Day 49: Glacier Hike

June 2, 2014

We had an early morning today with the alarm going off at 4:30. We had about a 2.5 hr drive to McCarthy – not that many miles but 60 of them were on a dirt road. We left promptly at 5:30 all excited about our days adventure of glacier hiking on the Root Glacier in Wrangell-St Elias National Park. Two of us had been on a glacier before but none of us had ever hiked on a glacier.

The drive was actually not as bad as we were afraid it might be.

Beginning of McCarthy Road

Sign at the beginning of the road

Typical stretch of the road near old railroad trestle

And you can't say you have a bad drive when on the way you stop for pictures of 5 moose. It was great! They were so big and some really big racks. We also saw trumpeter swans and mallard ducks and common merganser.

Yesterday we checked the weather with the ranger and were told that there was a 60% change of rain but “it probably won't because it never rains here.” Guess what? It definitely rained today. All day. The entire time we were on the glacier it rained. Most of the time it was pretty light rain and we all had on our rain gear so we hiked.

We arrived at the Wild Alpine office in McCarthy and were fitted with our crampons (like cleats for the ice) and given our trekking poles. We loaded up into the van for the 5 mile ride to Kennciott – the old copper mining town.

We actually had 3 guides with us today. The lead was McKinley and then 2 others she was training. Four of us to three of them. That was really personal attention. We hiked about 1.5 mile to the glacier, then put on the crampons and hiked on the glacier. It was AWSOME! We saw beautiful blue ice, got to drink some glacier water, saw large moulin (holes going to the bottom of the glacier) and in general just had a great time – even in the rain. It would have been better to have a beautiful sunny day so we could see all the wonderful mountains but then we may not have appreciated the glacier as much. Our guide was great and we can recommend Wild Alpine if anyone is interested. BTW – we used our TourSaver book and got 2 for price of 1 – a really good deal.

Part of glacier covered in silt and rocks

Track of our hike

After the hike we ate at Potato in McCarthy – really good hot sandwiches. Of course after hiking all day we were really hungry. We then hiked back to the truck and started our drive home. The road was in much worse condition after all the rain all day. You could barely tell the truck even had a tag when we got home. We saw one more moose on the way home.

Sign on the way back from McCarthy

Truck after the drive

We think it was the same as one we saw this morning but not quite sure. It was a wonderful day of new experiences with great friends. We all made it home safe and sound and know we are very blessed.