picture window facing the mountains was showing streaks that didn’t match the inside of the room. I moved around a bit and noticed that the streaks didn’t move. Instead, they got brighter and more colorful.
“Wake up, wake up, and look out the window!” I exclaimed. Unfortunately, they only lasted about 15 minutes, and there wasn’t enough time to wake up the other cabins before the show was over. But hey, at least we took a few time exposures with our iPhones, which do a better job capturing the display than what you can see in person.
Fly-in hike to Rohr and Regal Glaciers
The next day we did a fly-in hike to the where the Rohr and Regal Glaciers merged. The scenery from the plane once again was amazing. We saw some major folding of the layers of ancient rock.
We landed near the terminus lake of the glaciers.
River Rafting
The third day we awoke to cloudy and slightly rainy skies. We were going rafting on the Kennicott River. Just below the St. Elias Station are 2 glacier moraine lakes. We entered the lower lake and which empties into the river with stage 2 and 3 rapids. Most of this adventure would be about donning ‘dry suits’ and equipment for the trip.
It wasn’t possible to take photos so imagine floating on the moraine lake and then down the river over some fast rapids. It was all over very quickly.
We floated around the lake a bit and then headed down the river. Somewhat of a surprise to some of us was we also had to paddle from time to time with commands like, “One paddle forward”, “Two paddles backward on the right side”. Due to the recent warm weather and lots of glacier melt the trip seemed to be over before it had started and we were back on dry land ready to get out of the uncomfortable gear. Unfortunately, since none of us wanted to risk losing our iPhones in the river we don’t have any photos of the rafting part of the trip.
There was an old and very used former school bus waiting for us to take us on a ride that was nearly as rough as the rapids back to where we started.
Kennecott Copper Mill
The last day was a travel day back to Anchorage. Half our group left in the morning to drive the gravel road back to Chitina. The other half took bush planes and weren’t leaving until around 2PM. That left us enough time to take the shuttle to the National Park headquarters located at the Kennecott Copper Mill ruins. Some original and reconstructed buildings remained.
The tour went along the old railroad line that was used to build the ore processing center and also carry out the copper ore. We walked to the top of the mill and entered the processing buildings there. Basically it was lot of sorting, crushing, and bagging the high-grade ore portion (approximately 60% copper) to be loaded directly onto trains for transport to steamships.
The copper ore was discovered in 1900 and at the time was the richest copper ore in the world. In 1906 processing and removal of the ore began with funding from the Daniel Guggenheim and J.P. Morgan & Co., known as the Alaska Syndicate. They built a rail line from Kennecott to coast.
From 1909 until 1938, except when it closed temporarily in 1932, Kennecott mines “produced over 4.6 million tons of ore that contained 1.183 billion pounds of copper mainly from three ore bodies: Bonanza, Jumbo and Mother Lode.” The Kennecott operations reported gross revenues above $200 million and a net profit greater than $100 million.
A couple of items of interest- The mine was named after the Kennicott Glacier, but due to a clerical error the town’s name was misspelled. In 1900 the Kennicott glacier was much larger and blocked the view of the mountains above the town. Today it is below the town and hiked down the foot of the quickly receding glacier a couple days earlier.
Our ‘Northern Exposure’ Moment
While heading to the airport to catch our flights a moose moseyed across the road in front of us. It would make a reappearance on the runway a few minutes later.
Fly out
The view out was as incredible as the flight in. However, this time we flew along the river instead of flying through Fourth of July Pass. We traveled along the Kennicott River to Chitina.
Once on the ground we started the 4 hour drive back to Anchorage. There were some amazing view of mountains, glaciers and bays to the south. We stopped for ice cream in Parker.
The flight back the next day had great view of the fjords, glaciers, mountains and islands that dot the western coast of Alaska and Canada.
Getting back to the lower 48 we saw many forest fires along the way and good view of “The Sisters” where we explored on a driving trip i July, 2024.
