In June of this year, I was fortunate enough to travel to Alaska for two weeks. Nancy and I had journeyed to Alaska in 2009, and were thrilled with visits to Denali National Park, Seward, Homer and a float plane visit to the Katmai National Park for bear viewing. In recent years, I had become enthralled with the non-fiction books by Tom Kizzia (Cold Mountain Path and Pilgrim's Progress) and the Alaska fiction writer Dana Stabenow. They both wrote wonderful books about McCarthy Alaska and the formation of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This area was the focus of my visit, although I was also able to visit Chugach State Park (largest state park in U.S. and larger than Rocky Mtn. NP in Colorado), Whittier, Girdwood, and the city of Anchorage.
Alaska deserves more than two weeks or even two years. There are 12,000 named rivers and streams and more than 20,000 named and unnamed mountain peaks. I selected early June because our 2009 visit was in the fall and wished to avoid the peak of the summer mosquito season (mostly successful).
I had a rudimentary scheduled planned, but allowed for weather issues and new discoveries to dictate where I went.
I probably spent too much time looking for moose, one of photographic objectives. There are 1,200 moose living within the city limits of Anchorage and I hiked many miles in their parks and open spaces without seeing any. In the spring moose, deer and elk are hiding with their newborns and not active. Fall would have yielded better results.
I love to photography waterfalls and spring is the best time to find them rushing full. Whenever I had rainy or foggy weather, I switched to hiking to waterfalls.
As I identified plants on these hikes, I noticed many of their names ended in "berry". I realized I was seeing the flowers of these plants and that bears are not interested in the flowers as much as they are the berries which appear later in the summer. I did carry bear spray, but had no need for it. Also, even the rainy, cloudy days were not cold (50-60 degrees). At several locations, I was above 3,000 ft. in elevation and those areas still had ice on pond edges and some vegetation had not greened up yet. Still beautiful.
Wrangell Mountains from the McCarthy Road
Red Elderberry flowers. (Right) Campbell Creek Estuary Park Trail.
(Left) Trail to Thunderbird Falls. (Above) Giant thimble berry leaves, one of the most predominant plants on my hikes. Salmon berries were the second most populist plants along the trails.
Upper and Lower Thunderbird Falls, Chugach State Park
South Falls, Chugach State Park
After a few days in Chugach State Park near Palmer, I headed to Glenallen which was my base for exploring McCarthy and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I did not have glacier viewing on my list of things to see, but when the Matanuska Glacier pops up on the horizon, it was worth a few photos (above and below) from two different perspectives.
One cool surprise was the color of the emerging aspen and birch trees along the Glen Highway. The leaves are greenish, but the stands have an almost fall look of yellow when viewed as a whole.
Copper River drainage at the beginning of the McCarthy Road. Winter ice and snow carve these glacier-fed river basins wide, leaving miles of exposed rock and gravel when the waters subside in the summer.
A wonderful surprise -- not on any maps or guides I had was Liberty Falls at the beginning of the McCarthy Road.
I have to add a bit of disclaimer here. Most folks drive or fly into McCarthy Alaska to visit the historic Kennecott Copper mine works at the end of the road. This mine was one of the largest deposits of copper in the world when discovered in 1904. The Kennecott Copper Corporation was formed to extract the copper oar, bag it, and ship by rail and ship to Tacoma, Washington for final refining. The McCarthy road is the original railroad line that ran from McCarthy to ?
I did not spend much time at the mill site above McCarthy. To learn more visit: https://www.nps.gov/wrst/learn/historyculture/kennecott-mines-national-historic-landmark.htm