patrol guy wrote:Has anyone here been to the Kennecott Copper Mine in 2010? I was there in 2008, and they were starting to "restore" the place then (one giant project). I just watched an old slide show that showed the "before" buildings.
Actually I was just up there yesterday with my snowmachine. I had gone into McCarthy to catch the Mail plane back to Glennallen and buzzed up to Kennecott for a quick look. The temperature was -11*F so I didn't stick around too long.
Most of the restoration work on Kennecott has been in the form of replacing roofs in order to prevent further decay of the buildings. That work has been going on for years as the Park Service only doles out funds appropriated on an annual basis. To be sure, some of the buildings have been restored -- to some extent -- but the overall skyline of Kennecott is little changed over the last twenty years, other than improvements to the roofs of the buildings. Kennecott is built in perhaps the most dramatic setting in Alaska, perched on a steep mountain side with two large glaciers (Root and Kennecott) sweeping down from an 11,000 divide with 17,000 Mt Blackburn in the near distance.
When I first started visiting Kennecott in the early '80s, you could walk through the buildings and pick up endless artifacts consisting of letters and catalogs and other paraphernalia. This was pre-Park Service.
The glaciers make great landing areas in the summertime when on hydraulic wheel skis, but they are always changing.
Nizina