Park Film - Crown of the Continent

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Crown of the Continent – Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve Transcript. 00:00:10 We inhabit a restless Earth. This young land is in a state of constant turmoil and endless transformation. 00:00:30 The towering peaks of the St. Elias Range continue their climb ever higher into the sky. 00:00:40 Volcanic Mt. Wrangell vents steam into the cold, thin air awaiting its next eruption. Unyielding, Titanic glaciers grind their way to the sea. 00:0I:20 And as the vast wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias only now emerges from the last Ice Age, the chronicle of the planet itself is revealed. 00:02:40 In desperation to define the scale, we turn to the tour guide's litany of statistics. 00:03:10 Nine of the 16 highest peaks in North America. A single glacier larger than Rhode Island. 00:03:20 The Wrangell Mountains alone cover an area the size of Connecticut. 00:03:30 The park itself is the size of six Ycllowstones. 00:03:40 One national park larger than Switzerland with higher mountains. 00:05:30 The struggle to understand the magnitude of this landscape is ultimately futile, for Wrangell-St. Elias does not lend itself to meaningful comparisons. 00:05:40 Here is the natural world at its most dynamic. A surging, seething wilderness where our word’s geologic story is ever present. 00:06:10 The four mountain ranges of Wrangell-St. Elias look like a succession of advancing waves. And they are. Waves of land, great terrains that have rafted up from the Tropics over millions of years like transoceanic breakers finally reaching the sands of a distant shore. 00:07:00 The Pacific Plate dives under the North American continent along this lonely coast, buckling the Earth's crust and driving the St. Elias Range upward, more than three miles up from sea level and still rising. 00:07:20 The St. Elias is the highest coastal range in the world. 00:07:30 The mountain barrier is so high it captures the intense storm sweeping in from the Pacific and holds them hostage. Climbers consider this some of the fiercest weather on earth. In the higher elevations, more than 60 feet of snow can fall in a year, deepening some of the world's heaviest snowpacks. 00:08:00 A blue sky in the St. Elias Range is a rarity. 00:08:40 Unlike the uplifted St. Elias Range, the Wrangells are skeletons of formerly immense volcanoes, most of them great shield volcanoes, among the most massive on the planet. Mt. Churchill today still and serene, was the source of North America's two most explosive and voluminous eruptions in the last 2,000 years. 00:09:20 What has carved these jagged peaks down from gigantic lava domes is ice. This is the greatest concentration of glaciers on the continent. 00:11:00 Hundreds of glaciers fed by ceaseless winter snows transform the landscape. These slow-flowing rivers of ice carve U-shaped valleys. 00:11:30 The glaciers scrape hillsides bare and deposit millions of tons of earth in the braided brown rivers that flow down to the sea. 00:11:50 Even as the glaciers scour the mountains down to bedrock, life takes hold almost immediately, creeping up the slopes of moraines as the glaciers recede. 00:12:10 Pads of dryas hold down the silt and begin the march of life, crating soil other plants will need to gain a foothold. 00:12:30 Eventually, the boreal forest succeeds, so dense it hides the incredible wildlife. 00:13:50 Below the surface of emerging fjords, another forest hides the denizens of the ocean realm. 00:15:10 The elemental forces at work in Wrangell-St. Elias have organized to create avenues for life to exist. 00:15:30 Pioneering plants, musk egg bogs, predators and prey have a grand stage on which to explore their timeless connections. 00:16:30 Gigantic forces like the churning geology of Wrangell-St. Elias regard humankind with primordial indifference. But this magnificent landscape is not nearly a vast and pristine wilderness. To travel in these mountains is to journey back in time to see what much of the world looked like during the Pleistocene, the age of ice. The same environment that shaped human evolution in northern lands. 00:17:30 Native people have lived here for millennia. Bold and resourceful enough to traverse the Bagley Ice Field to trade copper along the coast. We look at this empty land and imagine that it has been untouched, yet the Ahtna people will often have a name for a peak that lies nameless on our maps. 00:18:50 Survival in a harsh environment requires an intimate knowledge of the landscape. 00:19:10 Subsistence hunting and fishing are a part of the fabric of bush life in Alaska, a symbiosis of nature and culture. 00:19:30 By Wrangell-St. Elias is not an easy or forgiving place. 00:19:50 Whatever the reasons for entering it, this wilderness requires a high degree of self-reliance. It is not that the land is hostile, merely indifferent and infinitely demanding. 00:20:40 These are transcendent mountains with the power to change the landscaping and to captivate the souls of those who venture into them. Duration: 23 minutes

Descriptive Transcript

Crown of the Continent: Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias

Audio Description Script

01:00:00:00

(Black screen. Title Appears.)

