I’m back in Alaska for the summer, an unexpected turn of life that now affords me some epic days of hiking. My favorite route takes me up to the old Bonanza Mine, one of the copper mines in Kennicott, Alaska, back in the days when robber barons like J. P. Morgan financed what I believe was the most profitable copper mine in human history.

Here are the ruins (of which a person can still scramble around in):