A Glacial Honeymoon

Wrangell St. Elias National Park in eastern Alaska is bigger than Switzerland! There aren't trails in Alaska's national parks so we had a topo map, compass, and Falk's sense of direction (mine has been on the loose for awhile now).

We backpacked a teensy section of Wrangell-St. Elias along the Root Glacier, up the wrong pass, back down the wrong pass, up the right pass, down the right pass, along a water fall, and down to the McCarthy River back to the town of McCarthy.



Alaska now has palm trees due to global warming! Who knew.

No....not yet. We had a layover in LA on the way there and spent it with Endie and Jens (Falk's cousin).




Hortense's sun hat.



Climbing rather than doing a river crossing...


This campsite was my favorite. You can see the ice fall behind it. We arrived in the pouring rain at 3am the night before (it never gets dark!) and dried out the next day.











Backpacking on the Root Glacier near McCarthy.



Kennicott copper mining town. The town was so isolated that, after the industry faded, the town wasn't ransacked.















There were more twin moose this year supposedly because the cows were better nourished.







Backpacking in Denali National Park west of Wrangell-St. Elias.












Falk reading, appropriately, John Muir's Travels in Alaska.