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A Bush Plane Drop-Off Into America’s Largest National Park: My Day in the Steamboat Hills with Wrangell Mountain Air
- Ashley Goes Hiking
- 57 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is America’s largest national park, over 13 million acres, bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Switzerland combined, and yet almost nobody actually gets into its backcountry. Unlike most parks in the Lower 48, there’s essentially no road system here. A single gravel road runs to the tiny town of McCarthy, and that’s it. Everything beyond that is alpine, glacier, and river country with no trails cut through it.
So how do you actually get out there? You fly.
I partnered with Wrangell Mountain Air for a full-day, nonguided bush plane drop-off into the Steamboat Hills, and I stayed the night before and after at Great St. Elias Station.
This is the most detailed play-by-play I can give you, because if you’re the kind of person who wants to actually get off the road system and into the wild heart of this park, this is exactly how you do it.
Why Wrangell Mountain Air Is the Way In
Wrangell Mountain Air runs flightseeing tours and nonguided bush drop-offs and pickups all over Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, out of the McCarthy/Kennicott area. Because so much of this park is unreachable by trail or road, landing a small plane on a gravel bar, a ridge, or an alpine bench is genuinely the only practical way most people will ever set foot in these areas.
They offer nonguided drop-offs at more than 30 locations scattered across the park’s backcountry.
You can structure the day however you want:
• A day hike drop-off and pickup. They fly you in, you explore on foot, they fly you back out from the same spot that evening (this is what I did).
• A point-to-point backpacking trip. Dropped at one location, picked up days later at a different one.
• A there-and-back backpacking trip. Dropped and picked up at the same spot after multiple nights out.
Because they’re not permitted to guide you once you’re on the ground, everything from there is on you: your route, your pace, your decisions. That’s part of what makes it feel so different from a normal guided excursion, and part of why I wanted to write this in as much detail as possible.
Wrangell Mountain Air is also a locally owned Alaska business through and through. It was founded back in 1992 by husband-and-wife team Kelly and Natalie Bay, who built the operation from the two of them flying and running everything themselves into a full team of multiple pilots and planes. They’ve since stepped back and handed the business off to new local owners, but they still mentor the current team and pass down their decades of knowledge of the terrain.
The company is based right in the tiny town of McCarthy, at the literal end of the 60-mile McCarthy Road, which is about as deep into this park as you can get without leaving the ground entirely. There’s something that feels right about flying into one of the wildest corners of the country with a company that’s been rooted in that same tiny community for over 30 years.
Staying at Great St. Elias Station
For our trip to the park we stayed at Great St. Elias Station, which is where Wrangell Mountain Air actually picked me up in the morning. They drove me from the lodging out to their airstrip where the bush plane was waiting. After a full day out in the Steamboat Hills, they flew us back and dropped us at the station in time for dinner.
Having lodging and the flight logistics tied together like that made the whole day completely seamless: no driving, no coordinating pickup points, just fly out and fly back to a hot meal. Plus, it was really nice to relax and read a book in our room after a long day of hiking!
Preparing for an Off-Trail Drop-Off
Long before the trip, once I knew our drop-off coordinates for Steamboat Hills West, I spent time studying the area on Google Earth to get a sense of the terrain, where the lakes sat, and what kind of elevation changes we’d be dealing with. I also downloaded an offline map of the area on onX Backcountry, Gaia GPS, plus a second, backup offline map loaded onto my Garmin device.
Having those offline maps is genuinely essential out there. There’s no trail system, and there isn’t an AllTrails route for this area or anything close to it. You’re planning your own line across the landscape from scratch, so going in with maps you can reference without any signal, and ideally a backup on a second device, is the best way to actually know what terrain you’re walking into and to have a rough idea of your route before you ever land.
I’ll also say this with real honesty: I have a lot of experience with off-trail hiking and navigation, and that mattered here. I don’t think a drop-off like this is the right call for someone’s first hike ever, or for someone who hasn’t spent time navigating without a marked trail. A better way to build up to something like this is to start on your local trails and practice reading terrain and using offline maps there first. Try seeing how comfortable you feel navigating a familiar area with your map downloaded but not constantly open, so you’re relying on terrain recognition as much as the screen. Obviously don’t actually get yourself lost while you practice, but that kind of low-stakes repetition is what builds the skills you need for something like Steamboat Hills. I knew going in that we were both genuinely comfortable navigating off-trail with downloaded maps, and that confidence is what made the day feel exciting rather than risky. I always encourage people to get comfortable reading offline maps and to have them downloaded well before they need them, not just for a trip like this one but any time you’re heading somewhere without a marked trail.
The Drop-Off: Steamboat Hills West
I was dropped at Steamboat Hills West (61.25622, -143.62827) one of the higher-elevation alpine drop-off points in the park. Before we ever loaded up, our bear spray had to be strapped to the outside of the plane, on the wing, so there was zero chance of it accidentally going off inside the cabin mid-flight. Seeing your own bear spray riding along outside the window is a pretty good preview of the kind of trip you’re about to have.
