SKOLAI PASS
mini-BACKPACKING
Multi Day
- Backpacking
- Moderate
An adventure through a tundra wonderland!
The Skolai Valley is a lush and vast landscape of colorful tundra, misty waterfalls, and enormous glaciated peaks. Picturesque in every way, this route allows you to explore a magnificent area of the Park without the burden of having to move camp every night.
Split your time between backpacking to extra special camping spots and day hiking from there to explore every nook and cranny of this vibrant and expansive wilderness.
- Moderate tundra hiking
- Opportunities for wildlife sightings
- Perfect for beginner backpackers
- Expansive views of the Alaskan wilds
- Wildflowers everywhere
- Up close views of the Seven Sisters!
Trip Details
Trip Length
4 days
Total Mileage
20mi
Total Elevation Gain/Loss
4,000’
Rates
Private Solo
$5,200
Private 2 Participant
$3,250/person
Private 3-6 Participants
$2,530/person
Private 7-8 Participant
$2,390/person
Private Trips with custom dates are available. Book now or call our Expedition Coordinator to plan your Private Trip today!
The “Alaska Factor”
There is a reason Alaska has such a rugged allure for the lower 48 and beyond: it is still wild! This raw and untamed landscape offers our clients the opportunity to authentically pioneer new territory and have real adventures. Part of embracing the “Alaska Factor” is understanding that things may not always go as planned and expecting the unexpected. Water levels might rise, snow might fall, glaciers may shift and move – the landscape is dynamic and unpredictable is what makes Alaska, Alaska!
All of our trips are customized as they unfold and your guide will fluidly make decisions based on weather, logistics, and group dynamics to maximize each day’s experience. There can be quite a bit of variation, but on each trip we promise a big slice of the real Alaska and authentic adventure!
DAY 0
DAY 1
Start the day with beautiful 30min bush flights over mountain passes, braided rivers, and dramatic Alaskan scenery. Upon landing at Skolai, you’ll don your backpacking bag and head up the edge of the valley over rocky talus and across several streams. Stunning waterfalls appear after every several hundred feet and you spook a rock ptarmigan along the way. Eventually finding a way up the tundra, you’ll cover about 3 miles and gain about 1,500 feet as you look for a good campsite along a high bench overlooking the valley. Set up camp and watch the low sun gleaming off the river below as your guide whips up your first backcountry dinner.
DAY 2
Crawling out of your tent in the morning, you don’t make it up to a standing position because you’re so enamoured by the tundra! Teeny plants, flowers, fungi, and lichen create in a busy microcosm of fascinating plant life. When you finally look up, you realize this lush green carpet covers everything in sight! Comfortable and soft, you feel well-rested after a cozy night on nature’s memory foam! Today you’ll wrap around the valley on a fabulous day hike to get a view of the stunning Russel Glacier. Take a different route to return to camp for another delicious backcountry dinner.
DAY 3
A strong cup of coffee in the early morning means you’re alert and ready with your camera as caribou prance silently past your camp. Follow them up toward Chitistone Pass to follow an old miner’s route toward “the Shire”, a lumpy green hillside full of peeping ground squirrels. Identify flowers and birds as you stroll through the tundra and admire the towering glaciated peaks to your left and right. Stroll casually back to camp and enjoy a final backcountry dinner with some of the best views in the Park!
DAY 4
After breakfast, you’ll pack up your camp and put on your full backpack – it feels lighter than it did on Day 1! And you get to go downhill! Navigate your way back toward the airstrip and keep your eyes peeled for movement in the brush – this is a great place to spot a grizzly bear! Unload some items at the strip and enjoy a day hike up to the Seven Sisters formation, an incredible cirque of tall peaks separated by white cascading ice falls. In the late afternoon, you’ll hear the buzz of your return flight coming in and you’ll make a mental note of which side of the plane you want to sit on for all the views on the flight back!
- Customized trip planning
- Logistics consultation*
- Your professional guide(s) – 4:1 ratio
- Orientation and a Gear Shakedown
- Roundtrip 25min bush flights in and out of the backcountry
- All the food on the trip
- Group gear (bear canisters, cookware, fuel, tents**)
*Upgrade to a Trip Package and have logistics included with your trip!
**We recommend that you bring your own tent if possible
What’s not included?
- Gratuities
- Personal camping and hiking gear
- Logistics
You’ll need to be in McCarthy the day before your trip begins for an Orientation and Gear Shakedown. You’ll meet your guide, grab group gear and make sure you are fully prepared to go into the backcountry.
Please account for a full day for travel both to and from McCarthy and the next Alaskan destination. We don’t recommend leaving McCarthy the last day of your trip as this cuts significantly into your last backcountry day and usually makes for a very hectic drive.
