Our flight was scheduled at 3:30, so there was still some time to kill. After a breakfast in a nice restaurant called “The Potato” we took the shuttle to get to Kennecott once again. But this time we walked further up towards root glacier – the only glacier of the three, which is shiny white and not covered by debrie at the end.
After a small loop on the glacier (tricky without cramp-ons!) we hiked back down and were ready and excited for our flight!
The flight again was worth it: We flew through epic valleys, pure wilderness with river-sand band kilometers wide, waterfalls and of course a lot of glaciers. The most impressive one being Russel glacier as well as the world’s largest icefalls of Stairway Icefalls. At a couple of places one could spot gravel air strips mostly used for mining before national park era. We also flew by one of the Kennecott mine sites with the living quarters.
After 70 minutes we landed again full of impressions and with a lot of photos of really just a small part of this huge, remote park.
Back at our camper we made ourselves a small dinner out of smoked salmon, toast and tomato mozzarella salad and then left back the McCarthy gravel road along the west side of the National Park. Next intermediate destination was Tok, Dawson Highway and finally Dawson, Canada!
