Wrangell-St. Elias: Scenic Overflights
With our backpacking trip into Donoho Basin complete and our trip into Bremner Mining Camp a few days out, we thought a couple scenic overflights were in order. It’s amazing what we saw up there. I think I am forever ruined about what will excite me in the future. I can’t remember the last time I felt so blown away by what I was seeing. Oh wait, yes I can. It was in Denali looking at the Mountain. Alaska is awesome. The first flight we would head south to the Tana River, to the Tana Glacier, Bagley Icefield, and Icy Bay before heading back along Baldwin and Chitina Glaciers. It was roughly 350 air miles.
After landing and grabbing lunch we headed back up in the air and out towards Tebay Lakes, the Bremner River, Fan Glacier, then north past the Chitina River to Hidden Creek and the Kennicott Glacier. This flight was about 185 air miles.
After this flight, we headed into the backcountry for our Bremner Mining Camp trip. Also, great trip and weather. After that trip, the weather made a turn for the worse and we were worried that if we did another air-supported backcountry trip, we might get stuck and not make our flight back home from Anchorage. So we called an audible and decided to hang around McCarthy and do one last scenic flight. The weather was a little iffy, but since we didn’t have a particular agenda for this flight we were able to seek out the good weather. We went up the Nizina River to the Nizina, Federika, and Russel Glaciers via Skolai pass and then over to the Bonanza Ridge area including the Stairway Icefall, Root/Gates/Kennicott glaciers. The lighting wasn’t as spectacular as the other flights, but it was still a good opportunity to shoot some other areas of the park we had yet to see. It was also about 185 air miles.
I mentioned earlier that we were also supposed to hit Skolai Pass area for backpacking. I didn’t really know what I was missing until this flight. If you go to Wrangell for a fly-in trip, Skolai is like a mini Switzerland. If I get the chance to go back I hope that I can get a few days in that area.
After that flight our trip was pretty much over. We headed back to Anchorage to drop off the car. Then we headed out for some celebratory drinks. On my 3rd beer I felt REALLY tipsy, even sitting down. I looked at my drink and thought to myself, I better slow down here a little. Then I looked up and realized that I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. It wasn’t the alcohol making me feel tipsy, but rather we were in the middle of a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. The ENTIRE building was shaking and people started standing up. Apparently that is a thing? After that we headed out to dinner and had a few more drinks before calling it a night to make our early flights the next morning.
Overall I shot around 6500 photos in 10 days pairing that down to about 500. The majority of those shots came during the scenic flights. It was totally amazing to see this park from the air. You lose all sense of scale when you are up there. Mountains that look close enough to crash into are a quarter mile away. Icebergs the size of houses are just dots in the bay. It’s the only way to really “see” the majority of the park. It’s a wild and untamed place. You could take any individual feature from this park whether it’s a mountain, waterfall, glacier, lake, etc. and place it in the lower 48 and it would be its own National Park. But here, it’s just another unnamed feature. Alaska really is the last frontier. It’s so freaking big and majestic that you can’t help but be humbled by it.
Cheers and happy travels!
