Rust Red, Snow White and Glacier Blue

This week on Adam and Ashley's Alaskan Adventure...we decided to take our longest and biggest trip yet for the 4th of July weekend. This past weekend we went all the way southeast to Valdez and drove into the remote town of McCarthy, AK. We decided to tent camp for the weekend seeing as some of the roads would not be Sweaty Yeti friendly.

We left early Sunday morning and made our way west and along the journey we saw at least 3 massive glaciers off in the distance as they made their way down from the mountains. We traveled along the Matanuska River and passed so many beautiful mountains. This drive quickly became one of our most favorite in all of Alaska. The route to Valdez was roughly 6-7 hours but boy was it worth it. Near Valdez we passed Worthington Glacier, a glacier off the main road that you can actually hike up to and explore. We easily spent over an hour exploring the glacier and hiking around. For those of you who do not know, one of Ashley's favorite things are glaciers so she was having a ball exploring the glacier up close.  Adam even managed to get into one of the ice cracks only to get ice cold water dripping down the back of his shirt.

Ashley was just a little bit excited.

As surprising as it sounds, that ice was super cold.

Adam just realized that cold water was dripping on him!

 As we continued on we drove through what was called Keystone Canyon, with massive rock walls that rose easily 200 feet above the road. Around every corner would be waterfalls and a beautiful new rock face for us to check out. There was even a unfinished railway tunnel that was built in the canyon. It was supposed to be used for the railroad network in the early 1900's but there was so much dispute over which rail company could use it that it lead to a gunfight in the actual tunnel and ended up that no company ever got to use it.

Valdez sure was packed for the 4th of July weekend. The town was fun to explore, all the little shops, restaurants and ironically named bars such as "The Fat Mermaid". We had dinner at a place called The Roadside Potato and it was delicious! Just outside of town we came upon a park called Glacier View so of course we had to check it out. The glaciers themselves had receded too far to see but they left huge icebergs floating in the lake that were close enough to touch. We even managed to climb out onto one only to realize that is was really slippery and very hard to walk on. We both know that this should have been obvious but for some reason it had slipped our minds in all the excitement. We only managed to take a few steps onto the iceberg before it got too slippery and steep to continue. After all that excitement we were ready to hit the hay so we drove to a remote campsite in Thompson Pass, only 20 miles away, up in the mountains and tucked in for the night.

The next day we ventured onward toward Wrangell St. Elias National Park-the largest national park in the United States. This park is so large that it is roughly the size of six Yellowstone, and is larger than the country of Switzerland with larger and taller mountains too. This park is unique in that it only has two roads that access the park; on the northern side there is a dirt road that leads 30 miles into the park and to the south there is a 60 mile road into the town of McCarthy. We chose to take the 60 mile road. From the main highway it was 30 miles to the east to a small town called Chitna. From there the road turned to gravel for the next 60 miles as it wound through the forested park. This road had potholes, and some steep up and down sections that we treated like a roller coaster and would throw our hands in the air and hoot and holler! The poor Jeep caught some air on some of those bumps and potholes even with us driving slow. We even had to drive over a massive old railroad bridge that was 528 feet across and over 200 feet above a deep river valley. After roughly 3 hours of driving we finally made it to the end of the road where there was a parking lot waiting for us. Once we parked we made our way to the footbridge and took the shuttle into the town of Kennicott which was an additional 5 miles from the footbridge. In Kennicott was a large abandoned mine-the largest and most profitable copper mine in US History. We got to take a tour of the mine and various buildings in the vicinity. This mine profited over 100 million dollars off of 600,000 tons of copper. The copper was discovered in 1900 and was mined until 1938 when the copper vein ran out and the mine was abandoned. The founders of the mine needed a railway established to transport all of this copper so they hired a man to build a railway that went 196 miles all the way to Valdez where they could send the copper to Tacoma, WA to be smelted. This railway crossed such a vast and changing landscape that every year they needed to rebuild bridges that had been washed out due to river floods. It was cheaper to rebuild bridges every year from wood than haul steel that far back into the back country. So for roughly 30 years every spring they would need to rebuild bridges to transport the copper. It was really was an amazing experience to walk through the old buildings and see the mining equipment. We even got to walk down 11 of the 14 stories of the old mill.The stairs were steep and narrow making us wonder how the burly Scandinavian works of the time were able to navigate the massive mill. After the tour we headed back across the footbridge to our camp for the night.

