There was a shuttle there. Eric asked the shuttle driver where we could find Wrangell Mountain Air. He said, "They'll probably just land."
As odd as this sounds, the shuttle driver was right. At the appointed time, a small plane flew in and landed, followed shortly by an identical aircraft. A seemingly impossible number of people got out of each plane. It was like watching clowns coming out of a Volkswagen. We were obviously going to be even more cramped than we would be in United coach. But this is when I met the woman who told me that a visit to McCarthy would be a life-changing experience. We were ready for adventure.
There were ten passengers (five couples), two pilots, and six seats in each plane. The pilot asked whether any couple would be willing to split up, and no one volunteered. I said we were celebrating our 20th anniversary and wanted to go together. The pilot then said, "OK, I guess this is where I start offering incentives." Eric wondered what we would do with a bunch of Wrangell Mountain Air frequent flyer miles. But the pilot offered a better incentive than that--the option to ride shotgun. That was a pretty tempting offer, and I was considering it when another couple stepped up to the plate. I decided afterward that it was just as well, because the dashboard on the plane was very high, not ideal for a short photographer like me. Eric and I crammed into the back seat of the plane. At least everyone got a window. After a safety briefing, we took off into the park.
When we landed at McCarthy, we suffered from a little bit of confusion. The flight was listed as going to "McCarthy/Kennicott," but we found ourselves in McCarthy when we apparently needed to be in Kennicott. There was a large shuttle van there, operated by Wrangell Mountain Air, but we had been on the second of the two planes and the van was already quite full. While Eric was taking pictures of the plane, I approached the driver.
"Uh, you might have to wait for the next one," he said. "We're pretty full."
I looked at my watch, saw that it was about 9:55 and said, "Can't. We have a glacier tour at 10:00."
The driver asked some of the passengers to slide over on the bench a little to make room.
"OK, we can take you," he said.
"What about my husband?" I asked.
"Oh," he said. "Well, the only way I can take both of you is if one of you rides on the floor in the gunnel between my seat and the other front passenger seat."
"I guess that would be me," I said, since I am considerably smaller than Eric.
I handed Eric my things and told him to climb onto the available bench space in the van, and sat down on the floor behind the gearshift lever. While I've definitely had more comfortable rides, there was enough room for me for the short ride down the dirt road to Kennicott. I'm normally very safety-conscious about seat belts and such, but I figured it was a large enough vehicle to be fairly safe in a crash, and there's just something about an Alaskan adventure that makes you not worry so much. We were a tiny bit late for our glacier tour, but it didn't matter much as we had paid for a private tour.
Those few miles between McCarthy and Kennicott would prove to be a problem on the return from the glacier as well. We were booked on the last flight of the day, at 17:00, and our guide's office had called Wrangell Mountain Air to reserve a space on the 16:30 shuttle. But when we got to the shuttle, there was no way to get on it. Our guide had one of the people from his office drive us to McCarthy in a private car. The driver told us that his group's relationship with Wrangell Mountain Air had sometimes been touchy, and that we should say something about the inconvenience to the Wrangell Mountain Air operators.
The Wrangell Mountain Air people were extremely apologetic. They said that it had been an exceptionally busy day, and that they had extra shuttles out, but it was still not enough to provide service for everyone. They promised that the frequency of service in these conditions would have been more than the usual half hour, and that they would not have let the plane take off without us and leave us stranded in McCarthy. Best of all, to make up for our inconvenience, they sent us home in a plane all to ourselves--a four-seater Cessna, just us and the pilot. So, we can't say they didn't make it up to us.
We had a great time flying back with Ben, in spite of the fact that it got pretty windy as we got close to Chitina. I asked him whether he made the flight every day, and he told us that he preferred to work only two or three days a week so that he could take rafting trips the rest of the time. He had just gotten back from one raft tour the day before, and was leaving on another one the next day. He pointed out some land that he owned down there below us. What a life--working so little and still being able to own a place! Not bad for a guy who looked like he hadn't even had his 30th birthday.
After all that excitement, we had dinner at the one place in Chitina that serves it: the Hotel Chitina, a historic 1914 building. There was a cache on the site, and we found it. As we would find throughout Alaska, there weren't many vegetables on the menu. Choices were limited, and the thing to eat was clearly fish. The food was decent, and the atmosphere nice.
On to the hike on the glacier.