White letters on black screen: "Wrangell-SI. Elias National Park and Preserve presents." From the darkness, the sun begins to appear over distant mountain peaks. Rolling, cloud-like fog hovers above the wide river, the Copper River, in the foreground. Time-lapse photography hastens the bright sun's appearance and the tumbling movement of the misty fog. Sunshine glints on the water's gently flowing surface.

Soon, jagged, snow-capped mountain peaks. Rapidly moving clouds.

(On second fall.)

From the wall of a calving glacier, towers of ice crash into the sea.

01:00:58:00

(Cue to time-code and fading of crashing sound.)

Now.snowshoe tracks trace a zipper-like pattern in deep snow.

01:01:11:00

("... continue their climb, ever higher, into the sky.")

01:01:27:00

A single mountain climber slowly ascends a peak. Soon, a snow-covered volcano, white steam escaping its vent.

("... awaiting its next eruption.'?

An aerial view of a craggy, mountain-like muddy brown glacier, partially covered with snow.

01:01:37:00

("... grind their inexorable way to the sea.'?

Now, lush green vegetation. A large reddish-brown bear ambles from left to right. Then, a mountaintop with a brilliant blue sky. Outside a small yellow dome tent, one man standing, another seated.

01:02:06:00

("... the achitectonics of the planet itself are revealed.';

A wide view of the gorge, far below the tent. At ground level, green vegetation surrounds the meandering river.

Now, we are flying close to a grayish-brown mountainside streaked with pale orange patches of earth. Then, fly over a snow-covered black ridge to view a vast white ice field surrounded by snow-capped mountain peaks. Black letters on the screen: Crown of the Continent-Alaska's Wrangell­ St. Elias.

The screen fades to black; then to a snowy mountain panorama shown in a grainy, slightly unsteady picture.

01:02:55:00

("... carried along by my father's dream.'?

Home movies of a man and three boys eating at a picnic table..

01:03:10:00

("... a dream for distant horizons.'?

A black and yellow train, marked "Alaska Railroad," pulls into view.

01:03:24:00

("... found in old National Geographies.'?

A hunter carrying a gun walks toward us. Now the hunter stands in a stream, dipping his hand to drink from the flowing water. A caribou gracefully climbs a slight incline.

01:03:36:00

("... Dad took our family north.'?

Three boys walking and climbing on a glacier.

01:03:46:00

("... were not without incident.')

Driving past spruce trees and snow-capped mountains.

01:03:54:00

("... on the Alaska Highway .. .')

A car and trailer in a ditch.

01:03:46:00

("... and camping under bridges and in ghost towns.')

A rough log cabin. Then, three boys on a beach.

01:04:44:00

("... an Alaska that surpasses all imagination.')

The screen goes to black. Then, snow-covered ground and a man with skis with poles steadily climbing a slight incline. Now, three men on skis, trudging across a wide expanse of snow, leaving behind a yellow tent.

Two tall mountain ridges in the background.

01:05:49:00

("... nine of the sixteen highest peaks in North America.')

Mt. St. Elias in the distance, encircled by wispy clouds.

01:06:00:00

("... a single glacier larger than Rhode Island.')

The Malaspina Glacier, a wide field of marbleized blue, gray and white.

01:06:06:00

("... an area the size of Connecticut.')

Sheer, thin rocky ridges, vertical cliffs.

01:06:12:00

("... the size of six Yellowstones. '?

A valley of glaciers, carving rivers of ice.

01:06:25:00

("... larger than Switzerland-with higher mountains.')

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

A single engine plane takes off from a rocky beach and flies past a deep blue lake, backed by low, green hills and azure sky with soft white clouds.

The plane flies over the crest of a snow-covered hill, a high sharp peak in the background.

Now flying over a glacier field covered by a rough surface of white snow and ice.

Flying through a deep, steep gorge of vertical rock, one side edged by tree-covered, terraced cliffs.

Now over a verdant green forest of tall slender trees, a green clearing and small ponds of water silver in the sunlight.

The tiny plane flies over a green valley backed by rugged, snow-laden mountains.

Passing alongside the steep vertical face of a mountain, following the lazily turning path of a mottled, gray-brown glacier field.

01:08:18:00

("... does not lend itself to meaningful comparisons.'?

We are over a turquoise blue lake. Then, the brown, cratered surface of a glacier.

01:08:37:00

("... where the vitality of geologic genesis is eveiy present.'?

[pronounced "sir-acks"] Jutting, upright ridges of glacier material, "seracs," rising like huge, broken teeth of dirty ice from deep frozen chasms.

Pace description to changing image on screen:

Now, peaks of mountain ranges rising like cresting waves.

01:09:18:00

("... finally reaching the sands of a distant shore.'?

A gentle tide breaking on the dark gravel shore of the intensely blue Pacific Ocean.

