TR: Wrangell St Elias National Park

[CarpeyBiggs]

Here's the text of a trip report from my recent adventures in Alaska. Youtube won't let me upload the eleven minute video, so I can't embed it here. All the photos and videos are available here:

http://www.danransom.com/TripReports/?p=220

Man, it feels like I haven

[JONBOYLEMON]

Jealous is not a strong enough word. Great report. Lucky.......

[tmartenst]

Awesome Dan!

[Cirrus2000]

Wow, Dan, sounds like an incredible trip. You guys were really out there.

Just curious about a few things: What kind of day and night temperatures were you getting? What's the elevation on the plateau? How short were the nights? See much wildlife?

Beautiful images, as always!

[CarpeyBiggs]

Yo Kev,

Day and night temps were roughly 55 up on the plateau, 65 in the valleys. Nights between 35 and 40.

Of course, this time of year, there really isn't night. It's just kinda almost dark. No need for a headlamp on this trip. Sunset was around 11, rises at 3 or so.

Elevations are roughly 3000 on the sanford, 4800 to 5200 on the plateau, and 2700 on the dadina. Not very high, but impressive when considering the terrain and climate (like sanford's summit at 16k, only a few miles away). I'm pretty sure we are the first ones in there this year, as the snow just barely came off the plateau.

Wildlife is not abundant up on top. It is mostly used by animals to move from one valley to the other, and food is limited. We saw dall sheep, a grizzly, ptarmigan, gyrfalcons, lots of caribou sheds, bison, but all in very limited numbers.

[Bad Karma]

AWESOME TRIP!!!!!!

I so need to plan a trip there...thanks for the backpacking porn

:rockon: :five: :2thumbs:

[Brian in SLC]

Wow, great stuff!

Pretty neat country.

Who flew you?

I flew with Paul (Ultima Thule) back in '91...

Looked like a great trip!

-Brian in SLC

[Ryebrye]

Pretty sweet stuff.

How long are you planning to stay up in AK?

[apcronnelly]

That was amazing! Thank you for taking the time to put together that video :2thumbs:

[Sombeech]

amazing. :cool2:

[oldno7]

Mountain's, Rivers, glaciers, wildlife, camera, tent, girl...........
Dan--you are styling :nod:

[stefan]

absolutely stunning, dan. many thanks. :2thumbs:

reminds me of when i was there 12 years ago. i was on a trip with my aunt's boyfriend, dave, and a few of his friends (coincidentally all from utah) and we were driving to glenallen to meet a friend of his who was coming down from fairbanks. we were then going to take the mccarthy road into WSENP, then a flight to the heart of the mountains from there. we were driving up in a VW vanagon and a subaru had extra full spares for the nail covered mccarthy road. however, the vanagon never made it to glenallen. there were sections of the road to glenallen that were entirely ripped up and being widened or something. the temporary dirt roads were like a mine field filled with deep potholes. what's worse, the night before it rained 8" in the area, filling the potholes and making it impossible to tell just how deep they were. the going was slow and at times there were potholes that dave did not avoid, which for some time seemed okay as they were deep enough to shake the vehicle roughly but cause no damage ... that is, until we hit a really deep pothole. the vehicle actually hit the road pretty hard as the wheel sunk deeply. i heard a loud high pitch squeal and i think i remember seeing smoke as we popped out the other side of the pothole due to momentum.

the vanagon was screwed. the engine literally fell out the bottom and was laying on the ground. dave stuck around to deal with the vehicle while the rest of us went to meet the other member of our party. dave#2 the driver of the subaru went back to help and bring dave after he figured out what to do with the vanagon. it was some time before they returned. dave didn't really want to deal with towing the old vanagon back to anchorage. after talking with many of the highway reconstruction crew, he found one guy (who was tripping on LSD mind you) who agreed to take the vehicle off his hands as it was ... lying there on the torn up highway. in the end we decided to take a plane from glenallen to mccarthy instead of driving in that treacherous road after the standard highway licked the vanagon.

anyway, it's such an incredible area. it's great to see more of it through your lens! thanks

[accadacca]

Sick Dan. :cool2:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2425/3711959574_59d4aa8d9c.jpg

[ststephen]

Great TR! Any shots of Gyrfalcon you can share?