Wrangell - St. Elias National Park

To quote the legendary Dwight Schrute, “welcome to the no-spin zone.” I’m not here to sugarcoat anything for you, or to try to prove that my trip was cheaper/more lavish than it actually was. Here we have cold, hard numbers with some of my opinions sprinkled in. The honest truth is that a trip to Alaska is expensive. There are ways that I could have saved some money (we’ll get to that), but you have to know when reading this and/or planning your own trip that visiting Alaska national parks is going to cost you significantly more than almost any other national park trip.

The year is 1912--the same year the Titanic sank; 7 years before women gained the right to vote. 40-year old Dora Keen shows up in a small mining town in Alaska and assembles a team of prospectors--not mountaineers--to assist her in an ascent of Mount Blackburn. After a failed attempt in 1911, Keen is back for a second try at this unsummited mountain, the tallest in the Wrangell Mountain Range.

It's weird how time and growth work together. Last year, I was planning a vacation to Glacier National Park... but when my brother took a temporary job in Anchorage, Alaska, Glacier flew right out the window. Looking back, my trip to Alaska unintentionally put me on a path; it taught me how to better research for a bigger trip, pushed me very far out of my comfort zone, and ultimately showed me AGAIN that I'm the thing holding me back. Since Alaska, I have been planning more ambitious trips and hiking farther than I thought I could!

This is a fluid post that I will continually update! Each time I visit a new park I’ll add it here, or update parks that I return to. It’s kind of a fusion highlight reel and future bucket list.