Whittlin' the Time Away

Just after passing through Glennallen about 13 miles east of our campground at Tolsona Creek, we reached the Richardson Highway and turned south toward Valdez. We stopped at the Vistor Center for the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest of our National Parks, six times bigger than Yellowstone. It was created in 1980, so it's also one of the newest. There are only two gravel roads into the park, so access is very limited. Hiking and 'flightseeing' are about the only ways to see the park. The Chugach, Wrangell and St. Elias mountain ranges all converge in the park, which contains 9 of the 16 highest mountains in the U.S. We took a ranger-led nature walk while at the Visitor Center, but unfortunately, the peaks were all covered in clouds.

We stopped along the way to view the Ayeska Pipeline. The 800 mile pipeline, which stretches from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean, to Valdez, was completed in 1977 and transports 1.5 million barrels of oil per day. Approximately 420 miles are elevated over permafrost soil which would become unstable if allowed to thaw. The pipeline is layed in a zig-zag pattern, and individual sections of the pipe can move sideways on its cross beams for over 12 feet for thermal expansion and earthquake activity.

We got to Kenny Lake around noon on Monday. Ever since we started on the trip, Diane and Bob have been talking about cutting "diamond willow" for walking sticks. We've seen a number of finished sticks, and they've been for sale for $40 to $80 each. Wow! It seems a whole lot better to cut and finish them ourselves. Kenny Lake is the place for diamond willow. It grows all around the area, and the campground even loaned us a saw and told us where on their property, it could be found. We all trooped through the brush to find just the perfect sticks.
Once cut, we returned to our campsites to start whittling, or more accurately, peeling the bark. This took the rest of the afternoon, but we got the first step done. There'll be a little more work to do on the sticks, then we've got to let them dry out for up to several months before they can be finished.

On Tuesday, we took off on a day trip to Chitina (pronounced, "Chit-Na"), an historic town on the Copper River. Chitina was founded in 1910 by the builders of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway, as a waypoint on the 196 mile-long railroad from Cordova on Prince William Sound to the Kennicott Copper Mine in what is now the national park. The railroad line was abandoned when the copper mine shut down in 1938, but the town continues to exist, and is a very popular spot for dip net fishing and fish wheels. On the way to Chitina, we stopped at a roadside campground to view a beautiful waterfall on Liberty Creek. The campground was closed because a bridge across the creek had washed out, but we were still able to see the falls.

Just past Chitna we drove out to the confluence of the Copper and Chitina Rivers, and found that the sockeye salmon run was on. The fish had arrived in large numbers during the previous night, and the fish wheel and dip net fishermen were landing huge numbers of fish. We talked to a dip net fisherman who, with his son, landed over 80 fish in two hours.
Another guy who was cleaning fish caught in a fish wheel complained that he was exhausted and needed a break. I guess that we must have seemed like nice people, because the fishermen gave us three salmon; one already filleted and bagged, the others still alive. We were planning on having a picnic lunch, so Debbie had a cutting board and a sharp knife to use for cleaning the fish. Yum!

After leaving the river area, we traveled up the McCarthy Road about five miles and had a roadside picnic. Returning to Chitina, we saw this bald eagle perched just off the road. It is such a magnificant bird.

We left Kenny Lake on Wednesday morning, headed for a four day stay in Valdez. The weather isn't great; rain and fog all the way. There is such magnificant scenery in Alaska that it's a disappointment to not have clear weather. Our Alaskan friends say that this is the poorest summer in several years, and the Anchorage TV station seems to agree. According to them, there are normally 15 days over 70 degrees during an Anchorage summer; this year, there have only been two, so far. Oh well, we're here, so we're sightseeing, and enjoying it.

More later.