Wrangel St. Elias National Park

This park sits at the southeast corner of the Alaska "mainland" up against the Canadian border. It is home to rugged snow capped peaks over 15,000' and 16,000' high, the second highest peaks in the state to those in Denali National Park and is home to a plethora of massive glaciers. It's also home to the tiny community of McCarthy (30 people in winter and roughly 200 in summer) and the last remaining saloon in any of the US national park system. A super cool, funky, quirky, artsy little village with art classes and shows, music festivals and good old fashioned mountain town fun straight out of the gold rush days in many ways.

It's a 60 mile, one way, dirt road to get into McCarthy, This one lane bridge sat 500' feet up above the river below.

Had to stop for this spruce grouse momma and her chicks along the way.

The Kennicott River through McCarthy coming off of the Root and Kennicott glaciers.

Samson, McCarthy's official town greeter.

Main Street in McCarthy.

When in a strange, funky place one should indulge in strange and funky drinks right? This oil can organic gin from Australia was actually REALLY good.

The Root Glacier a few miles above McCarthy. The layers of ice created over millenia reminded me of sandstone in the red rock deserts of southeast Utah.

After hiking up to the base of the glacier I hiked about another 1/2 mile up onto it for the perfect lunch spot.

This glacier was about a mile wide and starts about 23 miles back up in the Wrangel Mountains.

A frsh meltwater stream on top of the glacier.

While this might not look like it, this is still the bottom of the glacier. They grind up so much rock as they carve their way through the mountains that they deposit millions of tons of rocks and gravel as they melt and retreat. There is still a hundred feet of solid ice under this debris.

And finally, this is how they turn the lights on and off at the saloon in McCarthy;-)