Irregular chunks of white icebergs stand in shallow water and on the beach, some frozen into the curved shapes of crashing breakers.

01:10:06:00

('The St. Elias is the highest coastal range in the world.'?

Storm clouds roiling over the mountains.

01:10:16:00

("... hostage.')

Dark storm clouds speeding overhead

01:10:36:00

("... deepening some of the world's heaviest snowpacks.'?

Huge clouds rolling between craggy black mountain peaks.

01:10:50:00

("A pellucid blue sky in the St. Elias Range is a rarity.')

The screen fills with a steep slope of white snow. Three mountain climbers on skis with poles steadily ascend to a peak. Skis sliding on hard snow. Man in soft red jacket, wearing tinted glasses. He reaches the top of a snow-covered peak.

PAUSE, BUT SPEAK BEFORE IMAGE ON SCREEN CHANGES:

From an aerial view, we rise over a snow ridge to view a massive range of snowy mountains.

01:12:00:00

("... in the last 2,000 years.')

Sheer, vertical rock face of a mountain, gray, brown and blue.

01:12:08:00

('What has carved these jagged peaks down from gigantic lava domes-is ice.')

01:12:22:00

A small flowing blue stream. Now, six hikers walking on the gray-brown ice of a glacier field.

("This is the greatest concentration of glaciers on the continent.'?

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

Six hikers walk in a valley of ice.

Aerial views of bright blue glacier ponds surrounded by frozen white ice. Swirling dunes of mounded snow.

The surface of a lake, half-covered by island-like patches of ice and snow, like a jigsaw puzzle.

Two people in a kayak paddle, left to right, across a smooth glacial lake. Blue ice overhead melting into a pool below.

Let sound "drip."

The view from inside a blue and white ice cave as two people approach its mouth.

Now, we fly over the surface of a glacial lake.

01:13:50:00

("... fed by ceaseless winter snows, transform the landscape.'?

A blue river flows through a deep green valley.

01:14:02:00

("... carve u-shaped valleys.'?

A steep valley formed by brown earth that has tumbled down from the ridges on each side.

01:14:22:00

("... in the braided brown rivers that flow down to the sea.'?

Now we fly high over a flat area laced with rivers. Next, a small glacier nestled in the valley, high on a hilly ridge. Smooth sand, green vegetation in a valley far below.

01:14:46:00

("... creeping up the slopes of moraines as the glaciers recede.'?

Close-up of delicate, feathery white flowers.

01:15:00:00

("... creating soil other plants will need to gain a foothold.'?

01:15:22:00

A willow with green leaves. A bee buzzes a catkins, a fuzzy, caterpillar­ like bud, then buzzes a fireweed stalk of bright pink blossoms. A green field with many of the pink fireweed flowers, tall spruces at the edge.

("... so dense it hides the prodigious wildlife.'?

A rich green, spruce forest surrounded by snowy mountains.

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

A spikey-quilled brown porcupine waddles along the forest's floor, sniffing plants.

A black raven perched on a treetop flies into the bright blue sky. From the air, we look down on the spruce forest.

A gray-white, great-horned owl on a tree limb turns to look at us.

Sunset. Mist rising from a pond, surrounded by silhouetted spruces. A reddish-brown beaver gliding through the still water.

A brown, shaggy young moose, standing knee-deep in muddy water, eating green leaves .

Two long-necked swans sail on glistening blue water. A tan Harbor seal reclines on a floating ice berg.

A gull spreads its wings, taking off from its perch on a berg to fly low over green water.

A brown Harbor seal slides off a berg into the water. Now under blue­ green water, thick green kelp floating.

01:16:41:00

("... another forest hides the denizens of the ocean realm.'? Pace descriptions to changing images on screen: A jellyfish, pulsing, white, transparent.

A school of small fish.

A pink anemone consumes a tiny silver fish. A gesticulating starfish.

A hermit crab crawling on the sea floor. Four sea lions gracefully cavorting.

An orange fish turns and darts away.

Water dripping into blackness from a rocky surface above. [Get this in before first crashing sound.] Next, a glacier calving-a huge chunk falls from a wall of ice.

FIRST CRASHING SOUND

Two droplets falling from a crystal clear, icy surface.

01:17:30:00

(SECOND AND THIRD CALVINGS-AND CRASHING SOUNDS)

This calving created rolling waves in the water below. It ends with silt­ laden glacial debris tumbling into the surging water.

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

Water droplets falling from an opaque, frosty surface and then from a bluish translucent surface. Another calving in slow-motion. Billowing white clouds of breaking ice and flying chips. Now, a misty pond.

01:18:04:00

("... have conspired to create avenues for life to exist.'?

A tan and white hawk. Then, a wetland with marshy grasses and a quiet stream surrounded by spruce trees. A cow moose and two calves, knee­ deep at water's edge.

