Things to Do in Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve

Wrangell–St. Elias rewards travelers who think beyond the trail. This is a park built for scale and spectacle, where simply moving through the landscape becomes the experience. Drive the park roads for big-sky views of glacier-carved valleys, sheer cliffs, braided rivers, and mountain walls that seem to go on forever. Scenic pullouts and roadside vistas around the Chitina and Nizina country deliver some of the park’s most memorable panoramas, especially where rivers cut through deep canyons beneath the Mile High Cliffs. Historic points of interest add another layer: old mining country, remote settlements, and living cultural landscapes remind you that this is not empty wilderness, but a place where people have worked, traveled, and lived off the land for generations. For a park of such staggering size, one of its greatest pleasures is simply looking outward. Wrangell–St. Elias stretches from interior mountains all the way to the coast, and that sweep creates an unusual mix of environments, including wild shoreline and glacially shaped beaches in the park’s coastal reaches. Elsewhere, broad river bars and open gravel flats offer that same beach-like sense of space, with immense views and a powerful feeling of isolation. Wildlife watching is another standout pursuit; scan river corridors, hillsides, and open country for bears, birds, and other animals that thrive in this enormous, untamed ecosystem. If you want the park’s signature experience without committing to a long trek, take to the air. A flightseeing trip is one of the most unforgettable things to do here, revealing the true immensity of Wrangell–St. Elias: sprawling icefields, massive glaciers, volcanic peaks, and mountain ranges stacked to the horizon. Ranger-led programs and visitor stops help ground that grandeur in the human stories of the region, while a night in a remote cabin or campground lets you settle into the silence and scale that define the park. In Wrangell–St. Elias, the best non-hiking adventures are all about perspective—by road, by river valley, by historic site, and, most of all, from the sky.