Visiting Wrangell-St. Elias (the LARGEST national park!) | Kennecott, Root Glacier, & Bonanza Mine

After spending a couple days exploring beautiful Valdez, Alaska, we've headed a bit northeast to our final major stop here in Alaska, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Wrangell-St. Elias is not only the largest national park in the United States at over 13 million acres, but it is also home to nine of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S., four major mountain ranges, mining history, some of the greatest concentration of glaciers in North America, and so much more. But like many places in Alaska, only part of the park is accessible by vehicle with two access points, Nabezna Road and McCarthy Road. And for our visit, we're going to be driving down McCarthy Road to access the Kennecott area of the park. However, there are a couple important things to know about driving to McCarthy. From where we're standing here at the Visitor Center south of Glenallen, Alaska, it is a 118-mile drive, but the final 60-mile stretch from Chitna, Alaska to McCarthy is all gravel. And once you get to McCarthy, you can only take a shuttle or walk into the park, and we'll explain more of our plans once we get there. National Park number 48, let's go! We have made it to the turnoff off the Richardson Highway that will eventually take us to McCarthy Road, but first we have to drive about 33 miles on the Edgerton Highway, which thankfully is paved. We have a lot of unpaved adventures ahead of us, so I'll take any pavement we can get. We're about 22 miles into the Edgerton Highway, inching much closer to the McCarthy Road, but we're making a quick stop at Liberty Falls to check out this beautiful waterfall. We have made it to the fun part. We're at the beginning of McCarthy Road, which is almost 60 miles of mostly gravel road. If you drive it straight through, it would be about two to two and a half hours to get to McCarthy, but we're going to be going through some pristine wilderness, hopefully see some wildlife, and we just tend to drive a little slower in the van on gravel road, so it's going to take us a little longer. But to hopefully have a smoother ride, I'm going to air down the tires a little bit. All right, let's do this. The McCarthy Road actually started as a railway to support the Kennicott Copper Mines, but when large-scale mining ended in 1938, most of the rails were salvaged for scrap iron. However, in 1971, the rail bed was covered with gravel, which created today's road. And since the road is built over an old railway, we had read tons of horror stories about how rough the road is and how many people would get flat tires every year, because when they grade the road, it would kick up old rail ties and all kinds of other debris, so there'd be tons of flat tires. But thankfully, over the last few years, the state has spent a lot of money to improve it, make it a much smoother ride, so there haven't been nearly as many flat tires. And so far, the first 10 or so miles, it's been really nice. I had read somewhere that the first 15, 17 miles had been paved at one point back in the day, but a lot of it had deteriorated back to gravel. It's been really smooth so far, and hopefully it'll stay mostly smooth, and we have a nice easy ride. No flat tires. No flat tires. There's not a lot of stops to make along the way, but one of the most popular is the Cuscalana River Bridge. It's a one-lane bridge that was built in the winter of 1910, and it sits 238 feet above the river below. We have about 10 miles until we get to the end of the road, and to be honest, it's been a pretty uneventful drive. Minus two chipmunks we saw a while back. We haven't seen any wildlife, and if I hadn't read anything about this road, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. It did turn to more completely gravel after the river bridge back there, but it hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. All right, we made it! Check out our new van paint job! The road ends at the Kennecott River just before the town of McCarthy, but we still have five miles to actually get to Kennecott, which is the area of the park that has mines, hiking trails, and a glacier to explore. And from this point on, no vehicles are allowed, so the only way to get from here to Kennecott is to either take a shuttle, ride a bike, or walk. And one really cool thing about this park is that dogs are actually allowed on the trails, so Kona gets to explore it with us. So we're actually going to walk into the park tomorrow, and then we're going to camp for a couple nights inside of the park. But before we head into the park tomorrow morning, we're staying at Base Camp Kennecott, which is a parking lot and campground right here at the end of the road. It costs $30 per night to camp and $10 per day to park, so we're going to camp here tonight and leave the van here while we're in the park. Today we are heading five miles into Kennecott, and our plan once we get there is to explore the Kennecott mines and then camp close to the Root Glacier so that we can spend the rest of today and tomorrow doing some day hikes. We just made it past McCarthy, which is half a mile in, but we decided to just book it past town this time because we had heard that there are a lot of local dogs that just run all around town. And unfortunately for us, Kona is reactive to other dogs, so she does not like random dogs running up to her. So it didn't seem like a good idea to take her there, but we do hope to check it out after our camping trip because it does look like a cool little town. But we're now on the Wagon Road Trail, which basically runs parallel to the road, but it's a good alternative so you don't have to walk on the road the whole way. But this should take us the rest of the way to Kennecott. There it is! After seeing photos of this place for years, it is so cool to finally be here. I feel like I've just stepped back in time with all these old buildings. This is incredible. In the early 1900s, copper was discovered here and a large mining operation started, including both the mine as well as the mill town, which had a hospital, store, school, and even a tennis court and ice skating rink. From 1911 to 1938, nearly 200 million dollars worth of copper was processed, and at the peak of operation, around 300 people worked in the mill in the mines. But by the late 1920s, the supply of high-grade ore was diminishing, and between declining profits and increasing costs of railroad repairs, the operation closed by 1938. Over the past few decades, the park and the local community have been working to preserve these buildings for the next generations to enjoy. Today, it is a National Historic Landmark, which includes the mines that the ore was taken out of and the buildings to process the ore. There are a bunch different buildings to check out, but probably the most iconic of them all is this 14-story mill building right behind me. You can only go in the mill on a guided tour, which is two hours long, and it costs $28 per adult. And unfortunately, dogs are not allowed, so we're going to skip it this time because it just didn't feel fair for one of us to get to go on the tour and then the other one to just stand around for two hours. But there's still a lot of other buildings that we can go wander around and check out, including I think a couple that you can actually go inside without a tour. A lot of times when we visit places like this, we almost forget that this was actually a real working place that people came out here to earn a living, have as normal life as possible. It almost just feels like we're just walking around on a movie set. Quite a few videos back, we visited the Independence Mine at Hatcher Pass, which was such an impressive mining complex. I didn't know how it could get much better than that, but this one is hands down the most impressive mining complex we have ever been to. I love all the red buildings, and just look at how old everything is. Everything's kind of a mix of falling apart, but also restored. It is so much fun to walk around here. There are a couple different lodging options in Kennecott. You can stay in a lodge right in town, or you can camp for free in the backcountry. Since we have Kona with us, our only option really was to go camping. The main camping area is called Jumbo Creek Campground, and it's about 1.4 miles down the Root Glacier Trail, but we went to the visitor center a few days ago and spoke with a park ranger, and she told us that there's some dispersed camping even further down the Root Glacier Trail that should have some amazing views, so we're going to try to find one of those. When we chatted with the ranger, she said look for the second food storage sign, and then follow that path to find some sites that are more secluded and have better views. We did see some sites a little bit further down the trail, but there's quite a few people camping already, so we're really hoping we can get one up here, but if not, I think there are some backup sites we can camp at instead. About two backpacking trips ago, my sleeping pad popped, so I just got this new one. It's a Therm-a-Rest, and it's really, really nice. I'm super excited to sleep on it. Oh man, this one's way better than our other one. This one's actually like a mattress. This campsite is incredible. We have views all around us, but quite possibly the best view is of the Root Glacier right behind me, which is where we're headed next. We're going to finish hiking the rest of the Root Glacier Trail all the way to the glacier, and we're going to go walk on it. Out of the 5,000 square miles of glacial ice in the park, Root Glacier is the most accessible, and one