Back in August, Nyssa and I did a memorable four-day backpacking trip through the raw terrain of the Wrangell Mountains. Our route started in McCarthy and ended with a pickup at Skolai Pass, where Wrangell Mountain Air whisked us out in their impressive Cessna 185. Between those bookends was hard mountain travel through miles of freshly deglaciated terrain where the ground was shifting talus, loose moraines, and crumbling ice.
Our long weekend started slowly on Thursday with yummy breakfast burritos at the Potato before Kelly zipped us up to Kennicott with his ATV. In Kennicott we chatted with Elizabeth and Austin before heading up the sunny trail in the interior heat. I was quickly sweating and glad for my stylish zip-off pants.
At our turn east towards the pass to McCarthy Creek, we scrambled up the dirty lateral moraine and left the Root behind. Perched on top of the moraine, we paused to sit for lunch looking down on the ice of the Root, melted down 100 feet from its height 50 years ago.
On the hillside next to us, an oblivious grizzly was also lunching, but with a main course of blueberry ground squirrel. Done with lunch, we climbed steep fingers of tundra draped in afternoon sun to the pass to McCarthy Creek.
From there, we scree-skied down toward what was left of the McCarthy Creek Glacier.
Down in the valley, we intersected with the steep crumbling lateral moraines that were all that was left from where the glacier had once been.
The inside of the moraine was too steep and unstable to descend comfortably or even safely, and we walked down-valley past the crumbling rock windrow to get to the heart of the canyon. The drainage was choked with house-sized boulders where McCarthy Creek had eroded through the smaller material of the moraine, leaving just the giants behind.
With the evening shadows getting longer over the high peaks, we started up the last climb of the day. Here we found smooth fossils polished by the creek pouring down bedrock slides. Many peaks here are built from the volcanic arc that rose from the ancient ocean - it's mind boggling to see pieces of these prehistoric sea beds clinging to the shoulders of shield volcanoes. In fact, Mount Wrangell itself is still an active volcano, steaming in the thin air of the chilly elevations.
The sun was setting over the huge peaks by the time we finished climbing up the glacier and stepped out onto the pass to the West Fork.
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To the southeast, the glaciated hulks of the University Peaks caught fire in the last golden rays of the day.
Descending from the pass was a headache - we worked our way down steep snow and ice, around cliffs, and over exposed loose rock until we were off the headwall and into the hanging bowl.
Setting up camp in the fading light in the only dry and flat spot in the basin, we watched a group of climbers zigzag slowly upwards for over an hour through the cliffs and crevasses as the last light evaporated into blackness. Watching the dots of their headlamps finally crest the ridge and disappear on the other side, we felt bad for them knowing there was likely nowhere even remotely acceptable to camp for several hours on the other side. Wrangell–St. Elias National Park is bigger than Switzerland, but has fewer than 100 miles of maintained trails meaning this group would be choosing between ice, rock, or brush in the dark.
We woke on Friday to find another beautiful bluebird day which we hoped would bring us down to and across the West Fork Glacier, over Pass 6420, and to the Regal Glacier. Mountain goats watched us suspiciously as we dropped towards the West Fork. Starfishing down a steep gully, our final descent of the lateral moraine was nasty. There are ways through, but I think more guaranteed options are further up the glacier.
On the ice, the glacier was not as flat as we'd hoped it might be, but instead staircases of endless slippery ridges, valleys, and meltwater streams. Looking up, the glacier’s icefall was magnificent, a frozen explosion of seracs. I felt like this was the tour of Regal Mountain, just like it would seem for most of this trip.
Sheep and glittering quartz crystals led the climb toward 6420 Pass. Glaciers here have retreated miles since their Little Ice Age maximum in the 1800s. These valleys that now look like giant piles of rocks were buried in hundreds of feet of ice just 150 years ago.
The glacier here is nearly gone—just lingering scraps clinging to the valley floor.
From the pass, Frederika Mountain towered above shimmering aquamarine pools of meltwater. They looked deceptively warm and inviting for a quick swim.
The descent on the far side was steep and sketchy: cliffs, old ice, and neve. Below, a series of waterfalls sliced through sedimentary layers, leaving caves and alcoves that we carefully traversed above and past.
Friday night finds us looking for a campsite in the brush, cobbles, and boulders of the old lateral moraine of the Regal. It takes us awhile to find a sort of flat and sort of smooth spot, and we’re tired and hungry when we set up camp and crawl in for the night.
