Currant Ridge

Currant Ridge near McCarthy, Alaska, offers custom-built log guest house accommodations at the edge of the Wrangell–St. Elias wilderness — the most remote and arguably most extraordinary basecamp option in the largest national park in the United States, accessible via the McCarthy Road's 60 miles of gravel track from Chitina and positioned at the gateway to the Kennicott copper mining district, the Root and Kennicott Glaciers, and the vast interior landscape of a national park that at 13.2 million acres is six times the size of Yellowstone. For travelers who make the journey to this specific corner of Alaska, the quality of the log guest house accommodations at Currant Ridge gives the wilderness experience the comfortable basecamp foundation that the surrounding landscape's ambition specifically demands. Custom-built log guest houses near the end of the McCarthy Road give guests the most complete and most comfortable accommodation available in this section of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve — warm, dry, solid-wall lodging in a region where weather can change rapidly and where the surrounding glacier and mountain wilderness makes the comfort of a quality basecamp a practical necessity rather than a luxury. The accommodations' log construction reflects the building tradition of interior Alaska, and their quality within the context of the McCarthy Road's remoteness gives guests the specific combination of genuine wilderness proximity and functional overnight infrastructure that this level of backcountry adventure specifically requires. Pets are welcome. Kennicott, five miles up the road from McCarthy, is a National Historic Landmark preserving the copper mining operation that the Kennecott Copper Corporation operated from 1903 to 1938 — extracting over $200 million worth of copper ore from the Bonanza, Jumbo, and Mother Lode mines at a grade so high (70% pure copper) that it sustained the most productive copper operation in Alaska's history. The 14-story mill building, still standing on the terminal moraine of the Kennicott Glacier, is visible from miles away and provides the architectural centerpiece of the most significant industrial archaeological site in the Alaskan wilderness — a place where the ambition of early 20th-century resource extraction meets the most dramatic mountain and glacier landscape in North America. The Root Glacier, accessible by a short trail from Kennicott, provides the most easily walked glacier experience in Alaska — a several-mile hike to the glacier's edge and onto the ice surface with crampons (available for rent) that gives guests direct contact with one of the largest valley glaciers accessible to foot travelers in the national park system. The surrounding Wrangell Mountains — including Mount St. Elias (18,008 feet, the second highest peak in the United States), Mount Wrangell (an active volcano), and the Regal Mountain massif — create the 360-degree mountain skyline that makes the McCarthy corridor's visual environment one of the most overwhelming mountain landscapes on Earth. Currant Ridge operates through the Wrangell–St. Elias summer season from approximately late May through September, when the McCarthy Road's gravel surface is most reliably accessible and the glacier trails and Kennicott historic site are in their most active programming season. Flightseeing tours from McCarthy's airstrip over the Wrangell–St. Elias icefield — the world's largest non-polar glacial mass outside Greenland and Antarctica — provide the aerial perspective on the park's scale that no ground-based travel can convey. Reserve accommodations months ahead, as the McCarthy corridor's limited lodging inventory fills against the consistent demand from serious Alaska travelers who make the Wrangell–St. Elias approach a specific and deliberately planned destination visit.