really cool, literally, thing about this glacier is that you're actually able to walk on it on your own. They recommend you go with a guide where you can walk on it with a guide, or you can do ice climbing like we did on the Matanuska Glacier, but if you have crampons or micro spikes, you are able to walk on it by yourself as long as you're safe and careful. We don't feel super comfortable taking Kona on a glacier. It just seems like it could be a bad idea safety-wise, so we're going to take turns just kind of wandering around a little bit. All right y'all, walking on a glacier. The glacier looks kind of brown or gray in this spot. The more white ice is up ahead, but underneath me right now is just pure ice. This is so cool. This is so beautiful. It's kind of crazy they let you walk on this by yourself. I kind of feel like I'm doing something wrong or not allowed, but this is an amazing experience. I just wish Adam was here with me. It's not as fun without him. We just didn't know if Kona's paws would feel super comfortable on the ice. We didn't want to risk her pulling us in a sliding or something, so we just thought it best to split up for this one, but just look at this. All right, it's your turn. All right, let's do this. I've got my toes on the toe of the root glacier. This is so cool. I love the crunch under your feet of the glacier. Such a satisfying sound. You can see a waterfall of glacial water over there coming down the side of the hill. It's just taking me back to when we were doing the ice climbing in the glacier, and we were right next to that waterfall. It is so wild to be out here on your own. It's just a completely different experience. That was awesome. I could have stayed out there for a long time. I wish I could have kept going, but I guess it's probably best if I get back to Katherine and Kona. Welcome back. I made it back. That was so awesome. So many cool things to see up there. But man, it is getting really cold out, and it's getting kind of late, so we're going to head back to near where our camp is so we can make some dinner. Oh, there are so many more completely snow-covered mountains off in the distance than we could see yesterday. I had no idea that those were there. Wow. When I first peeked out the tent this morning, I was like, what a way to wake up. Today we are hiking the Bonanza Mine Trail, and if you start from the actual trailhead, it's about eight miles round trip and about 4,000 feet of elevation gain. But since we're starting from closer to Root Glacier, it will be a little bit longer for us. And there is actually a shortcut trail from the Root Glacier Trail that will take you to the Bonanza Mine Trail, but unfortunately this morning we were trying to filter some water because we're low on water, and our filter bag popped. So we actually have to hike into Kennecott, fill up some water there because they have water, bathrooms, trash cans, food. They have a lot of amenities in town. So we'll fill up there and then start the trail from there. Even though we might be hiking a little longer because we started the trail from in town, there were some perks to it. We got to go over this bridge that went over this gorge with the waterfall rushing below that goes down into the town. And then we climbed the hill that takes you to the top of where the mill is, and so we got a different perspective of the mill. And we also heard a guide telling his group that this is the first day in about 10 days where they were able to see down into the valley and see those really snowy mountains. So we are just really thankful that the weather has really cleared up for us today. We're about two miles into the hike and it hasn't been super exciting so far. We've mostly just been walking through trees and bushes along this dirt road that goes up to the mine. But man, it is super, super steep. I feel like I'm walking at an angle. It is totally kicking our butts and it's not really going to lighten up. It's going to be steep the rest of the way. But we've gotten above the trees now, or we're starting to, and we're getting more views. And just look at these mountains back here. They are so gnarly. All right, we're pulling over to catch our breath, give our body a little rest, and have some lunch because we're hungry. We're starting to get a little hangry over here. That's never good. We decided to bring full-on backpacking meals because we wanted a nice hearty warm meal on this trail. And on today's menu for Adam, we have buffalo style chicken mac and cheese. I am so pumped for this. Look how saucy this is. Dang, if you get dropped in there, you're going to drown. This might have to come into my, I'd have to enter my normal rotation. I like that. And I have Santa Fe style rice and beans with chicken, which I've had before. It's pretty good. It's not my favorite. It doesn't beat my pad thai or my