I decided to make this into 2 posts... this one with photos from McCarthy and Kennicott specifically, and the other with photos from the drive to McCarthy and back to Anchorage since that was such a large part of what made the trip awesome.
Let's start with getting your bearings. The 3 maps here get increasingly zoomed in. I added some letters to each image to reference specific things (you may want to click on the images to be able to see them better). In this first image, the area outlined in green on the right side of the image is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Near the middle of that outlined area is letter A, which is where McCarthy is. Anchorage is labeled on the far left side of the image. The last portion of the trip was on the 60-ish mile unpaved McCarthy Road which is over an old railroad bed (the tracks are still there under the road) and is quite scenic.
A "little" closer in, this is just looking at the McCarthy/Kennicott area. Letter B is as far as you can drive on the road, and then you have to walk across a bridge to get to McCarthy (letter C). From B to C is about a mile. There is a shuttle in McCarthy that can bring you to Kennicott (letter D), which is a pretty flat 5 mile walk.
Letter E in this 3rd image is as far as you can drive on the McCarthy Road. There is a parking lot there, and then you walk across the bridge (letter F) and down the road to McCarthy (the center of town is at letter G). There is a vehicle bridge at letter H, but only McCarthy residents are allowed to use it. The distance on the road between the two letter I's is about a mile.
And now, onto the photos.
This is the bridge... looking from the parking lot toward McCarthy.
The McCarthy train station, now a museum. This is part of the railroad that was converted to the only road through this area.
These are all the establishments in both Kennicott and McCarthy.
"Downtown McCarthy" (the next 2 photos)
Our campfire one night. :)
A few notes about McCarthy... dogs are all off-leash. People seem to be friendly to everyone, and several people invited us to their weekly softball game. Everyone is invited, residents, visitors, and their dogs. It's very informal, evidenced in part by the dogs running around the field, chasing the ball, etc. I missed a great photo here... at one point there were several dogs sitting around the pitcher, waiting patiently for her to throw the ball. I'm surprised it only happened once!
While there aren't many pay phones left in the country anymore, there are several around rural Alaska.
Now onto Kennicott...
The copper mine was in operation from 1911 to 1938. It was a self-contained town, complete with a school, hospital, recreation hall, and general store. The National Park Service acquired many of the buildings and lands in 1998 and began renovating the buildings that could be saved after being abandoned for 60 years.
The building is one of the several buildings in Kennicott. Between the building and the mountains in the background is a glacier. It just looks like a big area of dirt or sand, but that's actually glacial silt covering the ice that's underneath. The rangers there told us that when the mine was in operation, many kids there didn't even know there were mountains on the other side of the glacier. That's how much of the ice has melted in the past 100 years or so. Pretty crazy!
This is the actual mine. It is currently closed to visitors while they renovate it. As one ranger said, they're going to "re-attach it to the hillside". It's neat to see that they're renovating the buildings there, even if it does mean we couldn't see one of the most interesting parts of the town.
Another view of the glacier... in this one you can see the part of the glacier that is in the mountains (I'm sure that specific part has a name, but I'm not that smart).
There were some buildings we could go in and explore, and that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing the views these people had, and they weren't too shabby! I got into taking photos of the windows framing the views. You'll see several included in here. :)
A couple of the buildings that haven't been renovated yet.
And one building that has been renovated. I think this might have been the manager's house... something like that.
The building with the smoke stacks sticking out of the top is where they generated power. We met a very nice man in there that was contemplating how the whole thing would have worked. We ended up talking to him for quite awhile and learned (among many other things) that he owns a company that makes man-made diamond. Get that mind with 2 meteorologists and a hydrologist/engineer, and you've got lots of questions and discussion about how things work. We ended up seeing that man a few more times on this trip... he was fun to talk to!
This is inside the "power plant". I know there was a railroad going here, but it's still impressive that they got these big pieces of equipment in there and built this whole mill and town from nothing.
After exploring that building, we walked on down the road toward the glacier. The day started out cloudy but the clouds broke up and left us with a beautiful warm, sunny day. We decided to stop and relax and enjoy everything around us, with a great view of the mountains and glacier. I had fun taking all kinds of photos of the area.
There's lots of ice under all that silt. You lose perspective around there, but I can assure you that if a human was standing out there, they'd appear pretty small in this photo.
Zooming in on Kennicott Glacier
Zooming in on some of the silty areas. There was so much detail to take in if you took the time to do so.
Looking back at the town from our resting spot
You can go out on the glacier, and we saw several people on the trail with crampons, but we did not do that on this trip. It sure seemed to be something that would fall in the category of "everybody's doing it!!" but I doubt our trip was any less because we didn't do that one thing.
As we were sitting there enjoying the view in front of us, I layed down to soak in the sun and saw a great view behind us. So while this photo looks upside-down, trust me that it's correct. Imagine yourself laying down looking at the view behind you. THAT'S the point. :)
One of the old mining machines
Overlooking the area from up next to the mine.
The top of the mine building.
A waterfall we saw along our hike... very pretty!
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