Hey Folks,

Here’s another photo from my recent trip to the Wrangells. This is a photo of a couple of chunks of ice. I spent quite a bit of time right around this little area, watching the light – it’s amazing how much it changes in a very short time in the winter here.

I found some great pieces of ice and chunks and walls and all kinds of cool stuff. If it had been summer, I wouldn’t have been able to cross the river and lake to get to this part of the glacier.

Most folks ascend up the Kennicott Glacier from the east side, crossing over another glacier called the Root Glacier first. This time I hiked up the west side of the glacier, from below the terminal moraine. It was fantastic. As soon as I saw this area I knew I’d spend a good bit of time there, and ended up waiting out the afternoon (of course, I then messed up my leg, leaving me with a long hard, cold, sore clamber back to my camp in the dark).

The Kennicott Glacier is near the small town of Kennecott. Notice the 2 different spellings! The area was named after a naturalist, Robert Kennicott, who explored around Alaska sometime in the 19th century. The reason the town has a different spelling to the glacier is simple: a clerical error. The town was originally established for the Kennecott Mining Corporation, and they built a bunch of big mines in the area. They mainly mined for Copper, though there were gold mines in the vicinity. Everyone abandoned the town after the Company closed the mines down in the late 1930s. Nowadays I think there are 2 year round residents, and one of them, a fella named Chris, is house-sitting! Pretty quiet place.

The Kennicott Glacier is WAY cooler than the town. It’s pretty easy to get to and not very technical to travel on, but crampons are a good idea. I’ve hiked on both the Root and the Kennicott glaciers without crampons, but it can be a hassle sometimes, particularly the first 100 yards or so, if you access the glaciers via the usual trail out of town. Once you’re up on the ice though, the going is pretty easy, and it’s possible to cover a lot of ground pretty easily. I even took my mountain bike up there one year and spent a few hours riding around. There’s a section over on the Kennicott Glacier they call the Kennicott highway, a smooth flat section of ice that goes for 10-15 miles up towards Mount Blackburn. This section of the glacier is lower down toward the toe, near the terminal moraine.

I loved the way the light shone through the ice here. It’s kind of fascinating to me. The background is merely another chunk of ice, not 15′ away, so the foreground and the background are exactly the same subject, the same ice, yet so vastly different in this photo, merely because of the angle of light. Pretty cool, eh?

Winter hiking, Wrangell St. Elias National Park, Alaska

That peak there in the middle of the frame is called “Donoho Peak”. I kid you not! And folks ask why I love ths place? I even have my own mountain (misspelled though it is)!

This is me (of course) looking up towards the Wrangell Mountains. Mt. Blackburn is just out of the frame, a 16 500? mountain that rocks my world. The Kennicott Glacier roars down from the mountain on the west (our left) of Donoho Peak, and joins up with the Root Glacier which comes in from the right hand side of Donoho. This image was taken maybe 5 minutes after the previous one I posted, and maybe 15 yards away. Dramatically different view.

This is a good example of how much difference a dusting of snow can make. With no snow, this is all dirt and rock and moraine .. not very photogenic. The erosion wash that runs up towards the Kennicott Glacier here is normally flooding with glacial water, really dirty, super cold, fast, and not something you want to play around with. It’s about dried up by this time of year. This photo was taken about 30 minutes before my calf muscle tore, and I fell down and cried. Then I hobbled back to my camp, looking quite the wimp. It’s healed up pretty well by now though, which I’m happy about.

My dad, when I spoke with him about my injury, asked if I put ice on it. I said “uhhmmm, no.” The temperature was about 0? Fahrenheit when I got back to camp, and I was hardly going to ice down anything – making it colder didn’t seem like it was that crucial, at the time. I got inside my sleeping bag and whimpered myself to sleep. The next morning, of course, I could hardly walk. But I soldiered on, like a real trooper; a real bonafide Alaskan!

Cheers

Carl

PS – I didn’t REALLY cry. Or even whimpered. I think I did cuss a little though. Sorry mum! ?

Cheers

Carl

More Wrangell St. Elias National Park Photos.