Hiking in Wrangell St. Elias - McCarthy - Kennicott - Alaska - USA

The village McCarthy only has 25 permanent residents and is reachable by a long gravel road and a footbridge. The faster way to get there is by flying from Chitina, but that can only be done by small bush planes and it’s not the cheapest option.
Today we want to hike to the Bonanza mine. A abandoned copper mine that’s 1300 meters higher up. We take the first shuttle towards Kennicott and walk towards the start of the hike. At the crossroads we we turn left and pretty soon the path starts going steeply uphill. The track has suffered from heavy rains and has been worn out by the water. This makes the hiking rather difficult. On the sides the path also is steep and heavily vegetated. Not the place where you want to meet a bear, so making lot’s of noise we steadily continue our way. We meet 2 other hikers who forgot their DEET. Fortunately for them we have some. After spraying themselves we tell what altitude we’re at and continue up.
After a long climb we’re above the tree line. At least we can look around us somewhat and the track levels of a bit. Everywhere in the landscape you see the remains of the copper rush and the Americans have literally dropped everything and have left. We rest at a midway station and enjoy the view. After looking at the remainder of the route we decide not to continue any further. The mine is behind a mountain and the views aren’t getting any better. Eventually we’ve climbed 800 meters before we head back down.
On the way back we heard something BIG running through the bushes. At the ranger station they tell us it was probably a bear. So, we’ve heard 1 bear, but still haven’t seen one!...