Hey Folks

OK – we’ve officially left Denali behind. For a while. I’m going to post some images from Wrangell St. Elias National Park, because it’s been a while .. must be a few weeks at least. This photo was taken on a backpacking trip I did this August, near Tebay Lakes. We flew in to the backcountry, after waiting around McCarthy all day for the weather to clear – we’d flown in earlier in the day, only to be turned back by a dense fog, less than a mile from our landing strip — arrgghhh – so close! Then we hiked for 10 days, and had an absolute blast. The weather couldn’t have been better – you know it’s good weather in Alaska when I’m swimming in lakes and showering in waterfalls. The blueberries were out of this world. And now, most of them are in Virginia, where Sergei, one of the folks on the trip, returned to. He ate more blueberries than I’ve ever seen anyone eat. We saw 4 black bears while we were on this trip, and also saw 3 grizzly bears. Rather close – but very cool. We also had some of the best campsites in the world, bar none! A couple of the guys had their tents out on this little knoll here .. not a bad place to set up for the night!

The river you can see is the Bremner River, running west from near the eastern end of the Chugach mountains towards the Copper River. The Copper runs south, and is actually the park’s eastern border. The Copper River is coming in to this photo on the right hand side, and it’s junction with the Bremner is just out of the frame on the left, behind a ridge. I forget the name of the glacier coming from the west. It’s easy to forget the names of glaciers in this park, as there are literally hundreds of them – many with no name at all. We had a great night camped up here, and I’m really looking forward to returning to this area next year for another trip – we’ll be out 12 nights, and it’ll be absolutely AWESOME! The Tebay Lakes area is especially beautiful, and this year was my first time in there. I was blown away by how cool it is, very different to what I was expecting. The hiking was pretty ruugged, but well worth the effort.

I’ll talk some more about this trip over the next few days.

Cheers

Carl