{"id":1990,"date":"2022-06-21T16:49:17","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T16:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2022-07-01T18:34:59","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T18:34:59","slug":"week-5-mccarthy-ak-and-glacier-trek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/21\/week-5-mccarthy-ak-and-glacier-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 5: McCarthy, AK and Glacier Trek"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I first visited McCarthy 13 years ago with my friend Lisa (photos from that trip<\/a>), and ever since then I’ve wanted to come back and do a glacier trek. There are 2 bridges into McCarthy: one for locals (you need a key for the padlock to open the gate), and the other a footbridge. There is a huge campground<\/a> next to the footbridge with great views, a few pit toilets, and a food truck selling hot dogs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many folks warned us that the road to McCarthy was really bad, and to bring an extra spare tire, but advice is based on what the road was like 10+ years ago. The road was not bad at all, and no worse than the stretches of the ALCAN<\/a> or Denali highways) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my 60th birthday I treated myself to a 5 day trek<\/a> out of McCarthy, Alaska. Five hard days of hiking with a 45-50 pound pack over glacier ice, rocks, mud, and a lot of bushwhacking. It was completely amazing. There were 4 of us on the trek: myself, my friend Leanne from Tucson, a great new friend, Alfredo, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Monet, our guide. We hiked about six hours per day. I’m so glad I did this while my knees and back could still handle it. We saw a total of 5 bears (2 were young cubs), but all were far away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was trekking, Christine relaxed in camp, and did a tour of the Kennecott Mine<\/a> (highly recommended), which I did when I was here in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand the town of McCarthy, check out the book Pilgrims Revenge<\/a> (available as an eBook from the San Francisco library). It’s a fascinating story, and there is a lot of history of the town and the national park thrown in. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full set of photos of McCarthy and Kennecott <\/a>are here, and photos from the trek are here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Breathtaking views everywhere!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hiked up a ridge for a better view of the glacier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kennecott Copper Mill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first visited McCarthy 13 years ago with my friend Lisa (photos from that trip), and ever since then I’ve wanted to come back and do a glacier trek. There are 2 bridges into McCarthy: one for locals (you need a key for the padlock to open the gate), and the other a footbridge. ThereContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2031,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions\/2031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}