Glacier Flight

OK, here's a trivia question for you: what is the largest National Park in the United States? If you'd asked me that last week I would have said Yellowstone, but actually it's Wrangell-St. Elias NP here in Alaska...the one that McCarthy and Kennecott sit right smack in the middle of. Here are some comparative figures to make the point of just how huge this wilderness area is:

-It's bigger than 6 Yellowstones
-bigger than the entire country of Switzerland (by 25%)...and with higher mountains
-bigger than 9 US States
-9 of the 16 tallest mountains in North American are located within it's boundary

In other words, it's really, really big. So huge in fact that the only way to really appreciate it is from the air, so...when our second day in McCarthy came up sunny and clear we signed up for a 70 minute flight to view as much of the surrounding area as we could squeeze in, which still wasn't even 10% of what's out there. What we did see, however, was incredible. Up to now we had been impressed by seeing glaciers one or two at a time. On this flight we saw hundreds, and each one more beautiful than the last. Saw several that stretched for miles, so far in fact that we couldn't see where they began or ended. There are a couple in the center of the park that are so massive that they can only be viewed in their entirety from space. It's still the Ice Age in Wrangell- St. Elias NP!

I was a Navy pilot for 25 years and saw a lot of beautiful things in the air, but I must confess that this 70 minute flight above Alaska takes the prize for the most spectacular flight I've ever been on. The scenery just kept coming until we were numbed to it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here's a sampling of the photos we took on the flight. As an aside I should mention that usually when we're out and about on one of our excursions we might shoot 10 or 15 photos per day. When we returned from this flight and I downloaded everything onto the computer I realized that we had shot 157...it was that kind of day.





One of several "Ice Falls" formed as the rivers of ice cascade down from the mountain passes.



Those colored striations are gravel deposits that the glacier has collected on its travels as it undermines the softer ground ahead of it. It's all ice, it's just that some of it is topped with gravel.













The glacier blue color of the little ponds formed here and there is absolutely iridescent in the sunlight.


























And one short video to top it off.




We left McCarthy on the 26th and spent a couple of nights in a place called Pippin Lake - mainly to break up the drive before we headed up to Fairbanks.