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The Wrangell Mountains sit like peaceful giants along theGlenn Highway in Alaska. Mountaineers gawk at these beasts while driving by.Later, while daydreaming of lofty Alaska trips, the Wrangell’s significance islost to more glamorous mountains like the nearby Chugach and Alaska Range. Likemost mountaineers, Dylan Taylor, Danny Uhlmann and I had never visited theWrangells, but they sounded like a great place for ski touring.
Located entirely within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park—America’s largest National Park—the Wrangells are a 100-mile northextension of the vast Saint Elias Mountains. The Wrangells include MountBlackburn (4,996 m) and Mount Sanford (4,949 m), the twelfth and thirteenthhighest summits in North America, in addition to Mount Wrangell, a 4,317-metershield volcano
In early May, Gary Green’s Pilatus Porter became a spec inthe distance. We stood in silence on the barren Skolai Pass in the easternWrangells. We had skis, food for ten days and a pile of maps. We also had bigideas, but only one expectation: a crazy adventure.
Carrying our skis, we hiked cobbles to thick overflow iceand skied under glowering clouds that stacked against the higher summits. Thatnight we camped among the rubble of the Middle Fork Glacier moraines, feelingjittery with excitement at seeing a new range. We skied all the next day onthin snow over ice into a steep-walled cirque where a ground storm stopped us.The wind roared all night, loading the dramatic ski terrain. The next morningwe found ourselves cul-de-saced by steep faces loaded with hair-triggeravalanche slabs. We searched the basin for two days for an escape route—oftenretreating from whumphing faces and sometimes remote triggering avalanches froma hundred meters away.
Eventually we found a 9,000-foot sneak to the ChisanaGlacier, but there we discovered a new hazard—crevasses. Not just regularcrevasses, but little, hidden and nasty crevasses that kept us roped togetherlike dogs. In slow mountaineering-style, we crossed the vast Chisana neve andcamped in silent, pink twilight at 8,700 feet. The next day we continuedsearching for thicker snow. Anything to bridge the crevasses and subdue theavalanches. The crevasses just became deeper and hungrier and the lurkingavalanches wanting to stuff us into those terrifying slots. Trapped, wesearched the maps for an escape route and gambled on the Nizina Glacier, hopingit would let us slog 50 miles out to the mining-gone hippy town of McCarthy.
We skied 25 miles down the Nizina Glacier, following afamily of bears, but mostly following medial moraines that twisted likeanacondas toward a pro-glacial lake. We skated marginal ice across the lake andcrested a terminal moraine to see a sight of staggering beauty. The Nizinafloodplain stretched flat and broad, lined with limestone walls, fading intothe distance, hazy with windblown glacial dust. For two days we walked togetherdown the tundra-coated cobbles, often watching immense frozen waterfalls appearin the gullies. When the river banked hard against the mountains we bushwackedon bear trails, dragging our skis in the duff. Somehow the crippling beauty ofAlaska subdued the irony and agony of carrying skis. Late in the evening wewalked into McCarthy, a week before tourist season, the town was silent.
Maybe our trip wasn’t the Big Idea, but we didn’t feelcheated. Although we didn’t plan on dodging avalanches, tiptoeing overcrevasses and carrying our skis for endless miles, our trip went exactly asplanned: we had a crazy adventure. In Alaska plans are often just talkingpoints. The real objective is the unknown and the plan is no plan. Except forone: I’ll be visiting the Wrangells again real soon.
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Huge thanks to Shipton-Tilman Grant and Osprey Packs formaking this trip possible.