coconut curry, but it's all they had and it's still good. We are all fueled up and now we're ready to conquer the rest of this hike. This is our last major hike here in Alaska, and I think we saved the hardest hike for last. I haven't done all the math, but I'm pretty sure this is the steepest hike that we've done in our last two and a half months here. At least it feels that way to our legs right now, but this hike is starting to get really good. We're about three miles in, we have mining ruins right there, and then that is where we're headed. There's a waterfall, there's more mining ruins, and then just look at those like jagged, they're like little teeth peaks just off in the distance. Y'all are striking it rich up here. Look what I found. I'm pretty confident this is copper. How cool. Oh my goodness. We have made it to the bonanza mine. That was really, really hard. We read that it gets its name because two prospectors discovered an enormous body of copper ore here in the early 1900s, and they exclaimed, it's a bonanza! Something like that. This mine is crazy cool. It's basically falling apart. It's in shambles, but it's still so beautiful, especially when you think about how long it's been here and everything that's happened here, and then contrasted against all of these epic mountains. This would not have been a bad view to work from, and one thing that's really neat at the end is there are all these artifacts. We've seen a bathtub, sinks, shoe soles, some pants, we've seen cigarette cans, tools, all these things that have been laid out for you to look at. It kind of just feels like we hiked up to a museum. We saw a bunch of people coming down from the ridge that's behind all the mine buildings, and we asked them is it worth it to go up there, and they said it definitely is. You can possibly, if you look really closely, see the opening to one of the mines, and then also a bunch of mineral colors in the rock wall, so we're gonna go check that out. This park is just incredible. There are all different types of mountains. There's snowy ones, jagged ones, there's glaciers, and all the mining history. There is just so much to offer here, and another interesting thing about it is that it's designated as a World Heritage Site, along with Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska, plus two Canadian parks, Tachinchini-Alsek Provincial Park and Kluane National Park, which we visited on our drive up to Alaska, and together they make up the world's largest international protected wilderness. Seeing how much we loved this park, and also Kluane, we are definitely going to have to come back and check out those other two parks, but this hike has taken us way longer than we thought it would, so we are going to head back down, and hopefully we can get back down by dinner time. Tonight we are trying another new meal, yellow curry with chicken and rice by Mountain House. Smells really, really good. Oh, there's peas in there. Looks like some zucchini. Look at that. That looks delicious. Yeah, that's pretty solid. Has a little bit of spice, such a creamy consistency. It's really hot. I think I just burnt my tongue, but I give this one a thumbs up, and it's going in the rotation. I will say, these Mountain House ones, they make them saucy. I dig that. Adam's saucy boy. Saucy and pillowy. Yeah, that has great curry flavor in there. Perfect on the spice level, I think too, and I think I finally might have gotten the water levels right on this one. It's so hard. The rice is done, the chicken is rehydrated again. One day we'll get a measuring cup, but until then, we'll probably just keep getting it wrong. But we are mega exhausted. All three of us are completely pooped, so we're going to devour dinner and then probably just hit the hay because tomorrow we're hiking back out of the park, and even though it's only like seven miles and not even that hard, the thought of walking anymore right now makes me feel more tired. All right, now it's back to the van. I'm shaking a little bit. Well, it's happened, you guys. Adam just spotted a bear ahead on this trail. I didn't see it. We don't know if it's still there. We're yelling a bit. Hey, bear. I don't know. I don't know what to do. Hey. Hey, hey. Probably just going to get this ready, huh? Just in case. Hey. Hello. Adam said it was brown, so it could be a brown black bear or it could be a grizzly bear. I don't know. Hello. Hello. All right, I'm going to put the camera away so we can stay safe. We made it safely past the area where I saw him come out. It was just crazy. Catherine was putting my pack cover on, and I was looking ahead on the trail, and I just saw a big brown thing just stroll out onto the trail from the right from the bushes. It was huge. I couldn't tell if there was a hump or not, but man. But we made it through the area. We're going to keep going, and we're going to speak loudly and make as much noise as possible. We're like the only ones out here. I'm a little nervous. Yeah, we'll be okay. It's pretty crazy that in our entire two and a half months here in Alaska, we only ever saw one bear, and it was a black bear just on a sidewalk in the town of Whittier. And then on our last hike here in Alaska, we have potentially a grizzly bear walk out in front of us on a trail. I was not expecting this hike back to be this exciting, but also scary. Made it off the trail without getting eaten. That's a win. We just dropped our bags and Kona off at the van, and now we're going to head a half mile back into McCarthy to feast. I'm so hungry. This town is so cute, and even though Kona would have hated the local dogs running around, I absolutely love it. We came to a spot called The Potato, which also has a location in Valdez, but this is their original spot. They have burritos, they have wraps, they have sandwiches, and of course, as the name implies, they have potato items. More specifically, french fries. Even more specifically, curly fries, which in my opinion is one of the best cuts of fries along with waffle fries. So I got the potato head burrito. This has scrambled eggs in there, there's sour cream, jalapenos, salsa, and then some fries obviously because we're at the potato. And then I added some carnitas in there just for an extra special treat for myself. Better than backpacking food? Way better than backpacking food. This thing is loaded. It is stuffed. There is so much in there. I forgot to mention cheese too. You can see all that melty gooey cheese, these potatoes, these fries are just mmm. Oh for me, I love all the dogs here. This place is amazing. I got the bonanza burger, which is basically just a standard burger with cheese. I have some pickles on the side, and then I got their house salad on the side as well, which has almonds and feta. And I got this lemon Dijon dressing, which sounded really good. And then what's been just wafting into my nose the entire time we've been sitting here, the garlic rosemary fries. We're sharing these, but they just smell so strongly of garlic. It's torturing me. Oh, it looks so good. Oh yeah. Juicy. That is so juicy. Buddy. Hi, you're so pretty. So meaty, it's exactly what I was thinking of when we were out there on the trail. Mmm, so good. Now, this is the healthy part of my meal. This salad is so fresh, tasting a little bit of tang from that dressing, a little bit of crunch from the almonds on here. It's nice to kind of have something fresh on the table. Everything else is kind of fried and grilled, so this kind of counteracts it a little bit. You get really punched in the face with these, uh, all this garlic on here is pungent. Oh yeah. That garlic is spicy. Super flavorful. Yeah. The fries by themselves are super, super good. That garlic just takes it to the next level. It's raw garlic. So yeah, it has like that spicy garlicky flavor. We're big garlic fans. I can't think straight. It's been a really long couple of days. We're big garlic fans and these are heavenly. Don't worry. We got Kona a little something, something. We got her some plain fries. We're not going to give her all these, although she would eat them all if we let her, but we'll help her out with them. Oh, now we brought you a present. Oh, yummy. They're so good. Happy day, huh? Unfortunately, this was our last major Alaskan adventure. We're very sad. We're in denial. We're trying not to think about it quite yet, but I do think we went out with a bang. We obviously only scratched the surface of what this massive national park has to offer, but the area we got to explore was so much fun and we loved getting to camp and just kind of immerse ourselves in the Alaskan scenery for one final time. But we hope our adventure here helped you. If you want to visit this park, because like many or all of the Alaskan national parks, they are not as straightforward to visit as the ones in the lower 48. But for now we're going to head up to Tok, which is about a five and a half hour drive from here. And we're going to spend the next few days there knocking out some chores, taking advantage of U.S. cell service to try to get as much work done as possible. Because the next time you see us, we're going to be leaving Alaska and heading back into Canada for the next few weeks. I just found a typo in this national park sign. It just says McCathy Road, but it's McCarthy Road. That's pretty funny. You're allowed here. Isn't that so nice? Excited to go? You can be a Bark Ranger. Are you a Bark Ranger? Wow. You want to go to the park? This mine is Bonanza, B-O-N-A-N-Z-A. I think that's how you spell it. This mine is Bonanza, B-O-N-A-N-Z-A. Few times been around that mine, but it ain't just gold that you're gonna find. Ain't no copperback girl. Ain't no copperback girl.