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Lake Clark National Park

Lake Clark National Park is the third least visited national park in the system but you won't be disappointed with a visit to this pristine wilderness lake nor the flight to it over magnificent glaciers and ice fields.

Alaska

2015

About The Park

Lake Clark is one of the least visited parks in the national parks system.  In 2017 it had it had only 22,755 visitors which would rank it 58th out of the 60 national parks.  Only Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Artic had less visitors. It is comprised of the Lake Clark National Preserve and Lake Clark National Park. As with Denali it is basically one extended wilderness area. It covers 6,300 square miles (16,308 sq km) of which 4,120 square miles is the national park. There are no roads into it so getting there requires a bush plane flight in.

The park is located about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage and Lake and Pen Air took us there. They call themselves an on-demand air taxi which is basically a charter flight. There are no scheduled airline flights to Port Alsworth, the only “town” in the area which is just outside of the national park boundary. We paid $1,080 for two people for the round-trip. Five of the eight Alaska National Parks have no roads into them so getting there is challenging and more expensive than a trip to the national parks in the lower 48 states (and three of Alaska’s that you can drive into).

The other competing air service is Lake Clark Air which runs the Farm Lodge. I say competing because which ever air service you fly in on lands on a 4000’ dirt runway which parallels another runway, just feet away, run by the other air service. Given that both have to be maintained one can only wonder what bad blood caused them to not be able to share one runway in this remote place.

On the day that we had our flight we were the only two passengers. Given that the plane could hold about six people they made use of the space by removing the extra seats and using the space to transport a load of lumber. They hung a disc from a rope attached to the tail and loaded lumber until the disc touched the ground. This was how they determined the load limit. All the while I was watching the disc as they loaded plank after plank of lumber thinking the extra weight should make the plane more stable in the air on a windy flight but, at the same time, less maneuverable in an emergency. As it turned out the flight to Port Alsworth was uneventful.

We left Anchorage’s Merrill Field in clear, sunny weather and flew across the Cook Inlet to head over the mountains. There were plenty of glaciers and at times they just seem close enough to touch. I doubt that we were more than a few hundred feet above them. They were beautiful and we flew down a long valley and took a lot of pictures.

As you approach Port Alsworth you are flying over the end of Lake Clark. It’s the biggest lake in the park and quite beautiful. Port Alsworth is more a village than a town. It is mostly houses and no consumer-type businesses i.e. stores, restaurants etc. There’s minimal services there. Like much of remote Alaska people are pretty self-sufficient. When they travel to Anchorage, or whatever town is near, they stock up. There was a small café and general store with a limited selection.

The national parks visitor center and park headquarters is next to the easternmost runway. There’s no entrance fee.  I guess they figure if you are visiting Lake Clark National Park you are spending enough money.

 

It certainly is remote and Port Alsworth is in a corner of this wilderness that is in the Lake Clark National Preserve. To see any other part of the preserve or, for the most part, the national park requires canoeing, kayaking or taking a seaplane to land out in the wilderness. Powerboats can be rented on Lake Clark itself.

Lake Clark is pretty much for fishermen, hunters and back-packers. While it is a beautiful area the difficulty getting there and the lack of much in the way of services accounts for its being near the bottom of the list of national parks as far as visitors. We spent three nights which is my usual trip length on a first visit to any national park.  That gives me two full days to explore the park.  If there is more to see or enough beauty or interesting scenery to warrant another visit I put it on my mental list of places to go back to.  

I will add this - the flight from Anchorage to Lake Clark National Park was the most beautiful, scenic, interesting and exciting flight into any of the five Alaska national parks, that cannot be reached by roads, that we have taken. We have flown bush planes into Katmai, Kobuk Valley, Gates of the Arctic and Glacier Bay national parks and none compared with the flight into Lake Clark. That alone is enough to elevate Lake Clark on my list.

Wildlife

Brown bear, black bear, moose, Dall’s sheep, wolves, caribou, red fox, swans, salmon

Lodging and Dining

Most of the visitors are fishermen, hunters and people like my wife and I who are doing a tour of the national parks. The lodging is very limited as is the dining. There is no concessionaire who runs dining and lodging in the park. Everything is private and you need to arrange your own meals if you are not staying at a place that will provide dining.

