DAY 1
WELCOME TO ANCHORAGE
where the mountains and oceans meet and (this time of year) the sun never sets. This is the hub of Alaska and where many a wild adventure have started!
Join us at our gorgeous Air Bnb anytime after 3pm and make yourself at home. We’re staying at one of the most beautiful places in the heart of Anchorage away from the hotel and cruise ship crowds. We’ll meet up at 5:30 to get to know each other, talk about our upcoming adventure, share goals for the trip, go over gear, and share a great meal complete with local Alaskan beer.
DAY 2
In the morning we’ll have a delicious breakfast before a short 15 minute drive to Merrill Field. As the Alaskan saying goes, walk a month or fly an hour. In this case, flying turns an 8 hour drive into a 2 hour stunning flight across the Chugach mountains. If you’ve never flown in a bush plane you’re missing out on one of the greatest experiences in life, really. There’s nothing quite like seeing Alaska from the sky — breezing over tundra; spotting moose and grizzly; floating through massive glacial gorges with mile high walls of granite; watching the sun glint off rivers braided like lungs; seeing the tallest mountains in North America at eye level — it’s truly special.
Our skilled pilots will put us down in the small historic town of McCarthy where we’ll change to smaller planes and head deeper into the mountains. The pilots will fly off, leaving us in the bewildering silence and the awe of remoteness. We’ll hike a mile or less to our chosen basecamp and setup for our next 3 nights. That evening we’ll just rest and absorb the magnitude of the place. It may be sunny or pouring rain… but it’s always beautiful.
DAY 3 - 5
Basecamp hikes, delicious shared meals, relaxing evenings, cards, and campfires. When people ask me to explain the Wrangells I tell them this: imagine a valley where the lower 3,000 feet are like the rich green Scottish hills blooming with wildflowers, the middle 10,000 feet rivals the Grand Canyon with deep red towering cliffs, and the upper 3,000 feet is these massive snow capped mountains pouring glaciers down over the walls of the Grand Canyon. Each day will be an opportunity to explore a new place. Our hikes won’t be pre-planned and they’ll all be off trail. The alpine nature of the place means we’ll be able to avoid most bugs and bushwhacking, but not all. This is true adventure. If our group is bigger than six, we’ll have two guides and can hike in two groups each day. Some might chose a slow meditative saunter near camp while others may chose to go as far as their legs can take them. Each day will be a new co-creation with each other, the terrain, and the weather.
DAY 6
BASECAMP TRANSFER
After lunch, bush planes with bulbous tundra tires will come to pick us up from our remote basecamp and whisk us to our next home. We’ll set up again and settle in for a relaxing evening taking in our new view. The flights spook some and exhilarate others. But everyone remembers them as a highlight. Not to mention that AK bush pilots are some of the wildest and most competent characters you’ll ever meet.
DAY 7 - 9
We’ll spend our days on long hikes exploring our new surrounding, sharing hot meals around a fire and possibly in the tents on a weather day. If you find yourself exhausted, you’ll have the option to spend some time in camp resting, reading, making art, playing the camp guitar — whatever suits you. On basecamping trips we have a giant dome tent and camp chairs, so even if its a torrential downpour outside you can be cozy and laughing under the protection of the dome drinking a delicious hot drink. Because planes bring us in and out of these mountains, we still have to be very weight conscious. So other than the dome tent, chairs, and plenty of fuel for endless hot drinks, we still pack light like we’re out for backpacking.
DAY 10
Today is a bittersweet day. You’ll likely be really ready for showers. And you’ll be sad to say goodbye to the wild land that you’ve begun to call home. After breakfast the distant sound of engines will filter in. We’ll pack up camp and fly to McCarthy — a small mining town about 40 minutes away. Then we’ll have either two more flights or a flight a drive to get us back to Anchorage by mid to late afternoon. From our drop off spot, you’re on your own to Uber back to wherever you’ve chosen to stay for the night. That night (after showers and clean clothes and hopefully not checking your email) we’ll have a group celebratory dinner at one of Anchorage’s coolest restaurants and say our goodbyes.
The Alaska Factor
Any expedition in Alaska requires flexibility, patience, and a big sense of adventure. We always try our best to follow our itineraries as written, but rarely do. That’s part of the fun of it! Alaska weather is always changing and shifting and we will always respectfully honor what the weather allows or doesn’t allow us to do. We get the incredible luxury of flying into these beautiful places, but with flying also comes a need to defer to the conditions. Sometimes flights may be delayed for a day or more as we wait for an appropriate weather window. Trip itineraries may also shift due to group skill, pilot availability, or any number of unforeseen circumstances. Please come with an open mind, a spirit of enthusiastic adventure, and a willingness to see where the trip takes you.
