Palmer, AK - Driving to McCarthy

Today we’re going to visit: the Wrangell-St Elias National Park and the Kennecott Mine by the Kennicott River. (Now, that’s not a misspelling - the town, the river and the glacier are named after Robert Kennicott and the mine is the Kennecott Mine - something about a clerical error.) The small town of Kennicott housed the mine offices, the hospital, the residences, the movie theater and other mine offices. Most of these are now part of the National Park and we were actually able to tour the Kennecott Mine, a 14-story structure that was jusdt deteriorating until the NPS took it over, stabilized it and restored much of the surrounding buildings.
Since the mine owners did not allow drinking, gambling and other activities in the mine area, the town of McCarthy sprang up, 5 miles away to provide these: saloons, gambling, restaurants, a newspaper, hotel, stores - AND - a red-light district. Interesting, these two towns have no central water, sewer or eletricity. Generators provide the electricity, water is pumped from wells and drawn from culverts via hoses, while outhouses and septic systems are in use. No state schools or medical clinics. Mail arrives two times a week but then most who live here, live here only in the summer. There are historic lodges, fine dining, inns, B&B’s, restaurants, food trucks and other tourist services. And, of course, there is the mine and the amazing Wrangell-St. Elias NP to draw tourists.
Here’s the routine to get to the Kennecott Mine and our 11:30 tour: drive 30 miles on pavement to Chitina, then drive the 60 miles on a pptholed, rutted dirt road to a parking lot on this side of a pedestrian bridge, pay to park, cross the bridge, get into the shuttle that will take you the 5 miles to the Mine.
I want to divide our day in this area into two sections: one is the drive in which is a journey in itself and the other is our time in the towns. I’ve read that the drive to McCarthy is recommended for those who like ‘adventurous driving.’ For those who don’t there are shuttles that will take you the 60 miles of the road. OR, you can take a plane in. Whoo-eee. Let’s drive. The description I read goes on to say: ‘ Take your time on the McCarthy Road. We recommend slow speeds (5 - 10 mph) on sections of rough road, and no more than the posted speed limit - 35 mph - on the improved gravel and chipseal. Watch for sharp rocks, railroad spikes, no shoulders, narrow sections, soft spots, washouts, potholes and a few “roller coaster” curves… Flat tires are not uncommon on the McCarthy Road: Carry a spare. Tire repair is in Chitina and McCarthy.’ I guess that about covers it. I’ve heard that rental car companies have you sign a contract that states that you can NOT drive the car on the McCarthy Road. And, now I know why.
Narrow sections like this:

unimproved sections like this:

bridges like this (are those really wooden slats?):

small landslides,

curvy sections like this (and this picture is a two-fer - curves and washboarding too):

Well, you get the idea. We will need TIME to navigate this. We awoke at 5:15, started our drive at 6:30, stopped a few places along the route to take some of the interesting features (thinking that we had loads of time) and got to a parking spot, paid and crossed the bridge just in time for the 11:00 shuttle. Not a minute to spare. Whew.
We hit some fog as we were driving in.

It was just layered above the Copper River and we could see that it might burn off - if we got some sun. Fat chance.

Hmmm, where does this bridge end?

I’ve mentioned some of the road characteristics. Now, how about some of the sights along the way. And, there are many to see. It’s not just a gruelling drive - it is a really interesting one too.

This is the only view we had of the snow capped Wrangell Mountains. We read about the great views we could get along the way into the park and then again as we were leaving Alaska on the road back to Tok. But this is the only one we got.

There are fish wheels on Copper River, one of the major rivers we crossed. There were not in operation today since the river had come up unexpectedly. (An ice dam had broken in the wee hours of the morning and the water was up about 5’ from where it usually is.) But that’s for another blog.) These are in almost continual use during the salmon run and there are quite a few along the river. There are RV’s along the banks here for people to live in while they are fishing. (The ice dam breaking stranded several of these.)

There are also some very interesting bridges. This one is the Kuskulana Bridge, which is 775’ long and 238’ above the river. (don’t look down), 14.5’ wide covered with wood decking and (whew) guard rails. (A double whew here.)

We stopped before we got to the bridge, took a few pictures, one of a truck as it was crossing) and then drove over it ourselves. After which we stopped to take a picture of another vehicle crossing it. We saw that we could walk down under the bridge and decided to do this on our way back.

The Kuskulana Bridger we crossed, the next one we just looked at. It was one of the many railroad trestles built for the railroad which carried the copper form the Kennecott Mine to the wagon roads to the docks for transport to Seattle for smelting. This is the Gilahina Trestle. We got out of our car, walked under the bridge to take some more pictures. Luckily we did because on the way back to the campground, there was someone who had set us camp here.) These bridges were built as trestles for the railroad to carry the copper ore back to the harbors to then take to the smelters in Washington.

On some spots on this road, we positively sail along at 30 mph, most times we’re driving much slower to swerve around pot holes and to avoid the washboarding. Now, we’ve been driving about 4 hours and it’s getting close to 11:00. We’ve got to get to the bridge. We pull in to the parking lot closest to the bridge, pay our $5.00. grab our things, run across the bridge, pay the shuttle driver and take off towards Kennicott the town and Kennecott the mine. It took 4.5 hours to go that 90 miles. Yep, we travel fast.

We also saw one of the ubiquitous airstrips in Alaska.

Finally we reached the end, the parking lot and the pedestrian bridge to cross before we took the shuttle. Note how high the water is and how roiled it is.

On the other side, we checked out this cool vehicle.