Wrangell-St Elias National Park

Nabesna Road leading into Wrangell-St Elias

After doing the Top of the World Highway and crossing into Alaska, I was headed towards the town of Tok and then west towards Glennallen.  In between lies Wrangell-St. Elias National Park where I planned to set up camp for a while and spend a few days in one spot.   After almost a month on the road I needed to hole up somewhere and simply stay put.  Wrangell-St. Elias Park is our nation's largest National Park, six times the size of Yellowstone, consisting of over 13,000,000 acres.  That's correct, 13 million! Nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the United States are here and four of them soar to over sixteen thousand feet. There are more than one hundred and fifty glaciers as well with one, the Malaspina, being larger than Rhode Island.  Approximately 25% or 5000 square miles, of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is glacial ice.  This represents about 60% of the glacial ice in the entire state of Alaska. It's an impressive area to put it mildly.  Another major plus is that it receives very few visitors, especially this part of the park.  No major towns near any of the entrances and no services once in the park.  There are a few old mining towns, one being McCarthy, which I'll end up in later on this trip and a few private holdings.  It's the kind of place you can drive into, get out of your vehicle and literally walk off into true wilderness. If you like remote, this is the place.  In the picture above you could walk for hundred of miles on either side of the road before crossing another road. I ended up not having the best weather days while here and really didn't get to see much of the mountains but had a great time with some good wildlife viewing.  I was able to get a couple of peeks at the summit of Mount Sanford (Elev 16,237 ft) on the drive in as the clouds parted for me.  Due to the weather I didn't stay as long as planned and only spent two nights in this part of the park.

Beautiful red fox showed up in camp late one evening.  I suspect he'd been receiving handouts at some point due to his lack of fear approaching my camp. He really had no fear of me unless I approached him directly.  Even with Petey raising hell he didn't seem to mind.  Ended up putting Petey away as I wasn't sure what could come of that. Shame that people out there are uninformed and feed wild animals.  The animal then lose their fear of humans, which in the long run, is harmful to the animal.  He got nothing from me and I eventually ran him off but it was a great encounter and I was able to get some good pictures.

 Grey Wolf spotted on the road 

 Small black bear with a nice catch

Trumpet Swan on one of the many lakes along the Nabesna road

View of the lake I was camped on

 A private hunting camp located at the end of the Nabesna road.

At the end of the Nabesna road, you can park and then hike in about two miles to the old Rambler Mine.  Lots of old buildings and abandoned equipment to check out.  The view from up top is good, but I was basically in the clouds up top so didn't take any pictures worth posting.  Saw lots of bear sign on the hike in but no bears. Hiked into this shaft a little ways and then thought better of it and came out.  Being in here by yourself is no place to get injured.

Funny story on the picture below.  After leaving the park after I didn't get out until late on the third day.  Since it was late I pulled off after reaching the highway and started down a gravel road and went in about 4 or 5 miles looking for a spot to camp.  Came around the corner and came upon this mess.  As I was preparing to turn around a guy comes out with a big ass machete and I guess once he sees that I wasn't a government official or even worse law enforcement, he waves and starts talking, and talking, and talking, and talking!  I so wanted to take his picture as he was one funny looking dude but he'd have none of that.  Told me he was being hunted by the CIA and he'd been back up the road for about 3 months hiding out.  I inquired as to what he'd done and he said he wasn't quite sure, but he was being hunted nonetheless.   Didn't take me long to figure out he was a simply a nut job living back in here for whatever reason. I think he was lonely and was just glad to have someone to ramble on with. Wanted to know if Petey and I wanted to come inside his tent and look around but I wasn't real comfortable with that.  He seemed nice enough, but that big ass machete dangling from his hand convinced me that shooting the shit with him from the truck would do just fine.  Was able to sneak in this one picture.  Can't imagine what he had going on inside that mess. I know the inside of his head was going in many, many directions.  Oh, the people you can run into out here.