Wrangell- St. Elias National Park
  As soon as the aircraft took off, we were stunned with spectacular views. We headed up over the Nizina River, and the mountains opened up in front of us. We passed over more glaciers than I can remember, staring into deep blue crevasses where the icefalls tumbled down from the peaks. Dirty stripes in the glaciers marked medial moraines, where two glaciers merged together. Dark green forest and rocky crags covered the lower slopes, and we saw a mountain goat scampering along with incredible agility. We circled up to about 8000 feet, giving us clear views of Regal Mountain (13845 feet) and Mt. Blackburn (16390 feet), and more blinding ice and snow than I could imagine. The ride was turbulent at times, but I tried not to think about worst case scenarios and instead concentrated on taking pictures in this rugged "top of the world" landscape. After an hour we landed, although I still felt like I was up in the air.
    After all our excitement, we decided to have a cold beer in the Bear's Den Saloon, and replay in our heads the incredible sights that we had just witnessed. The bar had a real frontier flavor, complete with pool table, and old photos and mining implements adorning the walls. It wasn't that they tried to make it look old - it was old. As with the other buildings in town, each piece of "decoration" was essentially a museum piece.
    And the museum was where we were headed next. It was housed in the original CN & NR Railroad Depot, and contained a huge assortment of historical photographs, documenting the building of the railroad and the lives of the miners. Old newspaper clippings, mining tools, and artifacts from daily life rounded out this wonderful collection. We talked briefly to the museum caretaker, an old gentleman who also ran the local art gallery. When we told him of our aerial adventure he said, "you saw places you couldn't get to in two months, even if you were fully prepared and provisioned." We felt very lucky to have seen such rare views.
    The next day we left the campground on the river, crossed back over to McCarthy, and took a shuttle van up the road five miles to the mining town of Kennicott. It was here that a town of 600 grew from nothing, perched between the glacier and the mountains, when the richest copper ore in the world was discovered here back in the early 1900s. While it was difficult to gain access to this remote wilderness, some of the veins of copper ore ran as high as 70 % copper (compared to an average of 2% copper found in the lower 48 states). These rich veins made the operation extremely profitable for the Kennecott Copper Corporation. (Yes, the corporation is spelled differently than the glacier and the town. The mine was supposed to be spelled like the glacier, which was named after Alaskan explorer Robert Kennicott, but the company name was misspelled.)