Day 43: Tok to Tolsona

May 27, 2014

It was 37 and sunny this morning. We had a quiet night at our little trail head camping area last night. We were joined by 2 other passenger vehicles and and 18 wheeler. As we left this morning the snow capped mountains were pretty but difficult to see due to the haze and even more difficult to photograph.

Alaska needs rain. It was also quite windy making driving a little more challenging. The first part of the Tok Cut Off was very good road with no construction or frost heaves.

However, after about 20 miles it became a patchwork of gravel repaired areas with a quarter or half mile of decent then more gravel, rub board areas.

We did see a moose this morning on one of the rub board areas. He was far enough off the road in a pond that we were able to stop and go back and get his picture.

We also saw lots of trumpeter swans at a pond not far from Mentasta Lodge.

We arrived at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park about lunch time.

We talked with the ranger, Tiffany, for a good while. She was very nice and very helpful. Wrangell-St Elias is the largest national park at 13.2 million acres and also one of the newest national parks. The park contains the greatest collection of mountains over 16,000 feet on the continent and also the largest concentration of glaciers on the continent. To be so huge is has amazingly few visitors probably because it is not easy to visit. There are only 2 roads to access the park. The northern section is accessed by way of Nebesna Road in the community of Slana which is where we were today. The West side of the park is accessed by way of McCarthy Road which we plan to do next week when Barry and Donna are here. Otherwise one can hike in or have a guide fly you in to a remote area of the Park.

Nebesna Road is only 42 miles long, with only the first 16 miles being paved.

There are also 3 stream crossings, which can sometimes require 4-wheel drive, but today were dry. There are several trail heads on Nebesna Road and we did one relatively short hike today.

Most hikes are 2 day, or more, hikes. We saw only one other car the entire time we were there today. Wrangell is a beautiful area of remote wilderness. They do have some primitive cabins you can hike to and spend the night, or week if you like. We might consider doing this, for one night only, later in the summer. We also saw 2 more moose on our drive into the Park but they were too shy for us to get a picture.

After leaving the Park, we drove to Glennallen to our campground for the next 2 days, Tolsona Wilderness Campground. After being at Wrangell today it seems funny to call this place wilderness. There are 80 camp sites with hookups plus a laundry. It is very nice though. All the sites are on the creek and are nicely shaded with trees between the sites. For anyone headed this way, they also are a Good Sam and Passport America Park. We will be getting laundry done and some additional cleanup work done from the Top of the World trip, so that we will be ready to move on to Anchorage to await Barry and Donna's arrival on Saturday. There are also some trails here for us to explore tomorrow after the work is done.

By the way, we understand that the Kenai, where the largest fires were located, did get rain today and the smoke/haze is already improving.