01:18:25:00

("... a grand stage on which to explore their timeless connections.'?

A gray and reddish brown Arctic ground squirrel, sitting up on his hind legs, nose twitching.

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

A brown, rocky mountainside and its valley. The lower portion is pinkish tan and sandy.

We slowly move closer to see a small, wandering flock of white sheep.

Now we are flying over a terraced, crater-like, blue-white glacier field. Wrinkled bands or stripes of brownish silt embedded in the ice.

01:19:47:00

("... the same environment that shaped human evolution in northern lands.'?

A solitary figure hikes along a glacier. Now, mounted on a wooden dock, half-in and half-out of a flowing river, a fishwheel, a wooden windmill-like device alternating paddles and wire mesh baskets on its spokes, slowly rotating.

01:20:34:00

(" ... yet the Ahtna people will often have a name for a peak that lies nameless on our maps.")

A black and white photograph of two Native Americans dressed in vertical­ stripes. Now, we fly over a snow-covered ridge, a vast snow field below, a range of mountains, blanketed with snow, in the background.

01:20:56:00

{VISUAL CUE: Ice climber at right edge of screen)

A solo ice climber makes his way up a steep incline. The teeth of his ice pick bite into the ice. The cleats on the toes of his boots dig into the sheer, vertical wall of ice as he climbs.

Pause.

A small plane flies across our view of the snow- and ice-capped peak of Mt. St. Elias in the background. A shallow stream, its surface broken everywhere by the fins of swimming salmon. Two salmon circling each other, spawning. A dead salmon, glassy-eyed, mouth open, surrounded by tiny white eggs.

01:21:56:00

("... a symbiosis of nature and culture.'?

A fisherman, standing in the flow of a rushing stream, dips his long­ handled net to land a fish.

Now, we fly over dry, sand-colored land up to the bowl of a mud hot spring.

01:22:18:00

("But Wrangell-St. Elias is not an easy or forgiving place.'?

A forest of green spruce. Now, low, terraced levels of blowing, shifting, sand-like silt. More silt blowing across a river and its beach, like steam above the water. Next, four men white-water river-rafting in an inflated, rubber boat.

01:22:55:00

("... merely indifferent, and infinitely demanding.")

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

We slowly fly by a vertical, rock mountainside. Brownish-gray, tan and reddish-brown.

In a crevice, silver-white side-by-side waterfalls. Now, a winding glacier bed in the valley of a gently sloping, sandy mountainside.

01:23:33:00

("... and to captivate the souls of those who venture into them.'?

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

Three climbers stand on the rocky summit of a snowy mountain. As the camera pulls back, we see the long trail of their boot prints, that zipper-like trail they created in the smooth snow, as they climbed up the ridge to the top.

Pause.

The screen fades to black. Now, an autumn panorama of yellow-gold leaves, a blue-green lake, mountains without snow.

01:24:22:00

("I first came to Wrangell-St. Elias when I was six years old.'?

A moose prowls. A grizzly bear stands.

01:24:30:00

("... the first time I had ever seen a moose, or an eagle, or a bear.'?

A white snowshoe hare nibbles buds in the snow. A man snowshoes through deep snow, toward a cabin.

01:24:54:00

("... John McPhee, Velma Wallace, Barry Lopez.'?

Home movies. The father and small son, walking on a glacier.

01:25:10:00

("... I find something more.')

Pace descriptions to changing images on screen:

Water, bright blue, reflecting a yellow pond lily. Lily pads.

A shallow, running stream, edged by green moss. Yellow reflections mirrored on the water.

Bluebell blossoms.

A water droplet caught in the center of radiating green leaves. A red salmon swimming in shallow water.

Cottony weeds with spikey stems, their seeds blowing in the wind. [Don't stop!] A pair of swans gliding by. The first bobs its head; the second follows. Pearly, drops of water on leaves. A line of birch trees.

01:26:26:00

("... we, too, are changed.')

A plane and its shadow flying across a vast glacier.     A lake of floating ice.

01:26:46:00

("... made visible by this great land.')

Clouds swirl around the peak of Mt. St. Elias.

01:27:04:00

("... the earth and space -    father and son.')

Now we rise higher and higher above the glacier-covered land.

01:24:54:00

('To understand not only the parts of life, but the sum.')

The screen fades to black. White letters.

Duration:

22 minutes, 15 seconds

Soar above mountains and glacier-carved valleys still emerging from the Ice Age. With calving glaciers in hidden fjords, wildlife wandering a vast land and countless unnamed peaks, Wrangell-St. Elias fulfills the romantic, mythic image of Alaska. This single national park contains the greatest concentration of glaciers outside the polar ice caps, nine of the 16 highest peaks in the United States, the largest piedmont glacier and the highest coastal range in the world.