Saturday’s itinerary is to cross the Regal Glacier, cross the Rohn Glacier, climb up and over the pass to the Frederika Glacier, then descend the Frederika. The day begins with the descent down the big marbles of the moraine to the Regal.
On the Regal, crevasses and spines of ice force endless zigzags around the chasms in the ice.
At the confluence between the two rivers of ice, a fast and surprisingly efficient traverse through the icy moraine lands us on the Rohn Glacier. The Rohn drains off Regal Mountain (13,845 ft), one of the highest peaks in the Wrangells. Nearby Mount Blackburn, at 16,390 ft, is the second-highest volcano in North America. The Rohn is smoother for a while and making some easier and faster miles is nice.
The easy travel comes to a sudden screeching halt when the time comes to get off the Rohn. Between us and the hillside, is a 40-foot tall overhanging wall of ice covered in a jumble of rocks from kitty litter to boulders - all of which are poorly attached. Getting off is brutal, we treadmill back and forth and up and down through unstable moraine, collapsing holes, overhung ice until we find a non-vertical egress. Like last time, it is more mellow up-glacier.
It’s a relief to be off the Rohn and climbing above the ice. We follow ridges of rock that connect to meadows of tundra. Under our feet, the ground sparkles with geodes - what a magical place.
At the pass, a small patch of glacier clings stubbornly to life. We’re hungry, but the cold wind up here bites and we have miles to make, so we take in the recently deglaciated exposed Martian landscape and start our decent down the cold ice towards the Frederika.
After descending enough to escape the icy cold of the pass, we stop for a snack. Sitting on blocky rocks between a steep tumbling creek and the gray ice of the glacier, our eyes catch the flash of a vein of pyrite. We admire the crystalline fools gold then keep going.
Reaching the edge of the Frederika, we find another geologic miracle: a recently drained glacier outburst lake. Dammed by ice of the Frederika, the empty lake is a perfect tub of fine silt, stranded icebergs marooned across the floor like broken ships. For someone whose every day is dominated by protecting civilization against these cataclysmic features, just stumbling across one by accident is an extraordinary treat for me.
Outburst floods from these glacier dammed lakes — or “jökulhlaups” — can release the equivalent of months or even years of river flow in a matter of hours. They reshape valleys, strand icebergs, flood communities, and leave behind eerie, bathtub-like basins just like the one we stumbled into.
Eventually Nyssa drags me away from sciencing, and we hop up onto the Frederika. The glacier surface is smooth and we cruise down the glacier. Miles of fast walking in Kahtoolas on the hard ice chews up our feet - it comes as a relief when we reach the toe of the Frederika, slide off the ice, and rip off the microspikes.
The day’s final challenge is the chaos of navigating the terminal moraine to camp on the far side of the proglacial lake. Tucked behind willows and an old ridge of moraine, we’re protected from the katabatic winds rushing down the glacier, the spot is an awesome place to crawl in for the night.
On Sunday morning we wake with just seven miles standing between us and our flight back from Skolai Pass. The first mile rolls quickly by as we connect old gravel bars before we disappear into the second mile of tangled willow bushwhacks and moraine.
Then we leave the valley bottom behind and the terrain gradually opens from trip lines of willow to tundra. Here, fall colors are catching fire with yellows and reds stitched to the slopes. At first faint, a growing trail carries us above the brush and to sweeping views of the Seven Sisters.
A couple more miles and Skolai Pass spreads in front of us. Skolai has been a travel corridor for thousands of years. Ahtna and Upper Tanana Athabascans used it for hunting and trade, crossing between the Copper River Basin and the Yukon. Today it’s still one of the most accessible gateways into the park - if bushwhacking or bushplanes are accessible.
At Skolai, the wind is flowing through the valley from the west while clouds stream off the peaks.
In the cool mountain air, we wait for the pickup. My feet and brain feel pretty destroyed from miles upon miles of exposure, moraine, and nasty glacier. I’m happy to read and listen to the wind until the buzz of Wrangell Mountain Air’s 185 cuts through the silence.
When the bush plane gently touches down on the tundra strip, we toss in our backpacks, crawl in after them, then roar back into the air behind the powerful motor. Gliding back to McCarthy thru one of Alaska’s wildest ranges, we pass goats and sheep teetering on cliff faces, waterfalls carving into mountainsides, and the boiling gray of huge glacial rivers.
This is a trip I won’t forget any time soon and is deserving of a spot on the Best Of List.
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