Route Finding on the Root Glacier

Root Glacier with Stairway Icefall in the background

Ice Cave

Relatively easy by Alaska standards, our most popular overnight backpack is the hike across the Root Glacier to Donoho Basin.  Texas Nick, 26, and I took off after work on Sunday to hike out the Glacier Trail, then across the glacier to camp by the first bear locker at Donoho Basin.  Since it is still always light,  it didn’t matter what time we left.  

Moulins are what scare me.  What if I slipped down one? 

On the ice halfway to the medial moraine, Nick’s right crampon snapped in the middle.  After testing the ice without crampons, he eventually tore off the broken front piece and continued with full crampons on one foot and half on the other.  This worked after a fashion.  After crossing the medial or middle moraine, we had to do more route finding because as we approached the west side of the Root Glacier, the canyons became deeper, the moulins more frequent and the drop-offs higher.  Our plan was to climb out on a slumping ramp north of the waterfall. We had heard that the most obvious way south of the waterfall was a rough climb.  

We did find an easy way off the Glacier and managed to avoid the quicksand-like mud.  After struggling up the mixture of ice, mud and rocks on the lateral moraine,  we mistakenly bushwhacked through the willows as we searched for the bear locker and established campsites.  Though it was drizzling and had been for days,  we had remained dry crossing the glacier.  Bushwhacking through rain-laden willows soaked us, every bit of us, in just a few moments.  Our poles were a hindrance in the entanglement of the willows.  I tripped on mine and fell thigh deep in one of the pools.  

 

Sure beats clorinated water from our Westside compound.

Because I had worked all day and for the past week,  I was SO glad when we finally emerged from the brush and found a campsite within 75 yards of the bear locker.  We each pitched out tents.  Nick started up the MSR and I walked partway down a steep gully to find water.  Supper was Mountain House Chicken and Rice and Backcountry Thai Beef Curry.    By the time we finished, it was eleven.  We dove into out tents and as soon as we shed our wet clothes and warmed up our bags, I was in La-La Land, dreaming of zigzagging across the ice.

Camping on the lateral moraine

The next day was sunny so we had a leisurely breakfast, took photos, let our gear dry out and then started back across the glacier, this time staying higher on the crest and having an easier time of it.  But even if the route is straighter, it is still work climbing around on a glacier.  It reminded me of Antarctic stories where the men spent days struggling over rough ice, fighting their heavy sleds up and down, around and back.  We had light backpacks but the mile and a half across the Root became four miles of walking.  For me the most thrilling part is the moulins which are holes in the glaciers into which running water, creeks and rivers disappear.  These fascinate and frighten me. If you slip into one,  you don’t come out but are flushed down deep into the dark, cold wet plumbing inside the glacier.  Years later you’ll be flushed out down a river, ground into glacier flour.  

I admire the fireweed that seems to grow out of nothing.

We returned on the Root Trail, passing where the man had died last week and the lady had a stroke this week.  At Jumbo Creek I washed off some of the mud on my crampons, drank the icy water, and tidied up.  Soon I was back at Kennecott where I hitched a ride and was home soaking in the bath by 7:00.  What used to be simple excursions now demand a bit of recovery time.  I  very much appreciate that Nick had been willing to go with me at my slow pace.   A little adventuring is better with a friend.  Both of us are now a tad better at glacier route finding.

Find Nick. This mud is where the glacier meets the lateral moraine.

Tired, muddy feet with my new best friends, my crampons!

WRST is Superlative: Two Weeks of Ranger Training

Mt. Sanford in background at Huck Hobbit Homestead

Cabin at Huck Hobbit's

Class at Huck Hobbit's

Roll 'n' Roll School desk

Walking from HQ to Boxtown

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is my new park. The National Park Service code is WRST so we jokingly say WRST is the Best.  https://www.nps.gov/wrst/index.htm  

Of course,  I love all the parks where I’ve worked but Wrangell does have many superlatives:

--largest National Park in America

--largest Wilderness in National Wilderness Preservation system

--2nd highest mountain in America:  St. Elias

--largest piedmont glacier:  Malaspina Glacier which is bigger than Rhode Island

--longest glacier:  Nabesna Glacier, at approximately 80 miles, is the longest non-polar valley glacier.

