Tag Archives: Alaska Cotton

Iceberg Lake photo, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Alaska Cotton, and glacier, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

Alaska Cotton, and glacier, near Iceberg Lake, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Please click on the image above to view a larger version of this photo.

Hey Folks,

We just got off a great hike in the Chugach Mountain Range, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park; the Iceberg Lake to Bremner Mines route, a popular hike I’ve done a number of times now. This trip was an exciting adventure, as always, with a mixture of weather, some great folks to hike with, tons of cool stuff to see.

We actually took what is for me a new route part of the way, and skipped one of the climbs; heading straight for a glacier moraine and on to the ice instead. That was kinda cool, and I did find a great spot to camp that I hadn’t been to before, which is always a treat.

This image is from the first morning of the trip, when the skies cleared and we had some nice morning light. The day before it had been drizzly and overcast, and we hiked along the now empty lakebed of Iceberg Lake; it drains every summer.

After a hearty breakfast and packing up camp we headed off across a glacier and up higher to another campsite, where we did a short dayhike down to a few small alpine lakes. Great day indeed. The weather changed a lot during the 8 days of our trip, and we were constantly layering clothes on and off. The wind was cold, even on the sunniest of days, and fall is most definitely here in Alaska.Fresh snow on the peaks around us, the locals calls “Termination Dust” (i.e., the termination of summer) greeted us a number of mornings.

We made it to our pickup at Bremner Mines on time, and then had to wait for a break in the weather before our pilots came and got us, ferrying us quickly back to McCarthy, hot food, showers, chairs with backs, and all the comforts of the a small town. Good times.

Great trip, all in all.

Cheers

Carl