Backpacking in Alaska: The Sanford Plateau

We got an email about backpacking in Alaska. “Never done it, thought about it, and I’d really like to give it a try”. My response was “Well, you’re in the right place”. We mapped out a plan and Natalie came all the way up to Alaska for what was her first backpacking trip. Ever. Never been backpacking anywhere and here she was backpacking in Alaska. That’s some gumption.

Kudos to Natalie. And she crushed it.

We walked the Sanford Plateau in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in July 2009, and the weather was as good as it gets. After dinner up on the Plateau one evening, the sun going down to the north lit up the entire region. Mt. Drum, Mt. Zanetti, Mt. Wrangell, Mt. Sanford, all of them glowing. Four peaks over 12,000 feet, Sanford topping out above 16,000.

Natalie wanted some photos of her reading a book that she could show to her school students when she returned to teaching after the summer. I took a couple of her in front of Mt. Drum, and a few with the awesome west flank of Mt. Sanford as a backdrop. You can also see some of the glacial moraine in the valley below, a remnant of the receding Sanford Glacier.

Natalie wanted some photos of her reading a book she could show her students back home. I took a couple in front of Mt. Drum and a few with the west flank of Sanford as a backdrop. You can see the glacial moraine in the valley below, a remnant of the receding Sanford Glacier.

We hiked across the lower portion of the moraine and climbed up onto the plateau the following morning. It’s a steep climb, but so worth the effort. Once you’re up there, the walking is easy. Wide open tundra in every direction, and views that make you understand why people come backpacking in Alaska in the first place.

This trek was a first for Natalie, she’d never taken on quite a trip like a backpacking trip in Alaska before,

and I admired her willingness to jump right on in with a fly-in trip like the Sanford Plateau hike. Even when we got a little re-routed by high water in the Dadina River, and had a bit of bushwhacking to do in order to get to our landing strip destination, she handled it with aplomb!

Far better than I did on my first ever bushwhack through Alaskan alder.

Great job, Natalie.

By far my favorite part was walking across the plateau It’s just this broad open easy stroll where you can literally just go anywhere and soak in those awesome Wrangell Mountains. Backpacking here in Alaska never fails to reward those who push thru the challenging bits.

The Sanford Plateau area offers various backpacking trips: the route we took is a nice walk. This area generally gets far fewer visitors than some of the better know hikes on the south side and central regions of the park out of the McCarthy area. We didn’t see another hiker on the entire trip.

We saw a grizzly bear on the plateau, found a huge moose rack, and spotted bison and a grizzly bear den from the plane on the flight back to Glennallen.

If you’ve been thinking about backpacking in Alaska but haven’t pulled the trigger, Natalie’s story is a good one to hear. She’d never carried a pack. She showed up, walked across a plateau at the base of 16,000-foot mountains, bushwhacked through alder, crossed a swollen river, and came out the other side grinning. You don’t need a resume to do this. You just need to show up ready.

Take a look at our Alaska backpacking trips if you’re thinking about it.

Cheers

Carl

Newsletter