Alaska Day 18, Regrets...I Had Two

Day 18

Tuesday June 19

      For someone like me who doesn’t do back country camping, Wrangle/St. Elias still had two big draws.  There’s the Kennicutt Mine and also Root Glacier.  The idea of  hiking out onto a glacier certainly was enticing.

     From the lodge, you can see the Kennicott Glacier.  It’s the pile of brown in the foreground.  On its journey, it picks up a whole lot of dirt, rocks and assorted debris.  The ice  starts to melt, revealing that debris.  The moraine in turn acts as an insulator for the ice.   It’s the largest of the three glaciers that join here.

     Gates Glacier is smaller and feeds into the Kennicott Glacier.  The third, and most accessible is Root Glacier.   There’s a fairly easy two mile trail from the mine to the ice.  That big wall of white, is the Stairway Icefall. 

     All trails leave from the area around the Kennicutt Mine, more on that later.  The mine is four and a half miles from the pedestrian bridge. You can either walk, or pay the park service shuttle $5.   The first one picks up at 9A.  Well, at that point, it was still raining. 

      I got into a chat with Mark, who had been here three days and didn’t want to waste his last. His first day was much like mine was to be.  His second and third days were steep climbs to two of the mines up in the hills.  Both had deep snow that necessitated his going off trail and slowly working his way up.  Today, he had planned to hike up to a place called Jumbo Mine.

     The rain had stopped by the 10A shuttle.  We both decided  we’d  go out in it, no matter what the weather.  

    The drive up is messy. Molly, our driver, slowly worked her way around the worst of the potholes.  She explained this used  to be the rail line to the mine. When they built the road they simply tossed the railroad ties and rail aside.  You can still  see some of them.  She says the real danger comes from the old spikes.  Every year they find a few more.  When we finally arrived, Mark went off to his hike and I poked  around the mine ruins. 

     I walked into one building that had descriptions of the various ways the copper was removed  from the limestone.  The numbers were staggering.  There was a very knowledgeable park ranger there who felt the same way when she first came here.  She’s still amazed.

     There are tours of the mining complex.  Mark was highly impressed when he took it.  So, my game plan was a hike and then the 3:30P tour.  With that in mind, I started down the two mile trail to the Root Glacier.

      In preparation for this trip, I did buy a pair of cheap crampons that would attach to the bottom of my boots. The operative word here is cheap.   They’re stretchy rubber with ten small sets of spikes each.   I got to the base of the glacier, slipped them on and started climbing.

      Getting up the hill was pretty easy and I was feeling good about life. The view was spectacular.

      I even saw a group practicing their ice climbing.

      Along the way, I noticed my left foot was digging into the ice nicely. My right boot was slipping and sliding.  When I looked at the bottom of my crampon,  four of the ten sets of spikes were gone.   Regret #1, sometimes cheap is just plain cheap.  Regret #2, since it was supposed to rain all day, I left the new 70-300mm zoom lens back at the room.   
     

     There was water streaming along the glacier and even a few wateralls.  

      Underfoot, I kept finding patches of blue ice.  It has to do with the density of the ice and never got old.

      Numerous streams of melting glacier ice.

     Getting back down was going to be interesting.  By now I had flaked off a couple more spikes and had even less traction.  And I had to go down a steep slope. I knew I had all the spikes on my left heel, as well as most of the ones up top on my right foot. Combined with the trekking polls, I did eventually  make it down.  This is what’s left of the crampon.  Sometimes cheap is just cheap.

      There’s only one place to buy food in Kennicutt, and that’s at the Meatza food truck.  I had a chat with John, the owner.  All his food and supplies arrive by air twice a week.  His menu is limited but varied.   I’ve tried plenty of meatball sandwiches over the years, his was one of the best.  I told him and he joked that it's his mother's secret recipe.  Considering his mother is Sicilian, it may very well be.

      There are two tour companies here. They special in all kinds of different tours. I asked the first if they rented crampons.  They said no. I asked the second.  They said yes, and it comes with a $90 guide.  From a legal standpoint, I understood why they didn’t rent just the crampons.  But, I was disappointed.

      Instead, I signed up for a guided tour of the mine facility.  Our guide’s name was Merrit and he really is fascinated with the mine and led a fantastic tour.
   

      In 1900 Chalcocite, a copper ore, was discovered here by "Tarantula" Jack Smith and Clarence Warner.  They quickly staked their claim for mining rights.  Based on a hunch and scant evidence, Stephen Birch bought the claim for today's equivalent of a million dollars.
      Within a few years construction began on the 196 mile Copper River and Northwestern Railroad.  Without the railroad everything had to be brought in my sled.  The local timber wasn't strong enough for long lasting buildings, so eventually even that had to be brought in.
      So, Birch was taking a huge gamble with massive up front costs.  But, he believed in the mine. Before shutting down for good(the workers had one day's notice) $200 million worth of copper ore had been removed.  That was all profit, too.  During the processing of the ore, they discovered silver as well.  They removed enough silver to completely cover the up front costs and the day to day operation.  Not too bad.
      Heading in...

      The processing facility was built into the mountainside for a reason.  The ore was brought in up top, crushed and sent down through a giant sifter.  Anything too big was sent back up to be crushed again.  Each successive layer crushed the bits smaller and smaller.
   

   
   

     Eventually, the small bits of ore would wind up here.  These tables were automated and using gravity and basic geology they separated the copper from the limestone.  The tables would be rapidly shaken.  Since limestone is significantly lighter than copper, it would bounce out, eventually leaving the copper.

     From here, it was placed in sacks and loaded on the train for it's trip to Cordova, where it would be shipped to Tacoma, Washington for final processing.  Why sacks?  They quickly learned that damp ore freezes into a solid mass in the winter.  A layer of salt was placed between the layers of sacks to avoid their sticking together.
     While efficient, Birch didn't think it was good enough.  He had read about an experimental chemical process that would remove more ore from the small bits and pieces left.  He wired the creator of the new process and offered him a lot of money to try it in his mine.  It worked. 

    But, Birch still wasn't satisfied.  He still had pieces smaller than sand and was convinced he could get more copper out.  He found a process that involved dumping the particles in boiling water and adding eucalyptus oil. The limestone cling to the oil, leaving the copper behind.  It also left behind a surprise, silver.   
     By the way, the mine buildings were painted red for one reason.  Red paint was cheap.

     That's Merrit, our tour guide.  

     On the way out,  I asked about tours onto the glacier.  They do private, half or full day tours. I signed up for a half day, starting at 9A.   From there it was on the shuttle bus down the mountain.  I could have gone all the way to the foot bridge.  Instead, I got off in McCarthy and walked around a bit. The neighborhood dogs had free rein of the town and could be seen wandering in and out of the buildings.  

     The sandwich was late enough that I really didn’t want food.  So, I slipped into a place called simply, The Potato.   I was just looking for a beer at the end of the day.   On their list is La Tout le Monde Ale.  It’s by Dave Mustaine of the band Megadeath.  I’ve heard about it, but never actually seen it, until now.   This seemed like an odd place to finally find it.  And yes, it was quite good.

     Back at the lodge, I ran into Mark. He had indeed made it up to the site of the Jumbo Mine.  Once again, the trail was steep and covered in knee deep snow.  He had to scramble up some steep hillsides to  make it.   On the way down, there was a rock slide and he was in the path.  He ducked behind a large tree and waited it out.  

Coming Up,

I get recognized