Farm Lodge

The Farm Lodge is the only real lodge that you can stay in and the only dining option where you can make a reservation. Booking with the Farm Lodge includes the flight out to Lake Clark as a package. We had a nice dinner at the Farm Lodge one night.

The other limited lodging options are a couple of Bed and Breakfasts.

Alaska Back Country Inn

We stayed at the Alaska Back Country Inn, a bed-and-breakfast, which was situated on a bluff overlooking the lake. Our room didn’t have the lake view but a few steps out of the door and we were on that bluff which had some chairs and a fire pit and a beautiful view.

There was a general store, the General’s Café, that served burgers and such and we ate there one night. When I booked my lodging and discussed the limited dining options in Lake Clark, the owner of the Back Country Inn had promised us a freshly caught salmon dinner. He arranged for us to have dinner at a friend’s house because he was tied up in Anchorage. The salmon was fresh and delicious and it was nice getting to know someone who lived in such a remote place and hearing what life was like out there.

There are a few other lodges out in the wilderness but they pretty much are geared to fishermen or hunters (hunting is allowed in the national preserve) and getting to those lodges pretty much requires one to charter a sea plane to drop you off and pick you up.

Hiking

Tanalian Falls Hike

The only way you can actually set foot in Lake Clark National Park is by taking the Tanalian Falls hike. This is about a 7.5 mile out-and-back hike that ends at an impressive torrent called Tanalian Falls. It is only about the last half-mile out to the falls that you pass the national park boundary. The hike is rated moderate mainly due to the distance. It starts in Port Alsworth. We stopped at the General’s Café on the way to the trailhead and somehow got the attention of a dog who did the entire hike with us. We didn’t know where he came from and we thought that when we hit the trailhead he would turn back and go home but he didn’t. He was with us all the way there and back.  We were happy for his presence because we figured that he would be a good early warning system should a bear be near. Fortunately we didn’t run into any. We had lunch at the falls which we shared with our new 4-legged friend and when we arrived back at Port Alsworth he meandered off.

The day after next we saw our canine friend sleeping on the porch of the General’s Café and, when we told the owner how he took the hike with us, the owner told us that it was her dog and he slept the entire day after he hiked with us and now she understood why he was so tired.

Beaver Pond

You can also do this hike as a loop hike and pass by Beaver Pond.  We weren’t aware of that option and I don’t recall any trail sign pointing that way so we just did it as an out-and-back hike. From the map it appears to not add any significant distance, if at all.

Tanalian River Trail

Another nice hike out of Port Alsworth is the Tanalian River Trail, which started at the far end of the easternmost runway and went through the forest and ended up on the shores of Lake Clark at the point where the Tanalian River meets the lake. The hike was probably less than two miles. At the end of the runway there was a 4-engine tanker plane delivering gasoline. This is life in the wilderness. With only dirt roads and few cars – people used ATV’s to get around. Tanker planes like that travel all over Alaska to deliver fuel where no trucks can go. Needless to say we didn’t linger in its vicinity. In fact we moved rather quickly by it and away from it.

Lake Clark National Park Photo Gallery

Other Resources

Lake Clark National Park on the National Parks Service website - NPS.gov

Lake Clark National Park - Wikipedia

Tanalian Falls hike

Other National Parks Within a Day’s Journey

Alaska is America’s largest state. It has eight national parks. Of these there are five which have no roads into them and require bush planes to get to them.

From Lake Clark you could, if you got an early flight back from Lake Clark to Anchorage, get to either Denali National Park or Kenai Fjords National Park that same day.

Kenai Fjords National Park with its tidewater glaciers and amazing sea life is 127 miles to the south and about a 2.5 hour drive.

Denali National Park known for its magnificent wildlife and gorgeous scenery is 236 miles north and about a 3.5 hour drive.

Katmai National Park with its world famous Brooks Falls grizzly bears would require taking another bush flight (and seaplane) out of Anchorage to get there. This would probably best be done after spending the night in Anchorage.
*N*P*Z*

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Updated 02/11/23 7:04 PM

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