Caribou Creek Trail

Caribou Creek Trail’s trailhead is located in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, at mile19.5 on the north side of Nabesna Road. This is a multi-use trail which can be used by ATV’s, so it was quite wide. Parking for the trail is located at mile 18.9 on the north side of the road. Listed as easy to moderate, the hike is 6 miles roundtrip (plus a little over a mile between the parking and trailhead roundtrip) and has about 1000 feet elevation gain. During this hike we encountered two other groups of hikers.

If there’s one word to sum up today’s hike, it would be mosquitos. We have encountered them on other hikes this trip, including yesterday’s Skookum Volcano Trail, but today they were unusually thick and aggressive. We started with some 40% DEET on our hat brims, which usually keeps them at bay from our faces, but after I had 3 of them fly up my nose and found myself to be swatting in front of my face for a good amount of the beginning of the hike, I decided it was time to break out the mosquito head net. For the record, I have carried this mosquito head net in my backpack for at least 8 years, and this is the first time I’ve decided to get it out. We wear long hiking pants due to brush & bugs and light long sleeve sun shirts, but the mosquitos were even biting through our clothing! The head nets made a huge difference. The mosquitos were still swarming around our heads, but they were not biting ears or going in noses.

Today, we broke out our mosquito nets

The Caribou Creek Trailhead sign included a “bear frequenting area” sign

Now for the actual hike. We parked and headed to the trailhead where we found a “bear frequenting area” sign posted. But there was no date filled in and it looked like it had been up for awhile. We had our bear sprays and made lots of noise along the trail. The hike starts in an area where the brush is less than waist high with some spruce trees mixed in. This part had more breeze reaching the trail, which helped with the mosquitos. As we hiked further along the trail, the vegetation, grew thicker and taller and the ground more muddy and soft. Alder, willow and wildflowers joined the spruce and other low vegetation. This is where the mosquitos struck in full force.

The vegetation started as low brush with some spruce

Muddy section along the Caribou Creek Trail

We continued along until reaching the first of several Caribou Creek Crossings. This was one of the areas that still had snow and we found ourselves crossing on a snow bridge, which was well packed. The creek was not very big or deep, so we were not concerned about breaking through. The rest of the trail continued to have vegetation and muddy sections. It was shortly after the first creek crossing that we put on our mosquito nets. There were quite a few muddy sections. The park service is working on installing gravel boardwalks across some of these areas. They had supplies along areas to be completed.

Snow bridge over Caribou Creek

A completed gravel boardwalk

During the muddy sections, it was fun to look for tracks. We saw moose, wolf, lynx and a smaller hooved animal- perhaps either Dall sheep or caribou? We also saw numerous areas of moose scat and some scat that may have been wolf/coyote or lynx. This scat was full of light colored fur. We never saw any bear tracks or scat.