"I never seem to tire ... of looking down the lake or up at the mountains in the evening, even if it is cold. If this is the way folks feel inside a church, I can understand why they go." - Dick Proenneke
Wilderness Travel
Lake Clark National Park and Preserve is a wild part of the world. All camping is primitive, no facilities or designated campsites exist. You should use Leave No Trace guidelines to minimize your impacts. Backcountry permits for camping and hiking are not required, however there are rules and regulations governing one's behavior in all national park areas. Become familiar with them. Resist the urge to take, shape or alter the wilderness around you.
Still want to go camping or hiking here? Good! A further caution then: take it upon yourself to be extremely knowledgeable and prepared, or travel with an experienced guide. Guided trips can be arranged through several authorized services that specialize in backcountry hiking and backpacking adventures. For those interested in more "technical" outdoor experiences, a couple guiding services offer mountaineering and winter backcountry trips to remote parts of the park seldom seen by visitors.
Before you head out, be familiar with the park's food storage requirements for various locations in the park. It is extremely important that bears and other wildlife be prevented from obtaining and habituating to human food and garbage. The park offers bear resistant containers for temporary use by visitors free of charge. You can pick one up at the park visitor center in Port Alsworth.
Lake Clark is exceptionally remote and isolated. Weather can often be uncooperative. Adventures here demand self-sufficiency and advanced backcountry skills. Help is what you bring with you: common sense and skills. Assistance maybe days away. Travelers should also be prepared for the possibility of inclement weather delaying scheduled pick-up, perhaps by several days. See our safety page for more information.
Please consider leaving your itinerary with us at our field headquarters at Port Alsworth before departing into the backcountry. If you have additional questions, rangers will be happy to assist you. They can be reached at (907)781-2218, or you can drop by our field office if your travels bring you into Port Alsworth.
Living Without Trails
Lake Clark is a trailless wilderness, and you are free to travel where you like. No trails, no cabins, just you, out there. Trails become travel corridors that congregate people and concentrate their impacts. Traillessness helps to disperse use and its associated impacts. However, spending time in this pristine country requires preparation, self-sufficiency, and backcountry skills.
A trailless wilderness is all about choices: yours as a traveler and ours as Lake Clark’s wilderness stewards. Where you go .... How you get there from here..... What, if anything, lies ahead for you? These are all unknowns. At the visitor center and over the phone, we are frequently asked: "Show me the trails" or "Tell me where you think I’d like to go". We tactfully resist planning trips for people. Instead we offer traveling tips, suggestions, a planning tool or two and some map resources. Are you willing to explore your own route, correct mistakes in route selection and reap the rewards of self accomplishment or must you follow in the footsteps of others? Frequently these same apprehensive people return saying, " I can’t believe the experience we’ve just had. It was wonderful! Keep it as it is."
Off-trail hiking gives you infinite choices: a myriad of adventures rather than a narrowly defined trail experience. It employs the senses, heightens awareness and actively requires your constant participation in making decisions. Off-trail hiking is exploratory by its very nature and its reward is as varied as the people who partake in it. Trails invariably take us where they go, not where our spontaneity leads or where serendipitous discovery awaits over the next hill. Lake Clark offers you a choice not found in many other areas: there are no trails, only paths less traveled in a premier wilderness.
Backpacking
Multi-day backpacking trips in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve are a special treat. A serendipitous feature of park is its varied topography - something for everyone. Contrast seashores with glacial valleys, gentle tundra foothills with colorful, glacier fed, alpine lakes.
The park and preserve's northwestern parts (Telaquana Lake, Turquoise Lake) generally offer the easiest hiking. The drier, brushless tundra plateaus enable hikers to go where ever they choose. Farther south, there is more timber and brush along the drainages, hence more bushwhacking and tougher going if you leave the ridges.
There are no trails.... you’ll hike cross country, using a map and the lay of the land to get where you want to go. There are rivers to ford, bogs and mires to avoid, and bad weather to sit out. Vegetation and terrain usually dictate the difficulty of the hiking. Plan on covering one mile per hour (allowing for errors in navigation, route selection and tough going). Be aware that willows, alders and birch brush found along the water courses and on many of the lower mountain slopes generally mean slower and tougher going. Routes that look easy from a distance can be extremely difficult. If you’re not familiar with Alaskan terrain, give be prepared to turn back and try a different route a few times, and give yourself plenty of time to get where you’re going. Some areas are virtually impassable because of the vegetation. Hikers should also be prepared for wet feet, from either occasional soggy tundra or river fords. Keep in mind that all streams and rivers must be forded, and during high water levels, this may prove to be impossible.
You can plan a pick-up and drop-off in the same spot, or travel one-way to your pick-up place. Don’t forget to arrange a pick-up with your air taxi and agree on a what to do if the trip doesn’t go as planned.
Backpacking Destinations
The Telaquana Trail, an historic Dena'ina Athabascan route, is a popular one-way backpacking journey. Some hikers base at one of the lakes and take shorter hikes from there.
Twin Lakes
