A few weeks ago we went to Wrangell St. Elias National Park. It's the largest park in the United States, and one of the least visited. Annually, the park receives 50,000 visitors. In comparison, the south rim of the Grand Canyon can receive 50,000 visitors in as little as 3 days.
Part of the reason it's not visited is that it's just not easy to get there. There are only two roads into the park and almost no trails are accessible from them. We went along the south road. To get there we drove 3.5 hours from Anchorage, then started on the 60 mile dirt road, which took another 2.5 hours by itself and dead ends 1/2 a mile from the town of McCarthy.
This narrow, one lane bridge is nearly 300 feet over the river.
This old rail tressel was originally 800 feet long and was built in 8 days in the middle of winter. The road actually is just built upon the old railway grade, and as a result has earned a bad reputation for puncturing tires with old railroad spikes that sometimes stick out of the surface. The last few years they have worked hard on the road to improve it, and now a few car rental companies will even allow their cars to be driven on it.
The road to McCarthy ends here, at the headwaters of the Kennicott River, which flows out of the merging of the Kennicott and Root glaciers.
Throughout our trip I was very surprised at the poor job the park service does at managing access to the park, and the lack of knowledge of the rangers there. At the end of the road there is no park service parking transportation. You have to pay a local resident of McCarthy a daily fee to park your car, and there's no way around it because it's the end of the road and there's really nothing along the road until you get to the end of it. After parking you have to pay to camp there, or pay another resident for a ride into town or Kennicott, or walk into town where you will have to pay for somewhere to stay, or walk 5 miles to the nearest free park service campground. This footbridge leads across the river to McCarthy, about a 1/2 mile walk. We chose to camp at a closed campground for free, which happened to be right next to the "parking lot" campground, where they charged $20 a night.
Until the mid 1990's you could only cross by getting in a rope suspended cage and hand cranking yourself across the river using this old tram.
