Virtual Visit: Park Unit 137 - Wrangell- St. Elias National Park and Preserve

We woke up early this morning and decided to adventure virtually to Wrangell-St. Elias to continue our Alaskan exploration this week. The NPS website for Wrangell-St. Elias is excellent in that it provides a clear overview of the importance and nature of the park:

Park Superlatives:

• Largest national park in the United States.
• Largest wilderness area in the National Wilderness Preservation System.
• Designated as a World Heritage Site with Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, the Canadian neighbors Kluane National Park & Reserve and Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park. (Making this the world's largest international protected wilderness.)
• Four major mountain ranges:Wrangell, St. Elias, Chugach, and the eastern part of the Alaskan Range.
• Mt. St. Elias, at 18,008 feet (5.5km), is the second highest peak in the United States.
• Nine of the 16 highest peaks in the United States.
• Mt. Wrangell, at 14,163 feet (4.3km), is one of the largest active volcanoes in North America.
• The Nabesna Glacier, at approximately 53 miles (85km), is the longest valley glacier in North America and the world's longest interior valley glacier.
• The Malaspina Glacier, larger than the state of Rhode Island, is the largest non-polar piedmont glacier in North America.
• The Hubbard Glacier is one of the largest and most active tidewater glaciers in North America.

After reading the park site, we headed to youtube for video adventures and found three terrific films. The first was a professional film from Go Traveler that showed the grandeur and diversity of the park, as well as a personal story of visiting as a child. Very well done.

The second one was a National Park Service video that must have been made as the film for the visitor's center a few decades ago. This was an excellent overview with incredible scenery - about 30 minutes long. It made us feel like we had really visited the park.

The third video was made by a family with two boys who are on a quest to visit all the national parks before their boys turn 18. This video was fun, charming, and more realistic about what it's like to visit, drive, through, lodge, and hike in the park.


All in all, we spent a couple of hours exploring this amazing park - and discussing our plan of attack for visiting the park when we finally get to Alaska in person! In the meantime, this virtual visit was a great win!