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7 Free National Parks in Alaska
Alaska’s most incredible national parks don’t charge entrance fees. While Denali gets all the tourist buzz, these stunning parks serve up glaciers, volcanoes, and wilderness without the crowds – or the cost.
Gates of the Arctic National Park
America’s northernmost national park is pure, untamed Alaska – no roads, no trails, no cell service. A land mass bigger than Switzerland where caribou outnumber humans 5,000 to 1. The Brooks Range’s jagged peaks pierce the clouds at 7,000 feet, while 8 million acres of wilderness shelter wolves, grizzlies, and the midnight sun. Bush planes and hiking are your only ways in.
Katmai National Park
Walk among the world’s densest population of wild brown bears – over 2,200 coastal giants fattening up on salmon. In 1912, the Novarupta volcano erupted here, creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and the 20th century’s largest volcanic explosion. Rangers lead daily bear-watching expeditions to Brooks Falls, where bears snatch leaping salmon mid-air.
Lake Clark National Park
Four active volcanoes tower over a landscape where salmon-filled waters meet glacier-carved valleys. The park protects the ancestral homeland of the Dena’ina people, who’ve lived here for millennia. Two of North America’s largest salmon runs surge through these waters, while coastal brown bears dig for clams on volcanic beaches.
Kenai Fjords National Park
The Harding Icefield spawns 40 glaciers that crash into the sea, creating a 700-square-mile playground for whales and sea lions. Exit Glacier retreats 150 feet annually, revealing land unseen for centuries. The waters host all five species of Pacific salmon, while glacier-carved cliffs shelter puffin colonies.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park
America’s largest national park could swallow six Yellowstones. Nine of the continent’s 16 highest peaks pierce the sky here, while the Bagley Icefield spans 127 miles. The abandoned Kennecott Copper Mine stands frozen in time, a 14-story testament to America’s largest copper discovery. Ancient volcanic peaks sit on even older seabeds, pushed skyward by colliding continents.
Kobuk Valley National Park
Caribou hooves have carved trails through these arctic dunes for 9,000 years. The park’s 25 square miles of sand dunes rise unexpectedly above the Arctic Circle, creating a Sahara-like landscape in the far north. Each fall, half a million caribou migrate through the valley, their tracks crossing 8,000 years of human history.
Glacier Bay National Park
A living laboratory of glacial retreat, where ice has carved 65 miles of sea-filled valleys since 1750. Humpback whales breach in waters that were solid ice just 200 years ago. Tidewater glaciers calve icebergs with thunderous cracks, while mountain goats pick their way across cliffs that were only recently exposed to sunlight. The park’s waters host a tenth of Alaska’s sea otter population.
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