Kuskulana Bridge

This picture was taken on my ride to Valdez, McCarthy, and the Kennicott Mine, along the McCarthy Road.

The McCarthy Road is mostly the old Railroad bed going to McCarthy and the Kennicott mine. Along the way you catch glimpses of old RR Ties, Rails, and the Occasional Round wooden thing. It took me a while to figure out what a wooden disk planted firmly in the road bed could be. Then, right after I hit a huge pothole at 50mph, it came to me. My best guess is that they are old pilings driven into the marshy ground for a bridge.

The Kuskulana Bridge is part of the old Railway and is 525 feet long and one lane wide.

Here's the view off the edge.

The bridge deck, believe it or not, is higher off the surface of that river (238 feet) than the Mackinac Bridge deck is off the Straits of Mackinac! (199 feet).

One of the Line and Grade guys on my job this summer had a good story about this bridge. Several, several years ago he and his friend drew moose tags for that area. They were driving along the road looking for the moose when the came to the bridge and found it covered in ice and snow, which is not too unusual during that time of year. At that time there were no guardrails and only a set of planks for each side of the car, kind of like a wooden two track. Someone had cleared the ice off the passenger side planks but left a rounded pile of ice on the other side.

After arguing for a while he decided to drive across, while his friend walked behind him. He told me he had one hand on the open door the whole way across and that it was probably the scariest thing he's ever done. But...

After he got to the other side, all he could think about was that he was going to have to do it again on the way back!

Its hard to see with the picture being so small, but, if you check out the larger image here

Brian's SmugMug

You can see a little road heading up the hill on the far side of the bridge. I was sitting at work today looking at this picture, because its my computer background, and noticed the small road going up the hill at the far end of the bridge. I wonder where that goes. Guess I'm going to have to go back and find out.

As always if you want to see more and full size versions of my pictures check here.
http://brd.smugmug.com

Thanks for reading