Thursday, July 15, 2010

Day 60 – Tok to Kenny Lake Mercantile & RV Park

Today’s Mileage 176
Miles to Date 5292
Miles Remaining 4357

We departed Tok along the Tok Cutoff (Highway 1) to the Richardson Highway (Highway 4). The Richardson Highway continues to Valdez.

As usual it was another cloudy day so we missed seeing the Mount Wrangell (14,163 feet, an active Volcano), Mount Blackburn (16,390 feet), Mount Sanford (16,237 feet and Mount Drum (12,010 feet). The mountains are in the Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, which also contains the largest concentration of glaciers on the continent. The Malaspina Glacier is North America’s largest piedmont glacier, a type formed when 2 or more glaciers flow from confined valleys to form a broad fan ice mass. Malaspina Glacier covers an area of about 1,500 square miles – larger than the state of Rhode Island. Malaspina Glacier is advancing in spite of climate change.

We will be using Kenny Lake as a base camp to explore the Wrangell and Kennecott during the next few days so hopefully the weather will clear to bring a view of the mountains. The Kenny Lake Community is an unincorporated agricultural community with a population of around 500.

Views along the way

 IMG_0485 IMG_0486 IMG_0487 IMG_0488 IMG_0489

Base camp for the next few days

IMG_0490 IMG_0491

IMG_0493

No comments: