Posts Tagged With: Chhitina

Confluence of the Chitina and Copper Rivers

Copper Center, Alaska, August 20 Tuesday

Copper Center. Copper River. Gee, I wonder why the name is used here. Well, today we found out as we traveled long into Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The Ahtna Athabascan people who lived here mined copper well before European immigrants arrived and the Ahtna traded copper and other materials with tribes in the region. When the Russians and Americans came to the area and saw the copper usage by the Ahtna, the Ahtna chief told them where copper could be found-although not the best locations. Over time, prospectors discovered copper high on the Kennecott Mountain. That discovery led to the Kennecott Copper Company after more than $100 million of profits were made by the owners (in today’s dollars, about 1.5 billion dollars in profits.)

But I get ahead of myself. After a great breakfast buffet with plenty of bacon, we left the Copper Princess Wilderness Lodge around 7:45 AM. The first stretch of our journey was on paved roads with only a smattering of gravel sections. We had a brief scare with the car. Entering Chitina, where there are vault toilets at a NPS ranger station just before the park begins, we heard a scary dragging noise underneath the car. Stopping and investigating discovered nothing amiss. Starting up the car brought back the noise. Another inspection. Nothing. Driving the car into the ranger station parking lot, the noise disappeared. It seemed some item got caught and then worked its way free. We drove carefully for the next 10 minutes or so but the sound did not return. Good thing, it probably would have taken hours to get auto repair service to Chitina from Valdez.

So why else did we drive carefully? This was the McCarthy Road, written up as a thing of terror for many drivers. A road you should not take per many rental car companies. 60 miles in and 60 miles out, the only way to get to the towns of McCarthy and Kennecott, site of the famous Kennecott copper mine and Kennicott glacier. (As I was informed today, Kennicott with an “i” refers to the glacier and water related objects, Kennecott with an “e” refers to everything else. i=ice, e=everything else-get it?) Discussions of the road are hot topics on the Internet and at the visitor center.

Driving on the McCarthy Road

Warnings are justified but the road was doable. It is primarily gravel with a section of poorly maintained asphalt. The gravel is usually in a washboard state with big potholes only in a couple of miles of the road. There is one dramatic bridge to drive over, a 525 foot one-lane bridge over a river 285 feet below you with a wood plank surface currently under renovation. Portions of the road we drove at 20 mph, much of it was okay at 30-35 mph if you had high clearance and a good suspension. Clouds of finely grained sand dust swirled behind us. I was happy we were in a rental rather than my own car. The drive in was two and one-half hours with stops for pictures, the drive out was closer to two hours. Kennecott is at 2200 feet elevation while Chitina is at 600 feet so there is some elevation gain, most of it in the first five miles. When meeting oncoming cars you normally have to slow down; for larger vehicles (pickups with campers in the bed) one pulls over and stops.

Since Wrangell-St.Elias is mountainous, mountain peaks are all around you. The road follows much of the old railroad bed that was built to haul in supplies and haul out coal; transporting it to the port of Cordova about 120 miles away. Construction of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway was expensive and a feat of accomplishment as the route went over mountains with numerous trestles. Portions of it were built during the Alaskan winter during the years of 1908-1911.

The Root and Kennicott glaciers became visible as we arrived at McCarthy. McCarthy was the private town, providing entertainment to the miners living in the company town of Kennecott just five miles away. 600 people lived at Kennecott, primarily single men but some families. Today the roles are similar, McCarthy has a few bars and shops and a population of 28; Kennecott has the restored buildings and ranger talks of the National Park Service. To reach McCarthy itself after the drive, one walks across a footbridge over the river and either walks another quarter mile to the town or takes a private shuttle. After driving for three and a half hours from Copper Center, a brief walk felt good.

The Kennecott Copper Mill

Chris and I had lunch, finishing in time to take the 1 PM shuttle (they run every half hour and cost $15 round trip per person) the five miles and 25 minutes to Kennecott-the road here is uphill and full of potholes also. Kennecott is full of stories, the discovery of the mother lode, the back breaking work to construct the railroad and town, its abandonment in 1938 (truly abandoned, it was too expensive to remove items so buildings,dishes, food, etc. were all left here), the lives of the miners, the huge profits made here by the Guggenheim and J.P. Morgan families, the years of neglect, and finally the resurrection by the National Park Service and the ongoing restoration of many of the buildings. We learned as much as we could from videos, exhibits, and ranger talks before taking the 4 PM shuttle back to McCarthy and the footbridge to our car.

Glacial drift at Kennecott Mine

The glaciers here are receding but our preconception that we were looking at tons of mining waste in the valley was corrected. Down below us as we stood in Kennecott were miles of glacial drift. Remnants of the Root and Kennecott glaciers have become covered with dirt and ground up rock and look like a moonscape below us, stretching out everywhere we look. Even more amazing, when the miners were here, the glacier drift we see now were glaciers towering 300 feet above them. Talk about living next to an icebox, it must have provided summer air conditioning to the entire valley.

We did not stop along the road on our way out although we slowed down frequently as we passed numerous prime moose viewing areas. We looked and looked but no moose came into view. We were feeling pretty despondent. We have seen moose in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons but missed them in northern Minnesota and at Isle Royale National Park. But this is Alaska, moose are supposedly everywhere.

We made a restroom stop at the wayside in Chitina (population of 126), scene of our car scare on the way in this morning. As we left town, standing on the left side of the road was a moose! It ambled across the road, ate some leaves from bushes on the right side and continued on in to the brush and out of view. It took maybe two minutes between sighting and disappearance, just a lucky coincidence in our favor this time.

View from the Copper Princess WIlderness Lodge, 9:15 PM August 20

Ed and Chris Wdnesday 6 AM