--9 of 16 highest peaks in America

-- a World Heritage Site with Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve and the Canadian neighbors Kluane National Park Reserve and Tatshenshini-Alsek National Park. (Making this the world's largest international protected wilderness.)

Our first few days were at Copper Center, just south of Glennallen and headquarters for the park.   We stayed at Boxtown, the park facility which was a row of dry cabins with a kitchen area which would eventually have running water.  It was a late spring so for my first three weeks in the park there was no running water there or at Westside in McCarthy.  Plus snow and ice were everywhere.

Classes those first few days covered the history of the park, interpretation, ANILCA, ANSCA, the Ahtna Center, park administration, etc.  Just when I was getting antsy sitting still, we took a field trip to Slana and Huck Hobbit Homestead.  Su-lana is the northernmost WRST ranger station, located on the Tok Cutoff.  On the way we saw migrating caribou crossing the Copper River.  

Staying at Huck Hobbit was the highlight of training.  Steve and Joy have homesteaded there since 1985, when there were still homesteads available.  By themselves they built a lodge and three cabins.  Now they run the place for tourists, mostly Europeans.  Joy’s cooking is a joy in itself and Steve sings, plays the guitar, and enchants with his stories of folks in the area. During one of Joy’s fantastic breakfasts, caribou came right by the cabin.

Steve’s stories of his neighbors are hilarious;  he told of Lord and his Lady who used to sell tickets to a spaceship,  other neighbors who fought over an outhouse until one of them took a chainsaw to the second’s trailer and ripped it in two lengthwise, and Bob and Denise who built the Rock ‘n’ Roll homestead.  We floundered out in the deep snow to the Rock ‘n’ Roll cabin which was long deserted because Denise got cancer and they decided to go to Fairbanks for treatment.  There, when she died, Bob was so distraught he put her body in a lounge chair in the backyard next to her favorite Harley motorcycle.  She might still be there if the neighbors hadn’t complained.  Bob called Steve from jail to relate the story.

We spent one day driving up the Nabesna Road, one of only two ways to drive into the park, the other being the McCarthy Road. We visited  the Viking public use cabin and counted moose, again.  

When we returned to Boxtown, we were supposed to go to Valdez to shop but the pass was snowed under.  Instead we visited Ranger Diane’s homestead and had a caribou/salmon BBQ.  Homesteading is incredibly hard work with a great deal of improvisation required.  Diane has had to reuse, repurpose, and recycle to fence in the horses, ducks, geese and sled dogs.

After two more days of inside classes, we were off to McCarthy. The sixty mile road to get there is an adventure in itself.  We spent most of the day learning the waysides and practicing our interpretation techniques on each other.  I liked working in groups because we are usually solo when we make our presentations.  Again we were counting moose but got to add a gazillion hares, also.

Our water supply

First cabin

In McCarthy we filled up our water cans for Westside camp from Clear Creek spring where most  McCarthyites gets their water.  I was happy to get a chance to settle into my summer cabin but was claustrophobic by the 9’x7’ size of it.  I’m a light lover and wanted to punch in another window.  

View from the Mill, looking down on Power plant and the Kennicott Glacier

In front of leaching plant

The next day we drove up to Kennecott from McCarthy.  The general public has to use the footbridge but the park pays thousands of dollars a year for the right to drive over the only vehicle bridge.  Whenever we cross the Kennicott River we must unlock the gate, drive through and lock it up again.  Further on we have to splash through the beaver pond across the road.  In Kennecott Jamie, head interpreter for the southside, led us on a tour of the Kennecott Copper Corporation’s concentrating mill*, the main building in Kennecott.  At fourteen stories it is one of the country’s largest wooden structures.  

In the afternoon we walked out to the Root Glacier, strapped on crampons, and went for a short stroll.  The Root is one of the most accessible glaciers I’ve ever been on.  The ponds on it are a startling aquamarine.  After the mill tour, a walk on the glacier is the biggest tourist activity here.

The next day we auctioned off the remaining taco fixings and the HQ rangers left us to our summer in McCarthy.

*try saying that quickly when you’ve had a few beers

Ponds on the Root Glacier

Me on Roo Glacier

McCarthy Airport with Mt. Blackburn in the far distance, Donoho close on the right

Scene on from our driveway