Back when I was planning the trip, I had a conversation with Mike from Kennicott Wilderness Guides. He asked me what kind of hikers we were, and I said we liked to stop and look at things and take a lot of pictures. He recommended that we take a private tour for just the two of us. The price wasn't so much higher that I resisted the idea. So, when the van stopped and I climbed up off of the floor, we walked down to the Kennicott Wilderness Guides office and met Jared, host for the day to us and only us.
We can't say enough good things about Jared. He knew his stuff, he was lots of fun, he was safety- and environmentally-conscious, and he tried to balance our desire to experience everything very fully with our need to catch the plane back to Chitina. We were scheduled to return at 15:00 and he hiked with us until 16:00. When we visited the National Park Service Visitor Center on the way back, we told a ranger that we'd taken a great glacier hike with a very conscientious guide from Kennicott Wilderness Guides, he said, "Oh, you went out with Jared?" That's a real testimonial. We've had some great tour guides in our travels, but Jared stood out as exceptionally thoughtful.
We spent some time at the office getting settled in, figuring out how many layers to wear, getting fitted with crampons, and gawking at the scenery. Jared asked us whether we'd brought lunches, which we had not, so he called in an order to the Kennicott Lodge across the road. We talked a bit and he told us he was from Lodi but had lived for a few years in Los Angeles. When I went up to the lodge to pick up our lunches, I met someone from San Pablo. It seemed that the place was crawling with Californians.
We headed out on foot for the 3.2-km (2-mi) hike out to the glacier. Jared took us through the historic mining town of Kennicott. Copper was discovered in the Wrangell Mountains in the early 20th century, and the Kennicott mine operated from 1911 to 1938.
Jared told us that the Kennicott mining operation was set up before the railroad to Kennicott was built. All of this giant heavy equipment was brought to Kennicott without the benefit of trains, much less trucks or airplanes. The miners brought the boilers up the river on barges, then took the boilers apart, had horses drag them up the hill on sleds in the snow, and then reassembled them at their present site. Quite an amazing story. I observed that there must have been enough potential profit in the mining operation to make it worth this not inconsiderable effort, which probably killed a few of the miners. Jared said, oh, yes, there was lots and lots and lots of money to be made.
Along the trail, we passed a large group of hikers coming from the other direction--37 elderly Israelis. Jared had lived in Israel at some point, and greeted each of them with, "Shalom." I started saying, "Shalom," to them, too, and then one of them started babbling at me in Hebrew, and I had to just stand there looking stupid and explain in English that I didn't actually know any Hebrew other than, "Shalom." Jared was quite surprised that the other glacier tour operator from Kennicott would take out a group that was so large and so poorly suited to glacier trekking. It was obvious that they shouldn't have, because one of the men had a large, bloody bandage on his head.
When we reached the foot of the glacier, Jared gave a technical explanation of how to walk in the crampons, but also made a philosophical speech, incorporating some things he had learned during a stay with some Buddhist monks on a trek through Nepal. When walking on the glacier, he explained, it was important to take every step with a meditative level of intention. We shouldn't, for instance, try to walk and take a picture at the same time. We should plant our crampons firmly in the ice, with as many of their points on the ice as possible, then turn our intention to taking our picture. One step at a time, one thing at a time, that is the way to safety and enjoyment on the ice. It's important to stay in the moment during an exciting experience like this.
I loved wearing the crampons. They could be adjusted to fit my heels tightly without squishing my toes, a very rare quality in shoes. They lifted my feet up high and kept my boots dry even in puddles. And their grip on the ground was so good, I felt like I could walk up anything.
Once we got out onto the glacier and away from the other hikers, Jared spread out a camping pad for us to sit on, and we ate some very thick turkey sandwiches from the Kennicott Lodge. A picnic on a glacier! What an experience!
A glacier is far from a flat, uniform piece of ice. Like the lava flow from a shield volcano, it is full of interesting surface features. Jared told us that, because a glacier is always moving and melting, the features are always changing, and a glacier will look very different from one year to the next.
After this, Jared told us it was time to turn back so that we could catch our plane without having to rush through the return hike too much. He was impressed with our attention to the smaller details of the environment, like the flowers along the trail, and wanted to let us enjoy ourselves, within the time limits we had. When we stopped to take off the crampons for the walk back along the dirt trail, he compared notes with two women who had guided the 37 elderly Israelis along the trail, who were now going out on their own to recover from the experience. It had been quite frustrating for them, and they were unhappy that their tour operator had expected them to do it. Jared pointed out that his group never takes groups larger than six people.
Full of energy and life, we returned to the picturesque town of Kennicott. We had seen so much in one day, we could have just dropped off to sleep then and there, but we still had another amazing flight back to Chitina ahead of us! We would have the mad adventure of catching the plane detailed on the previous page. Altogether, it was such a thrilling and fulfilling day, I felt like a kid at Christmas. I've been fortunate enough to have had many great adventures in life, and this glacier hike definitely ranks highly among them.
On to Denali National Park.