Four Days in Denali

We are back to civilization.  At least in an area with internet connection.  We spent the last four days in Denali National Park, so this blog is a summary of those days (when you are there, they tend to blend from day to day).

June 1 rst was spent as a day of mostly travel from Portage Glacier to Anchorage to Talkeetna on a cloudy, rainy day.  The day started out with an initial trip to Portage Glacier.  This is a Federal park which consists of a 650 feet deep lake with a glacier on one end that calves icebergs.  The park is set up with a large boat which can hold up to 200 people which takes you out onto the lake to see the glacier at the other end.  The ice in the glacier is  light blue in color, about the shade of blue seen in the sky on a cloud free day, late evening, with the sun setting after a rain storm (wasn’t that poetic).  This is due to the pressure that the ice was subjected to during formation of the glacier.  We rode around on the boat and did get to see a small iceberg calve and a tiny amount of snow fall during the trip.

Calving iceberg at Portage Glacier

Then through Anchorage to Wacilla (hello Sarah) and finally made the night stop in Talkeetna.  Talkeetna is a strange little town with a rustic, hippie feel.  It is both a tourist trap for the trains that come through on the way to Denali, but also a destination for people planning to make a flyover trips and glacier landings on Denali.  We attempted to make one of these flyover trips and stayed overnight in the parking lot of the small airport.  We awoke on the 3^rd with cloudy skies, threat of rain, and a cancelled flight.  So, we decided to head on up to Denali and possibly try the flight on the way out. 

We were booking our trip to Denali online and found out that there is a campground 29 miles into Denali, which is the last campground that an RV can stay in on the 89 mile park road.  In most cases this would mean, “so what”.  But you gotta understand that in Denali, you do not drive your vehicle into the park, because it is so wild and they want to keep it that way, people must park cars at the entrance and ride a park shuttle bus along its one gravel road.  Buses run on a regular schedule, so you can get off a bus nearly anywhere and hike around, then get back on the bus to ride back out or to a new destination.  People on the bus are always on the lookout for animals, so if you see one stopped, it usually means someone saw something.  Strange concept, but here it works.  Anyway we were able to get a campsite in the park.   This campground is called Teklanika.  You can only camp here if you have a hard sided camper due to wolf problems. 

On the way into the park we see a stopped bus.  Sure enough, just to the right are three male caribou grazing in the field.  A hundred pictures later we move forward.  About 10 more miles down the road we see another one stopped.  This time it is a mother grizzly and cub grubbing up worms and such under the Tundra about 75 yards from the road.  All in all it was a great day.  When we got to camp we took a three mile hike up a river bed to get warmed up for the upcoming day.

I have an idea, let's hike up there.

Our Second Hike

First full day in Denali.  Up early to catch the first bus to Eielson Center, the last stop on the road and a great place to view Mt. McKinley.  On the way out we see dall sheep, caribou, and grizly, all from a pretty good distance away.  At the end of the line Kevin and I decide to bust loose from the group and head up a nearby mountain.  We climb about 1,000 feet straight up with a view to kill for.  Mt. McKinley is so big it creates its own weather pattern.   Early in the morning we could see it clearly coming up with beautiful blue sky surrounding the peak.  By the time we got to the end of the line, clouds were starting to form around the mountain, but we were still able to get a good view.  One of the park rangers said that only about one in seven people who come to the park actually get to see the mountain, so I guess we were pretty lucky.

Mt. McKinley

We caught the bus and road about 10 miles to an area called Muir’s plain.  This was named after a gentleman who was instrumental in creating the park and was an area he studied.  Getting off the bus, someone said “we saw three bears here yesterday” while the bus driver said “ this is prime bear and moose territory”.  Since moose appear to be more dangerous than bear (they weigh over a 1,000 pounds and are very territorial) this advice really set off our radar.  We step off the road and through brush material that is full of moose tracks, bear tracks, and tons of scat.  Yesterday when we checked into the park, as a souvenir and kind of as a joke, I bought a bear bell.  This is a bell you attach to your clothing that goes ding, ding, ding as you walk.  Of course your saying that if we got off a perfectly good bus in bear country that we may be ding a ling aling, but that’s another story.  Anyway, I had packed this bell in my bag, but it came out of my bag and ended up on my belt loop.

Bear Scat (look it up)

Friendly grizzlies

They say that the mosquito is Alaska’s state bird.  Well, we stopped in this arctic tundra to chill and eat a snack when the wind died down and the mosquitos raised up. It sounded like the hum of jet engines as these mosquitos rose out of the tundra to suck on the blood of a human, something they had probably never seen before.  A little DEET and we were all good.

Moose

Dall Sheep

This place is vast.  Words cannot describe the feeling you get as the bus drives away and you are standing in an area where you can literally see for hundreds of square miles.  You feel like a very small entity in a giant natural world.  Valleys so wide and long that your eyes relax when looking over them like they do when you look out over an ocean.  See what I mean, it is indescribable.

We walked for about 7 hours through bear country today.  Did not see any bear while walking, but should have.  We did find a moose antler that had been shed sometime this past winter.  Weighed about 30 pounds and would have been the coolest souvenir ever if we could have figured out  a way to get it out of the park.  We ended up leaving it where we found it, for the squirrels and other rodents to chew on for calcium supplement. 

After walking for about 3 miles along the road we were picked up by a return bound bus.  On this bus we saw some wildlife up close including more Dall Sheep and 4 grizzly’s.  We ended this day with cooking up a delicious rib eye steak on the grill, baked potatoe, and pork and beans.  Just what we need, more flatulence fodder.  I had forgotten how prolific Kevins methane generator operated.  Figure if we could connect him directly to the Moho fuel tank, that we would never need to fill up again.

Next day we ride the bus for about 15 miles before we get off.  About 95% of the bus riders just ride the bus and never get off.  They have no clue what they are missing.  Just walking down the road is a great experience, when you get off the road it is an order of magnitude greater experience.  We chased a heard of caribou into a canyon and over a small pass to the next canyon and back to the highway. About 10 miles later we are back on the bus. 

There is a 5 mile stretch of road where you can only walk along the road due to the concentration of bears.  They have signs up with warnings and the signs have nails all around the edges because the bears chew on the signs.  Being the mighty mountain men that we are, we decide to get out and walk this stretch.  We yell to the bus driver that we want to get out and the rest of the bus patrons look at us like we are superheroes.  As we exit, the bus driver says “Did you notice the fresh pile of bear scat about 20 feet back?”  I’m thinking, it’s too late to turn around now, all these people think we are superheroes, so we get off the bus and start walking.  Ended up not seeing any bears on that loop but it was a great hike.

We ended up seeing all of the major mammals except for a wolverine.  We say grizzly, moose, caribou, dall sheep, wolves, and minor critters like artic squirrels (which look like prairie dogs), ptarmigan (state bird), and lots of mosquitos. 

Topping off the trip to Denali, we see four moose close up as we are heading out of the park on our last day.  What an adventure.  Advice for your travels, go during the shoulder season, camp inside the park, get off the bus, and pray for a clear view of The Mountain.

Heading back to Talkeetna, hopefully for a flight around McKinley and a glacier landing, if so you will get photos, if not, traveling to the Glenn Highway and Wrangell St. Elias.  But first, we have got to find a Laundromat.  No more clean clothes and have already recycled a few things.  Luckily, the weather is a cool 40 to 55 degrees and sweating is not a big concern up here.



On thin ice




One bad moose



Caribou