Paxson, Alaska
While it may not be anywhere you have heard of before, if you fly there in a Super Cub, it won’t be a place you will soon forget!
Paxson is really nothing too remarkable itself. It is simply a small town on the side of the road that really just exists to help maintain the road and Alyeska pipeline carrying oil from the north shorelines of Alaska to Valdez. It is the surrounding area however that is absolutely spectacular (check out the video above to see what our weekend camping out at Paxson looked like).
This little town can be a great jumping-off point to explore the mountains, glaciers, and rivers in the area surrounding the Wrangell St. Elias National Park.
Where is there to stay?
It’ll be tent camping at the Paxson strip (about 2,000′ gravel runway) if you choose to base out of there. With a tattered windsock and room to park 10 planes, it’s not a bad place to set up camp. Within an hour’s flight, there are many gravel bars, old mining strips and camps, tundra, and the occasional four-wheeler trail you can drop a Super Cub into.
What is there to do?
Aside from a few good strips to go hiking and biking around, this is a great area to begin honing in your skills in identifying your own landing sites (much of this terrain is more challenging than it may appear once you venture away from the established strips). There are plenty of relatively “nice” backcountry strips you can practice on to warm up before venturing off into uncharted territory.