The Goat Trail

Trip participants should arrive in Anchorage no later than the evening before our schedule trip departure date. For our example, the Trip would require all participants arrive in Anchorage sometime on July 31. I highly recommend you try to arrive even a day earlier is at all possible, to allow for flight delays resulting from weather. Expeditions Alaska does not provide, but can recommend, accommodation in Anchorage.

Day 1
Your guide will pick you up, from your accommodations in Anchorage first thing in the morning. The exact time will depend on how many people are on the trip, where everyone is staying, etc. Typically it will be somewhere around 8am, Alaska time (4 hours behind EST).

We’ll spend the day traveling to McCarthy, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The drive typically takes about 8 hours, depending on stops, etc. We pass along the northern edge of the spectacular Chugach Mountains, following the Matanuska Valley, the open taiga forest of the Glenallen area. For lunch, we try to stop at the Golden Spruce Cabins, near Kenny Lake. The remaining leg of the drive is slow on the McCarthy Road, a 60 mile gravel road along what used to be the Rail Line in to McCarthy from Chitina. We should get some great views of the Copper and the Chitina River at the start of this leg. if the weather is favorable, we will also get great views of Mount Blackburn, Mount Wrangell, Mount Drum and Mount Sanford as pass by.

The final leg of the trip is through the boreal spruce forest of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park’s lower elevations, before arriving at McCarthy. We don’t actually arrive at McCarthy, rather we arrive close to McCarthy. The road for public traffic ends at the footbridge over the Kennecott River, about 1/2 mile from McCarthy. We’ll either camp by the river, or we can stay in the rustic Kennicott River Cabins about 100 yards back up the road. For dinner we have several options in McCarthy, such as the Golden Saloon, or the Glacier Creek Campground BBQ.  For a look at images from the backcountry section of the trip, be sure to look at the slide shows from both the Wolverine and the Skolai trip pages.

Day 2
The following morning we’ll need an early start. Pack up gear, shuttle it over the footbridge and into McCarthy, eat breakfast Ma Johnson lodge, and then walk over the road to Wrangell Mountain Air. At approx 9:30am we take a short flight (about 30 minutes) with them up to the Skolai Pass landing strip. After unloading people and gear (depending on the size of the group, and weather conditions, it may require two, or even three flights – usually we do it in one) we’ll backpack up to a plateau just above the landing strip, providing a perfect campsite on the sot tundra, with spectacular views of the University Range to the south and the Frederika Glacier and Mt Frederika to the North. After setting up camp, we’ll grab a bite for lunch, then day hike up to Hole in the Wall. This hike can take 2-3 hours or as many as 5 or 6. It simply depends on how far everyone wants to hike. Afterwards we’ll walk back to camp, have dinner, and enjoy the long Alaska Summer twilight.

Day 3
Nw we really get our feet wet. We’ll have breakfast, then break camp and head south towards Chittistone Pass. We’ll walk over a small moraine, cross a few very small creeks, and then clamber up a steep ridge to our next campsite. The hike takes, usually, anywhere from 3 -5 hours. Again, we’ll end up on a high open plateau, where we can find some tentsites (we try to not use precisely the same campsites each trip, in order to not damage the fragile tundra), set up camp, and explore the surroundings a bit. There are lots of nearby glaciers and icefield we can look at, as well as look for caribou, Dall sheep, marmots, golden eagles, red fox, maybe even see a grizzly bear or 2.

Day 4
We can spend this day hiking and exploring the Chittistone Pass area, dayhiking south to the Russell Glacier, with great views of Mt Bona and Mt Churchill (15 and 16 thousand foot peaks) and the University Range. For the adventurous, we can clamber down off the ridge and get up close and personal with the Russell Glacier. It’s heavily crevassed, so we won’t want to venture too far out in it, but it’s a real treat to see so closely such an impressive glacier. This day will involve one small but fast creek to cross – depending on water levels we may be able to rockhop it, but more likely we’ll throw on some sandals and step on it. trust me, it’ll be cold.

Day 5 
We’ll break camp again and head west over Chittistone Pass, and down the Chittistone Valley. This is a longer walk, and you’ll appreciate the day spent yesterday without a heavy backpack on. It’s mostly descending, and the terrain is mostly hiker-friendly, with just a few rocky stretches. This is the day we’ll cross the Goat Trail – a series of steep scree slopes that require some concentration. Having hiked the Goat Trail numerous times (I crossed it 5 times just during the 2006 season), I can assure you it’s not as hard as it looks. The main thing is knowing the right trail to take over the final ravine. Many people take the lower route, which is deceptively hard. After we cross, we’ll camp up high on the tundra where we should have exceptional views up and down the Chittistone Valley.

Day 6
The final day is probably the hardest. We’ll hike up the creek towards the north, ascending up on a broad sweeping plateau that is actually around the backside of Hole in the Wall. Then we descend and cross Hansen creek, before ascending back up the side of Wolverine Butte to pick up another Dall Sheep Trail, cross a steep little scree slope, then round the ridge to see our final destination – Wolverine Landing Strip laid out on the tundra below us. We camp near the strip, and enjoy the evening looking over the Chittistone Valley, where, weather permitting, we’ll have a view all the way back up the Valley to Chittistone Pass. We usually see mountain goats and Dall sheep in the area, and have seen black and grizzly bear, wolverine, foxes, marmots, arctic ground squirrels, weasel, golden eagle, ravens and more.

Day 7
We’ll get an early pickup here. The landing strip sits on a broad open ridge at 5500′, and often gets windy later in the day. So we’ll fly back to McCarthy, enjoy a hot breakfast at the Lodge, grab a shower, and spend the afternoon either lazing around McCarthy, or we can shuttle up to Kennecott, where we can hike up to the old abandoned mines, or hike out to the Root Glacier and do some glacier walking. We can have lunch at the Kennecott Lodge or bring it with us. In the evening we’ll return to McCarthy, have dinner, and again either camp on the river or stay at Kennecott River Cabins.

Day 8
We’ll get up early, have breakfast in McCarthy, then hit the road for the drive back to Anchorage. Typically we get back to Anchorage around 5 or 6 pm. I’ll drop you and you/r party off at your Anchorage accommodation. I highly suggest you don’t plan on flying out of Anchorage that evening, but wait until the following day – we CAN experience weather-delays in the backcountry that could easily make it difficult to get back to Anchorage in time for a flight on this day. If you must book your return flight on this day, please (a) speak with us about it well in advance, and (b) schedule a red eye, such as 1:00am the following morning (Aug 9, 1:00am, for our example here).

This trip can be a 4-5 day backpack from “Point to Point”, directly hiking from Skolai Pass over the Goat Trail to Wolverine, or can include various dayhikes and explorations along the way (recommended) and easily stretched into a 7-10 day trip. A typical duration for this trip is 7 days, allowing time for side hikes and explorations up the Russell Glacier, Mount Baldwin and Hole in the Wall and Wolverine ridge.