EDIT: Photo links here are all dead as of 2017, but you can see the photos and trip report here
The Objective:
As seen from afar
![]()
The numbers that shaped our world:
Size of Wrangell St Elias NP and Preserve: 13,200,000 acres or 20,587 square miles
Distance traveled: 430 miles: ~220 miles on land and ~210 floating
Time: 33 days: 25 on foot / 8 paddling
Distance on-trail: 0
Resupplies: 3
Bears: 14
Other park visitors: 0
Jars Nutella eaten: 5
Gallons olive oil used: 0.7
Hours of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performed: 1.2
Width of tent space space, per individual: 15”
Width of foam sleeping pads: 20”
On the long, unpaved road to McCarthy, with the bumpin sound system.
Almost midnight at the McCarthy airstrip with a great bivy spot
When Chuck Norris goes to bed at night he checks underneath for Garry Green.
Cisco won the rock-paper-scissors for shotgun seating
We were dropped off at Tebay Lakes
And as Garry buzzed away we found ourselves very far from anyone else.
At the end of the first day we could look down the Bremner valley and see the Copper River on the horizon. On day 30 we camped at the Bremner / Copper confluence and could see our first campsite 25 miles up the valley. Almost full circle.
Hauling the Great Grey Whale
The fireweed was going off in the smoky valleys.
Ready for the first of many balls-deep glacially fed river crossings.
Like this one, where we waited until morning to cross so as to avoid swimming.
Big, unnamed peaks every which way. This was the first time I’ve spent three days walking up a single valley.
Over a pass…
And onto a grizzly bear trail
In places, the bears don’t have a normal path. Generation after generation steps in the footprints of the last bear, carving long trains of divots in the tundra.
Shaking the reindeer lichen out of the VE-25.
After the first few days of 80 degrees and sunny, the weather shifted to cool and damp and is probably that way today too.
No photo-choppery. Serious.
Good thing I didn’t bring any down-filled gear.
Down the Klu River valley
The maps cover four times the area of the 7.5-minute series I’m used to using. For the few days it seemed like we were moving at a glacial pace until I adjusted to the scale.
I began noticing the first fall colors with the shift to cooler weather. This must’ve been around August 6th.
The first glacier crossing was only a mile or two long and rarely crevassed. Compared to the miles of wet scree and talus moraines we crossed that day, walking on the ice was cake.
To minimize the chance of bear encounters, sleeping tent, kitchen, and food storage were spread far apart. Yellow tent on the right, blue and white speck of a kitchen Mid in the middle.
Not a big truck.
We arrived to our first resupply site two days early. The Park maintains the bunkhouse from a small mine that operated for a few years in the 1930s and employs a volunteer to look after it in the summer.
![]()
Shortly after we arrived, a pair of Park Rangers flew in on a mission to aversively condition the local grizzle bears. Joe noticed one nearby and the commotion that ensued was spectacular.
In addition to good shots, they proved to be fine scrabble players too.
We spent down time exploring the area
And cutting unnecessary doo-dads off packs, you know, like zipper pulls.
The snipping from Cisco’s pack.
The NPS employees gave us coffee since we were too lite-minded to bring the fuel or the grounds to make it while traveling.
![]()
Bookmarks