Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve guide · 1 min read
Flightseeing the Bagley Icefield and Mount St. Elias
Parts of the Saint Elias and Chugach ranges are blanketed by the Bagley Icefield, the biggest nonpolar icefield on the continent.
Its size is hard to grasp from the ground. A flightseeing tour from McCarthy, Alaska, gives you a far wider view of it.
Mount Saint Elias ranks second in height among peaks in the United States and Canada. It belongs to the Saint Elias Mountains, and no other range along a coastline anywhere on Earth climbs as high. From a plane, you can take in the peak and the icefield together, so the scale of both becomes easier to see.
Roughly a third of the park is under glacial ice, and it holds more glaciers in one place than anywhere else in North America. Just 101 miles of road serve this 13.2 million acre park, split between the 59-mile McCarthy Road and the 42-mile Nabesna Road. Beyond those routes the land is wild, rugged, and vast, which is why flying is one of the best ways to take it in.
Wrangell Mountain Air runs a 70-minute outing called the Thirteen Glacier Flightseeing Tour. The route passes numerous glaciers and the Wrangell Mountains, and it also crosses over Kennecott. Along the way, you may spot Dall sheep on the mountainsides.