Once our pilot set the plane down and we grabbed our packs, he took off again, and just like that we were alone. It’s a genuinely surreal feeling watching the plane disappear and realizing you’re the only people for miles and miles in every direction, and that the only way out is for him to come back.
We headed across a bench plateau and got our first overlook of a lake below us, then picked our way down through a rocky scree slope that had an underground waterfall running beneath it, along with pockets of marshy ground covered in wildflowers. From there we traversed a boulder field and rockfall area that opened up into an incredible viewpoint over two impossibly blue alpine lakes. What struck me most all day was how varied the landscape was, from scree to marsh to boulder field to glassy water, often within the same mile.
We made our way down to the lakes themselves, which were clear as glass, with some of the most beautiful rocks visible on the lakebeds I’ve ever seen. We lounged there for a while, ate snacks, and I’ll admit I took a short nap lakeside. From there we walked to another viewpoint over a second lake, then on to a third lake with a ridge I was able to climb up onto, which genuinely felt like standing in the clouds.
We spent the rest of the day working our way from lake to lake, taking a wide loop back toward our drop-off point in the late afternoon.
Checking In with the Pilot
One detail that surprised me: an hour before our scheduled 5:30 pm pickup, we had to send a real-time weather update to our pilot. I used the SOS/satellite messaging function on my phone, and I also had a Garmin device with me, along with a satellite number the pilot gives you specifically for this. We reported wind direction, wind speed, cloud cover, and whether we’d had any moisture that day.
The reason this matters is that the closest weather station to the park isn’t actually close at all. For pilots flying into remote alpine terrain like this, the most reliable way to know current conditions is either to fly up and look themselves, or to have the people already on the ground report it. Since we’d been out there all day, we had a far better read on the real conditions than any forecast would.
When our pilot finally came into view to pick us up, after a full day alone in some of the wildest country I’ve ever been in, it was an incredible moment. I honestly think anyone who loves the outdoors, who loves true wilderness and untouched backcountry, should experience this at least once in their life. It’s genuinely hard to find the words for how amazing it was.
By the numbers, we covered about 7 miles with over 1,500 feet of elevation gain, with no trail to follow at any point, just terrain and the next lake we spotted that we wanted to go check out.
Our pilot told us fewer than 1,000 people have ever set foot in that specific spot. There are no trails, no paths, no litter, no sign that anyone has ever been through, just untouched Alaskan alpine bush. You’re not following in anyone’s footsteps out there; you’re making your own line between lakes based on what looks good from where you’re standing.
Wrangell-St. Elias is so vast that you could spend a lifetime getting dropped into different corners of it and still barely scratch the surface. There’s also a multi-day Steamboat Hills Traverse option if you want to turn this same area into a backpacking trip instead of a day hike.
What We Packed, and Why It Matters
Even for a planned single-day hike, Wrangell Mountain Air requires you to pack as if you might be spending the night. Weather in this part of Alaska can turn fast, and if conditions get bad, they may not be able to fly back in for pickup until the following morning. So we carried full overnight gear:
• Tent
• Jetboil stove with MSR Fuel (you can't fly with jetboil fuel so get MSR).
Rather than carry all of that with us for the entire hike, we left the bulk of it at the drop-off point and only carried day essentials as we explored. That meant if the weather had turned and we’d needed to spend the night, we’d only have had a couple of miles to hike back to our full kit, a smart middle ground between being prepared and not hauling an overnight pack across alpine terrain all day.
We also had day hiking essentials like our Garmin InReach, trekking poles, hiking backpack, water reservoirs, bear spray, and rain jackets. We carried that along with our backpacking food (bad to leave food unattended!) for the day.
We had perfect weather the whole time, but I was glad we packed like we might not.
Flightseeing: The Bonus Round
We also booked a flightseeing tour with Wrangell Mountain Air, which gives you a completely different perspective on the park: glaciers stretching for miles, carved valleys, and peaks you’d never reach on foot in a lifetime of trips.
One highlight from the air is the area around the Root Glacier, near Kennicott, where the Stairway Icefall drops thousands of feet down the mountainside. It’s considered one of the tallest icefalls in the world, second in scale only to the Khumbu Icefall on Everest. The park is also home to the Bagley Icefield, North America’s largest subpolar icefield, which is worth seeing from above if your flight route takes you near it.
The Bottom Line
If you want to actually experience the backcountry of Wrangell-St. Elias, not just look at it from the McCarthy Road, Wrangell Mountain Air is genuinely the way in. Pair it with a stay at Great St. Elias Station and you’ve got the full loop covered: lodging, transport to the strip, the flight in, a full day in terrain almost nobody has ever walked, and a flight back out in time for dinner.
This was, without question, one of the best national park experiences I’ve ever had. If you’re the kind of hiker who wants solitude, no trails, and a landscape that looks the same as it did 10,000 years ago, start here.
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