Re-Wrangell

We headed toward Denali National Park after first stopping in Anchorage for supplies planning on doing a 4-5 day backpack in the area.  Once at the park we noticed the crowds and the clouds covering the mountains.  This combined with the fact that you have to take an expensive bus to any backpacking after sitting though an hour orientation made us head for the hills, hills not in the park.  We quickly decided to head back to the Wrangell - St Elias which, although a national park, was way more laid back.  We took the Denail Highway and saw a lot of hunters and a lot of nervous Caribou on the ridges.  We stopped along the way for a paddle in Tangle lakes and enjoyed views of the Alaska Range.

                                         

                    

After a bit of trouble with a flat tire (amazingly our first in 30,000 miles-700+ on gravel) we found a camp site near a beaver pond; we had a great view and were right next to a blueberry patch.  We made some blueberry syrup and then went to bed not really considering that we were between a berry patch and a salmon rearing pond...  Alexis woke up several hours later to the sound of water splashing and woke me up saying "I think there is a moose right next to us!" well it was as big as a moose but had much sorter legs!  We watched what we now knew to be a large grizzly fishing in our pretty little beaver pond by moon light.  After a bit we could tell by the ripples the bear was making that he had moved a bit farther away, we quickly moved to the cab of the truck with our bear spray in tow.  Almost an hour later the bear had enough fishing and crashed through the brush in back of our truck and detoured around us back to the road.  On his way out we heard him shake the water off like a really big dog.  Back to bed just in time for the local beaver resident to slap his tail a bunch, and then for a real moose to wade through the pond.  Not much sleep that night, beaver ponds are active places!  In the morning we went in to the Ranger station to check out some bear cans (BRFCs).  The ranger on duty handed us the cans and said "have a great time", and we were out the door. 

The drive to our trail head was great, the clouds had lifted once again and we had views Mt. Wrangell, Sanford, and Blackburn.  Enjoying the fine weather we packed up and headed up Trail Creek, which despite its name does not have a trail.  It took us several hours of bushwhacking to make it to tree line and then several more of walking over tundra to our camp for the next two nights.  We ran into a family of hunters trying their luck at Dall Sheep on our way in, these turned out to be the only people we saw in five days.  We did see hundreds of Dall Sheep (looks pretty much like a big horn to me) during our hike.

The next morning the weather had turned back to typical Alaskan, that is overcast and wet.  We awoke with the snow line only a couple hundred feet above us and spent the day touring around the high country, enjoying the views, and investigating the many rock glaciers and ice glaciers in the area. 

We then packed up camp and headed over the pass into the Lost Creek drainage where we set up camp for two more nights.  Our first day in the area was mostly spent sitting in the tent waiting for the weather to change.  We didn't really plan ahead for being tent bound and so got to read the map over and over again, I looked at the map so much I began to proof-read it and found numerous errors.  The following day we decided that we couldn't take it anymore and hiked around the area despite the rain/snow mixture coming down.  Cold and wet we had a quick Top Ramen dinner and went into the tent to listen to the sound of rain change to the sound of snow.  Luck for us, we were right on the snow line and didn't wake up to much on the ground.  We packed up and headed out, Alexis had her rather large souvenir strapped to her pack.   Back in the truck we headed towards Haines to catch the ferry to Juneau, along the way we were almost busted for speeding but luckily the cop’s radar gun only worked in two of the three dimensions!!