Alaska's Lake Clark National Park

Lake Clark was declared a National Park in 1980 as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, in an effort to protect “multiple values,” including the waters that flow into Bristol Bay, site of the world’s largest salmon fishery, said Megan Richotte, Lake Clark National Park’s (@lakeclarknps) program manager for interpretation. The park is a veritable greatest hits of Alaskan landscapes and wildlife. It would take many lifetimes to hike all of Lake Clark’s glaciers, mountains, volcanoes and tundra; paddle all of the park’s lakes and shoreline; and spot the wide range of wildlife large — bears, lynx, eagles and wolves — and (very) small — collared pika and tundra shrew — that claim the area as home. And Lake Clark is also a culturally rich area, home for thousands of years to the Dena’ina Athabascan indigenous people.

We were heading to the only public use cabin in all of Lake Clark’s four million acres — bigger than the state of Connecticut. All that space for about 23,000 visitors per year.


From “An Alaska National Park as Big as Connecticut. Annual Visitors? 23,000.” by Jenna Schnuer (@jennaschnuer) in the New York Times; Photo by Christopher Miller (@csmphotos)

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