We continued our journey by curving south on the Glennallen Hwy wrapping around the immense Wrangell - St. Elias National Park. Watching the majestic beauty of the mountains and the surrounding boreal forests and spotting more moose, eagle and swans along the roadway, we decided to take a detour and head deep into the park. We turned east toward the town of Chitna for the 60 mile gravel road to McCarthy - the only way into the vast national park. The road is built over the old narrow gauge railway the hauled copper from the mines out to Cordova on the coast. Occasionally, you can see a rusty rail peaking through the gravel surface and in two spots, the road narrows to an old one-way rail bridge crossing over the rushing rapids below. After two hours of bumping down the road in the pouring rain, we reached the end of the line. It's a strange place here in the middle of nowhere. We stayed in a little cabin at the road's end, but the actual town of McCarthy is one mile on the other side of the Chitna River, only accessible via a walking bridge and small dirt road. The old mining town of Kennicot is another five miles down the dirt road accessible only by a shuttle service - old passenger vans that ferry visitors back and forth for five bucks a ride. We had booked a glacier hike for the morning so met our shuttle at 8:30am on the far side of the river and arrived in Kennicot 20 minutes later. We were fitted for crampons, threw them in our packs and headed through the old mining town toward the trail to the Root Glacier. The skies parted and we got spectacular views of Mt. Blackburn, the 5th highest mountain in the US. Fresh snow covered elevations above 3000 feet from the storm the night before giving the entire range a picture post card feel. We approached the foot of the glacier, donned our spiky footwear, and headed up. We meandered around small rivulets of ice-blue water, pools of azure, small waterfalls in the snow, and deep crevasses. The guide led us to two moulins, spots where flowing water pours into giant holes in the glacier which emanate an eerie echo of water falling into the abyss below. Safely back on hard ground, we hiked back to town and explored the dilapidated copper mill. This was one of the richest copper strikes ever discovered. Typical copper mines dig ore with 2% copper content. The Kennicot mine had veins of rock containing 70% copper! The owners made millions and in 1938 when the minerals were gone, they packed up and left... and thus, so did we.