The end of pavement and beginning of dirt road to McCarthy

 

 

 

The large bridge we had to cross

This was of course a one lane bridge.

This was the 14 story Kennicott mill that processed and sorted all the Copper.

Adam having a blast exploring all the nooks and cranny's of the old buildings. We also had to wear hard hats during the tour.

This was the dynamite shack for the mine, luckily it was far away enough from town that it wouldn't have destroyed the mine had it gone off.

We started the mill tour  entering in on the 11 floor, there were great views!

 Now to probably the best part of our entire trip thus far...the glacier hike. On July 5th we did a full day glacier hike in Kennicott. The guiding company picked us up at 8:30 and from there were were fitted with crampons and hiked 2 miles to Root Glacier. We were on the glacier by 10am! Our guide was awesome and incredibly knowledgeable. There was only one other couple on the tour so we made excellent time compared to the larger groups that only did half-a-day trips. With the crampons strapped to our feet that added an additional 1-2 inches so we had to pick up our legs higher than we normally would walking and we had to forcefully put our foot down so that they would grab onto the ice. We felt like we were little kids throwing a tantrum as we stomped our way across the glacier. Walking on a glacier has been on Ashley's bucket list forever so it was truly an unreal and amazing experience for us. Hiking around made us really hot but the cool breeze blowing down and across the glacier felt wonderful. Soon we were hiking around in t-shirts enjoying the breeze. With only 5 people were were able to cruise along the glacier looking at many different features! Our guide took us to these glacier features which are called Moulin's; basically melt-water boars a hole deep into the ice, very similar to how water on land makes a sinkhole. They could go all the way to the bottom of the glacier and you could see water gushing into this deep blue hole. All along the glacier melt-water flowed in and around on the surface creating beautiful streams that meandered through the ice. We would also come across these pools of water with such a beautiful blue color that there is no name for such a color that could do it justice. These pools could be as deep as 150 feet! We would walk across deep crevasses that had luckily been pushed back together as the glacier made its way further down the valley. Around noon we picked a spot with a great view and our guide laid down a mat for us to have lunch on. A nice added bonus was that he scooped up some glacier water and used a jet boil to heat it up and we all got to have a hot chocolate on the glacier with our lunch! After lunch we continued exploring and we found these areas that used to be small lakes on the glacier but just had roughly an inch or two of water sitting in the basin. All this glacier water of course brings with it a fine grain silt and that often coated the bottom of these lakes. With the crampons on we would walk out into these lakes and it felt like walking on water. As our guide liked to say this is where you can get your "Jesus" pictures of you walking on water. Soon we came across this area that we like to call "The field of Toupees". There was some form of lichen/moss that was growing on the rocks and ice in only one spot on the glacier. They looked like little toupees for the chucks of ice sticking up! The nice thing about the hike was that we had endless amounts of ice cold glacier water to fill up our water bottles with and boy did that taste good! (Do not worry, the guide said it was ok to drink). For a fun surprise our guide gave us all a Twizzlers and we bit off each end and used the Twizzlers as a straw to drink glacier water out of one of the beautiful blue pools. It was the coolest thing! Unfortunately Adam got a little too excited and forgot to remove his backpack before drinking; luckily Ashley's water bottle floats! We hiked about 6 miles on the glacier that day and were back to our car by 5pm that night. It was such an incredible experience and one we will remember for the rest of our lives!

Adam putting on his crampons before we head onto the glacier!

Our guide showing us a Moulin!

Ashley standing over a crevasse.

Our walking on water pictures!

The Field of Toupees

Using Twizzlers as drinking straws, notice the water bottle about to fall!

After the glacier hike we were exhausted and sore but it was totally worth it.  We headed back towards the main highway just to break up the long drive we had to go home. We even came across a cafe that had the best carrot cake we have ever had! Even after a fun filled weekend it was nice to come home to an actual bed and kitchen. 

Until next time...

-The A-Team