Kennicott Glacier Moraine Walk

The Kennicott Glacier Moraine Walk begins in the extraordinarily preserved ghost town of Kennicott, a National Historic Landmark where the massive red-painted wooden buildings of the Kennecott Mines Company still stand largely intact on the hillside above the glacier. From 1903 to 1938, the mines extracted over $200 million worth of copper ore from deposits high on Bonanza Ridge, making Kennecott one of the most productive copper mines in American history. After the mines closed in 1938, workers departed virtually overnight, leaving behind equipment, furniture, and personal effects that turned the town into a time capsule. The trail winds down from the townsite onto the surface of the Kennicott Glacier, a 27-mile-long river of ice descending from the Wrangell Mountains. The glacier's surface moraine is a chaotic landscape of rock debris, ice pinnacles called seracs, and meltwater ponds in vivid blues and greens. The Wrangell Mountains provide a dramatic backdrop, with Mount Blackburn at 16,390 feet and Mount Sanford at 16,237 feet dominating the eastern skyline. The trail does not require crampons or technical equipment for the standard moraine walk, though rubber boots are useful for wet sections. Guided glacier walks are available from Kennicott for those wishing to explore the ice itself.