Adventure
The Great St. Elias Station is built for immersion (Of the wilderness kind).
We believe that people need wild places and that wild places need people to care about them.
Let’s talk about adventure
What is it?
Today, the verbiage and general concept of “adventure” is used in widely different contexts. For those seeking “wilderness adventures,” it is important to understand the concept being presented to you. We will be the first to tell you this place isn’t for everyone. It’s not supposed to be. Those looking for real adventure know that there are inherent levels of discomfort and euphoria involved.
What We Think
For our part, we believe that for wilderness to be truly wild and for adventure to be truly authentic, there must be certain degrees of unpredictability and unscripted elements. We also believe that creature comforts and well-earned refuge are important ingredients to properly balanced adventures.
To Sum It Up
Out here, you might get your feet wet when you hike. You might battle the brush and navigate over uneven terrain. But you might also feel more alive a long way. And when you return with the glow of the midnight sun on your cheeks, the glass of wine, the cozy bed, the hot shower will be your just rewards.
Let’s set up your activities together.
The Simple Luxury of Being Here
Not every day needs to be filled with action and activity. The landscape invites a different rhythm, where time outside, unhurried exploration, and moments of stillness can become some of the most memorable parts of a visit. You don’t have to be an adrenaline junkie or fitness guru to enjoy this wild place. Many people come here for peace, stillness and disconnection.
For The Active
Here in the McCarthy/Kennicott Valley, activity is aplenty and real adventure is guaranteed. We can help you navigate this wild unknown-ness by sharing our own deeply rooted experiences and knowledge and letting you be the chooser of your own adventures.
Glacier Exploration
Flight Seeing
Whitewater Rafting
Packrafting
Alpine Hiking
Trail walks
Photography Excursions
Historical Tours
Ice Climbing
National Park Service Interpretive Experiences
A Few Favorite Ways to Experience the Valley
A Classic Kennicott Day
Root Glacier exploration followed by the Kennecott Mill Tour.
The Grand Overview
Jewels of the Wrangells flight-seeing paired with a private glacier hike.
Water and Ice
Kennecott River rafting paired with a glacier hike.
Slow Exploration
Self-guided Kennecott Mine tour, then back to the lodge for a cozy chair and that book you’ve been wanting to read forever.
For the active
Here in the McCarthy/Kennicott Valley, activity is aplenty and real adventure is guaranteed. We can help you navigate this wild unknown-ness by sharing our own deeply rooted experiences and knowledge and letting you be the chooser of your own adventures.
Adventure Purveyors
We can help you build the adventure formula that aligns best with your abilities, interests and budget, including group or private options, full days or half days, peak fitness or leisure.
The Grand St. Elias Station partners with local guide services and tour operators who lead and facilitate these adventure packages.
Click here to find out more. (Button that links to email)
Looking for do-it-yourself options? No problem! Here are some of the top experience providers in the valley. Tell them we sent you!
List Businesses maybe with their logo’s/ web links:
Kennecott Wilderness Guides
Wrangell Mountain Air
St. Elias Alpine Guides
McCarthy River Tours and Outfitters
Dining:
The Roadside Potato
McCarthy Lodge
Kennecott Glacier Lodge
The Meatza Wagon
The Land
The lodge sits inside Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, surrounded by millions of acres of protected wilderness.
This valley, where two glaciers meet, is a place of immense scale and untamed forces. Rivers rush fast and cold, wind cuts through mountain passes, and glaciers groan and shift over decades. In this environment, wilderness doesn’t soften—it sharpens.
Yet within that vastness there is refuge: a cabin light glowing at the edge of the valley, a hearth where boots thaw and stories are shared after long days in the wild.
We are a tiny dot on a map surrounded by true wilderness.
Set within the immense wildlands of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve, our valley lies at the edge of one of the largest protected landscapes on Earth. When combined with neighboring parks across the border in Canada—including Kluane National Park and Reserve, Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve—this vast, connected wilderness forms a protected region spanning nearly 24 million acres. It is a place where glaciers still carve the mountains, salmon rivers run unbroken to the sea, and entire ecosystems remain intact from coastal rainforest to high alpine icefields. Here, the scale of the land is difficult to comprehend and even harder to forget.
The landscape just around the lodge offers a remarkable window into the vast wilderness beyond. The park holds nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the United States, including Mount Blackburn, a massive volcanic summit that rises prominently above the surrounding icefields and can be seen from the lodge. From the valley floor, forests climb toward open bands of alpine tundra before giving way to glaciers and high mountain ice. At the head of the valley, the dramatic Stairway Icefall spills down the mountainside in a fractured cascade of blue ice, constantly shifting as the glacier slowly moves downhill. Right outside the doors, forests, tundra, braided rivers, glaciers, and major peaks all converge. It is a small pocket of land that quietly reflects the same ecosystems that stretch across the park on a vast scale—an intimate glimpse into one of the largest protected wilderness landscapes on Earth.
Our presence here is guided by a simple philosophy of stewardship.
This is already protected land, and our role is not to tame it or reshape it, but to help people encounter it on a small and intimate scale. By welcoming guests into this landscape thoughtfully and with great care, we hope to create a deeper understanding of why places like this matter. Wilderness at this scale can be difficult to comprehend from afar. But when someone walks across the tundra, hears the ice moving on a glacier, or simply sits quietly in the presence of mountains that feel older than memory, something shifts.
As David Attenborough once observed, no one will protect what they don’t care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced. Our aim is to offer that experience—so that the value of wild places becomes something people carry with them long after they leave.
The wildlife here reflects the scale and freedom of nature. Guests may encounter moose moving quietly through the willows, mountain goats high on the cliffs, Dall sheep along distant ridgelines, or the occasional bear crossing a river bar. Trumpeter swans pass through the valley as well as eagles, and other migratory birds that follow ancient seasonal routes across the continent. Wolves, wolverines, and lynx live here too, though they are rarely seen. What makes these encounters different is the space. In a wilderness this large, animals are not gathered or accustomed to people. They are not on display. They move through their own vast ranges, largely untouched by the press of humanity. Here, wildlife remains exactly what it should be, truly wild, living its own life in a landscape big enough to hold it. And when you do catch a glimpse of one, it feels less like a sighting and more like a brief privilege you were lucky enough to witness.