Check out our Transportation Page to learn how to get to and from McCarthy. Check out our Lodging Page for lodging recommendations in the area.
Trip Package
If you are planning your trip +2 months before your trip start date, upgrade to a Trip Package! A Trip Package will include transportation to/from McCarthy, local lodging, and any other local activities you’re interested in. We charge a non-refundable $50 Trip Package fee per person for this service.
This is a Moderate Backpacking Trip. 
Please keep in mind that there is no truly “easy” hiking terrain in the Wrangells and often the coolest places require a little extra effort to get to. On our Moderate Trips, you will be off-trail trail for the majority of the trip, traversing some combination of rocky slopes, squishy and spongey tundra, and/or slick glacial ice in crampons – all of it uneven, most of it hilly and some of it brushy. On these trips, you will cover 5-8mi/day with up to 1500’ of elevation gain/loss while carrying your own gear along with a portion of the group gear. You will be camping in the rugged wilderness with no manmade shelters, toilets, or really any type of development. We recommend physical training in preparation for Moderate trips These trips are great options for experienced car campers and beginner backpackers, although we always recommend as much prior experience as possible.
GALLERY
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FAQ
All the pictures and descriptions sound amazing! How do I know what’s right for me? Here are some things to think about when selecting a trip:
What is my #1 goal for this adventure? Do I want to relax and get away from a hectic schedule? Do I want to push myself on an epic and athletically challenging journey? Create life-long memories with my family or partner? Learn skills from the experts and grow my scope as a mountain athlete? See new landscapes and experience Alaska’s unique glaciated terrain?
What are my interests? Birding, animals, photography, geology, wildflowers, journaling, athleticism, spirituality, art, technical climbing, etc.
Will this trip be part of a bigger Alaska trip? Where else am I going and what else will I see? Our glaciated terrain, history, high-altitude peaks, and vast backcountry wilderness are what set us apart from other areas in Alaska.
What am I comfortable with at my current level of knowledge, experience, and physical and mental ability? Alaska is bigger and tougher than anything in the lower 48 and it’s a great place to push yourself, but you want to be realistic and make sure you have a good foundation to build upon if reaching for higher heights.
We pride ourselves on cooking healthy and delicious meals even under the most adverse conditions! Your exact menu will depend on the trip, your guide, and the dietary preferences/restrictions you list in your Trip Application. No matter what kind of cook your guide is at home, all our guides are well-trained backcountry chefs and use time-tested recipes from our proprietary cookbook for their trips. We carry a plentiful and varied stock of ingredients and most meals are prepared from scratch (allowing for easy substitutions, additions or subtractions of ingredients). We onlyt use pre-packed freeze-dried meals on summit pushes on our mountaineering expeditions.
On our backpacking and basecamp trips, you can expect 3 meals a day, plus snacks of your choice. Breakfasts and dinners are usually hot meals and lunches are served cold. On mountaineering trips lunches consist of a variety of snacks as it can be hard to organize group meals while on a rope team.
We use a combination of fresh, dehydrated, and freeze-dried ingredients to make our delicious meals, however on longer backpacking and mountaineering trips your guides will use more freeze-dried foods than fresh foods to keep pack weights as low as possible. On our rafting trips, we cook full multi-course meals with fresh ingredients and enjoy hot and cold breakfasts, cold lunches and hot dinners.
Meals for most trips start with Lunch on the first day and end with Lunch on the last day. *
*If you are signed up for a Custom Trip Package with us, it may include more meals. Check with us if you’re not sure. Mountaineering trips also include meals in McCarthy before and after the backcountry expedition.
Wrangell – St. Elias National Park is home to both black bears and grizzly bears and we are honored to share our home with such majestic animals. We treat the bears with respect and do our best to maintain their wild environment and nature. The bears out here are truly very wild and have very little contact with humans – this means that they are naturally afraid of us! Yes, even grizzlies! Bears do not hunt humans and our most common bear sighting is of a bear’s butt as they run away.
Although bear sightings may be exciting, we do our best to avoid close encounters with preventative measures at camp and while hiking that our guides will share with you. Just in case of unusually close encounters, our guides carry flare guns (to scare a bear away) and pepper spray (in case of an uncomfortably close meeting). It is very uncommon to have to use either.
If you want to, you can bring your own bear spray too, however, know that your guide has one and has been trained on how to use it. With 40 years of guiding in the Park, we have found that being bear aware, taking preventative measures and the flare gun and pepper spray to be sufficient mitigations.
Please refrain from bringing firearms with you on our trips. Not only does this make our other guests and guides uncomfortable, but they are also completely unnecessary for bear safety. We know that other areas of Alaska may recommend firearms for bear safety, but we specifically recommend against them.
