SMITHSONIAN: A Daring Journey Into the Big Unknown of America’s Largest National Park
A note from our friends at the Smithsonian:
Thought you might be interested in a photo story from Smithsonian‘s May 2018 issue, which explores the ravishing landscape of Wrangell-St. Elias, America’s largest national park, and how climate change is turning it into acres of rushing, glacial streams.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska is “an astonishing world of ice many thousands of years old.” Encompassing 13.2 million acres, it is larger than Yosemite and Yellowstone and all of Switzerland combined. Despite its massive size, it gets about 70,000 visitors per year, (that’s 1.75% of Yellowstone’s 4 million visitors!). In “The Big Unknown,” noted adventurer and writer-in-residence at the University of Wyoming, Mark Jenkins, gives us a detailed account of conquering rushing streams, dropping 200 feet into moulins, and a historical review of The Klondike Gold Rush.
Jenkins was lucky to have this experience at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park- exploring the innards of a glacier, climbing icy peaks and haunting a ghost town- because due to climate change, its landscape of moving, melting glaciers is morphing every minute and it will be a completely different place in ten years.
You can read the entire story here.
* Photography by Nathaniel Wilder.
