The glorious end of the road - Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

Sunset, April, 2001 by Jeff Phillips

Discover the real Alaska at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

Who in their right mind would look forward to driving over 60 miles of muddy washboarded, potholed, narrow gravel road? Well, me, for one. My fantasy of Alaska has always been to drive out to the end of the road and head out into the unknown. Which is why I've driven to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. This is, I figured, about as close as I'd ever get to the end-of-the-road essence of Alaska.

Arriving in a downpour, I park the car, cross the footbridge over the Kennicott River, and walk in to the collection of historic buildings that is the bush village of McCarthy. I'm looking for St. Elias Alpine Guides.

"Welcome to Alaska," Bob Jacobs says as I hang my wet jacket on a peg in the old powerhouse that is office and training area for his service. Two guides are playing chess in the kitchen; another is stoking the woodfired stove.

Jacobs has been climbing and exploring here for 23 years, yet he's the first to admit he has only scratched the surface. At 13.2 million acres--think six Yeilowstones or almost all of West Virginia--Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest park in the nation.

Pulling out a map, he gives me a quick orientation. Just a few miles north of town (I'm disappointed to learn locals still use cars to get around beyond the end of the road) is the newest addition to the park, the amazingly well-preserved millworks of the Kennecott Copper Mine. It is also the location of the recently refurbished Kennicott Lodge, which sits at the foot of the Kennicott Glacier. To the north rises the jagged spine of the Wrangell Mountains. To the east the St. Elias Mountains stretch across the border into Canada's Kluane National Park, and to the south the snowy Chugach Mountains are capped by the Bagley Icefield.

Looking at the tiny dot of McCarthy surrounded by the immensity of this spectacularly rugged wilderness, I wonder where I could possibly go first.

Glaciers the easy way

"There are two things every visitor to Wrangell--St. Elias must do," says Jacobs as he grabs his hiking boots: "See some of this park from the air, and walk out on a glacier. Since this isn't great flying weather, let's get out on the ice."

We drive (though local shuttles run from McCarthy to Kennicott) to the historic Kennecott Copper Mine. From there it's an easy walk to the edge of Root Glacier, which slams into the Kennicott Glacier not far from where we stand. Strapping on wickedly spiked footwear called crampons--essential gear--Jacobs shows me the flat-footed, Godzilla-like stomp that makes walking on ice surprisingly easy. Crunching over the top of a ridge, we drop into a large bowl where rivulets of water gather to form a torrent that plunges into a crevasse. This is no place to take a tumble. Peering over the edge, we look deep into the sapphire heart of the glacier.

As we climb to the top of a compression ridge, the clouds lift a little--enough so that we can see several miles up the convoluted, moraine-striped glacier to Stairway Icefall. Because I still haven't grasped the scale of the park, I have a hard time believing Jacobs's assertion that the dark crack across the face of the fall is actually a 300-foot-high cliff of ice.

Then the clouds descend, the rain closes in again, and Jacobs stops for a long, deep breath of the brisk air. "This is what Alaska is about," he says, taking in the view of the glaciers and green mountain flanks that surround us like walls. "No cars, no buildings, no lights, no people. Unlike anyplace else, once you set off here, you are totally on your own."

The town that copper built

Instead of spending the night in McCarthy, I opt for Kennicott Glacier Lodge at the mine. My room is small and simply furnished, with a shared bath down the hail, but has a view of the glacier. The following morning, the clouds are breaking up, so I race down to the pay phone to book an afternoon flightseeing tour.

After a satisfying family-style breakfast, there's time for the guided tour of the Kennecott Copper Mine buildings, including the fascinating inner workings of the immense, rust red mill stacked in ramshackle splendor against the massive mountainside.

Copper was discovered up on Bonanza Peak in 1900, but it wasn't until a railroad line to the Pacific was completed in 1911 that the mill roared into full production. Dianne Milliard, who works for Kennicott-McCarthy Wilderness Guides, leads our group up through the labyrinthine works of concentrating tanks, shaker tables, roller mills, and jaw crushers to the top of the 14-story mill.

"Anywhere from 800 to 1,200 tons went through the mill per day" says Milliard, who explains that the ore, which was carried from the mine in tram buckets, was concentrated here, then shipped to Tacoma for refining. By the time it closed in 1938, Kennecott had produced $200 million in copper, silver, and gold.

We wander past a store, power plant, hospital, bunkhouse, and other buildings that the National Park Service intends to stabilize and preserve in a state of "arrested decay." I find myself hoping that's all they do. In this weathered condition, the mill complex bears stark witness to the ruggedness of this country and the people who mined its riches.