JKX Alaska – Day Seven: North Pole to Glen Allen, Alaska

Everyone awoke in the North Pole and attended to the various problems with their JK’s. We had issues with wheel speed sensors, crank sensors and an oil issue but everything was handled and everyones spirits were high. We were going wheeling again! After the drivers meeting, we had some quick road miles to make and then we turned left off the highway and looked straight into the mountains.

We had a quick drivers meeting and everyone aired down from the previous road day and we were off up toward the Canwell Glacier. No one had any idea what it was going to look like let alone the fact we would be running up a spine ridge with a couple hundred foot drop off to the left and the mountain to the right.

The JK’s ambled up the trail slowly as we were taking drone footage and there were photographers out getting still content. The higher we climbed the gnarlier the trail became as well as the darker the sky got. It was once again raining in Alaska.

As we neared the end of the trail, it turned right and we stared directly into the Glacier basin and the run off creek it had created. It was truly unreal to think we were parked in a spot that had once been under a hundred feet of snow.

Everyone took the allotted time to eat their lunch and shoot pics of where we were at, for those of us that had never seen a glacier we all took the time to soak it in.

Once we were on our way down Mel decided to take a different route back to the highway and we snaked down the spine ridge and into a different valley that presented us with a beautiful emerald colored lake for a photo op.

We lined up the JK’s and the photographers each took a turn capturing the moment and then we were off to another destination.

A Few short road miles took us into another valley and a stop to walk across an old fashion suspension bridge over a glacier fed river.

Once the group had chance to feel the bridge beneath their feet we were off to see the famous Copper River and we used this time to air back up as we had a few miles yet to go and the morning was going to going to have road miles as well.

The day had taken us to places and sites no one could even dream of let alone drive their JK into. Eric said it best, “I have checked off items on my bucket list I didn’t even know I had on the list.” The trip was winding down but we all knew is was going end in epic fashion.