In August, I took a trip back to the historic town of McCarthy, Alaska. The town, nestled deep in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is a popular destination for those seeking a truly remote experience with nature. This essentially off-grid, isolated town stands as a monument to older, slower ways of life.
Offered in McCarthy are flight tours by the Wrangell Mountain Air company. Based out of the town, the service provides numerous flight excursions throughout the national park, ranging from quick but beautiful 50-minute flights up a glacier and ice-fall to breathtaking 120-minute flights across ice fields and around 18,000-foot mountains.
For my trip, I chose the 70-minute Thirteen Glacier Tour, which soars over glaciers, takes you alongside the Mile High Cliffs and down Skolai Valley, and concludes with a trip over the towering Kennicott Glacier and Stairway Icefall before heading back to McCarthy.
The flight begins at McCarthy Airport 15Z, a small gravel runway filled with bush planes of all types. My tour took place in the plane pictured above, which, surprisingly, fit six of us (including the pilot). Lucky enough to get the co-pilot seat (though not lucky enough to be allowed to fly), I was front and center for the entire flight around the park. We took off heading south and flew over the McCarthy town center before diverting eastward toward Sourdough Peak, which hosts a massive rock glacier sliding down its southern face. From here, we diverted north to the Mile High Cliffs. While not actually a mile high, they still rose prominently from the river down below.
Turning northeast again, we flew along the length of the Chitistone River, named so after the Native word chiti-, or “copper,” which is found all over the region and what made McCarthy and the nearby mining town of Kennicott so prosperous throughout the early 20th century. From here, we’re flying deep into the heart of Skolai Valley, where, in my opinion, the most breathtaking sights are held. The slideshow below shows but a sliver of the views you get on this tour.
The Seven Sisters Peaks are the next major sight of the tour. These mountains absolutely blew me away with their impressive beauty. Below are just a few of the views I had.
Continuing now northwest, we came across even more beautiful mountain views, along with lush green landscapes, as shown in the slideshow below.
Probably one of my favorite parts of the whole flight was seeing brilliant blue melt ponds along the glacial landscapes. This water, blue from the melting ice having been compressed for so long, looked like something out of this world.
Crevasses and cuts in the ice made for a truly bizarre look at what, from afar, seems like smooth ice. But, up close, the jagged nature of the glacier is revealed.
Finishing up the flight back toward McCarthy, we passed a small group of Dall sheep resting on a mountainside. These funny creatures were just having a quick break on the slope, munching away at tundra vegetation and licking the salt deposits that can be found all over the mountain.
Back to McCarthy, we passed over Root Glacier and the Stairway Icefall, the second-highest icefall in the world after Mount Everest’s famous Khumbu Icefall. Here, signs of climate change can be seen all around. Pieces of ice continuously dislodge and break off from the icefall, posing a hazard to the few brave enough to climb its face. Waterfalls flow steadily down as well, as seen in the image to the right.
Doing a flightseeing tour from McCarthy is, in my opinion, an absolute must for anyone visiting the remote Alaskan town. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to get an aerial look at the nation’s largest national park.
Nick Gentile Photography 