The Town of McCarthy

McCarthy was founded as a homestead in 1906. It served as the supply and recreation stop for the entire Kennicott mining district. Now it caters to tourists who show up at the National Park. Some of you may have heard about the crazy ass Pilgrim family in the news in the last year or two. McCarthy is where they caused some of their trouble, even setting up camp in the middle of town. When reading about that, I couldn't imagine what a mess that actually must have been until I visited and could see for myself just how small the town was.






I hate saying it but I guess you have to say McCarthy is one of those towns that is like stepping back in time, sort of. I just felt like I was in the present around a bunch of old buildings for the most part. Ma Johnsons Hotel was very cool though; it fit the saying much better. Everything in the hotel was supposed to be from the original buildings. The bedframes, mirrors, all the decor, the single sheet of pressed tin that made up part of the ceiling, the wavy glass around the check-in counter, the books and toys, and black lacquered wood floor. I think it would definitely be cool to stay there for a night.






McCarthy is really just one block of dirt road next to a river. When we were there it was practically deserted except for the dogs all over the place. The saloon was pretty cool too, again because of all the relics. They actually had good food and beer and music at prices that were not astronomical, considering their remoteness.


A local neighorhood


This is Diesels house, obviously


This was a very narrow footbridge that crossed the river to the local party spot.






Also of note was the cemetery. Maree had been to McCarthy years ago, and I would never have noticed the faded board nailed to a tree indicating the direction through the woods to get there. Inside were many unmarked and faded graves, but the air was chock full of living dead zombie mosquitoes that had an unbelievable thirst for human blood, so we were never able to stop moving and had to run away.







We were lucky to get there on a sunny evening. We had enough time to look at everything, grab some food, then head back to our campground before it got too dark (by dark I mean the sun was slightly below the horizon for few hours). I was looking forward to the next day, which was supposed to be great weather. Unfortunately, and typical for this summer, it started raining at 2 am and continued to rain for the next 14 hours. It was also that night that we realized that Maree's tent was no longer waterproof. I woke up at 4 in the morning staring at my reflection in a pool of water right next to my face. We had brought a tarp to put over the tent, but the mosquitoes were so bad that we decided to skip it and just jump in and escape. It was the first time I've had to use one of those mosquito head nets. Those things suck. You can't see anything and you can't eat either unless you take it halfway off, which means you'll get bitten. But waking up in the water was one of those things where I was too tired to do much about it, so by morning our bags were pretty wet and we realized we were definitely not camping again on that vacation. There was no point in staying another night anyway, since I wasn't going to be doing any of my planned hiking. So we let our breakfast cook in the rain while we sat in the car to escape the still relentless waves of mosquitoes, and then we geared up and headed back across the bridge to catch a shuttle to Kennicott.




All the spots that appear to be dirt on the lense were actually mosiquitoes in front of Maree's face that were caught in the light from the flash.


Next time: Kennecott

The Road to McCarthy

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.