Denali National Park – July, 2011

Steady rain put a bit of a damper on our move from Fairbanks to a campground just outside Denali National Park.  And what a shame since it might have been a pretty drive in better weather.  Once we got set up, we made a mad dash to the visitors center in the park to check the lay of the land and decide what we wanted to do during our three-day stay.  The short film “Heartbeats of Denali” whetted our appetite for touring the park.  In checking the on-line weather report, Howie had determined that Tuesday would be partly cloudy with a 30% chance of rain and that Wednesday would be mostly sunny with even less chance of rain.  The problem, if it is one, with Denali is that it is so large that it often has its own weather system, that weather can change almost instantly and the weather on one side of the park might not bear any relationship to what’s happening on the other.  That makes planning a bit tricky but eventually you “has ta pay yer money and take yer chances”.

Denali National Park covers some 6,000,000 acres which makes it a tad larger than one or two New England states which shall remain nameless.  Yes, it’s sheer size is impressive but what boggles the mind is that Denali is not the largest national park in Alaska!  It ranks third.  No wonder Alaskans tend to refer to Texas as “that cute little state down south”.

Private vehicles are not permitted past Milepost 15 on the only road into (and out of) the park.  Past that point the road is not paved, is extremely narrow in some spots and has sharp drop-offs with no guard rails.  Not the sort of place where you’d want to encounter an RVs touting “Call 1-800-RV4-RENT”.  We opted to spend our first full day on a bus for the 8 hour round-trip tour to the Eielson Visitors Center,  which is at at Milepost 66.

The green shuttles into Denali do not provide food for the trip so I had to get up early to pack a lunch and assemble all the other gear that was recommended – mosquito repellent, cameras, binoculars, bottled water, snacks and hats plus things I deemed essential for backcountry travel – hand cream, a nail file, Kleenex, reading glasses, sun glasses.  I stopped short of bringing a book to read.  The weather was overcast but at least not raining and began to clear as we boarded our bus at 9:00 a.m.  The buses are operated by Aramark, the NPS concessionaire, and offer little in the way of luxury, but the windows were clean and so taking photos through them was possible.  And our driver, Matt, was jolly and inclined to share his knowledge of the park.  He explained that he needed to keep his eyes on the road so the rest of us were in charge of spotting wildlife and yelling for him to stop.  Naturally we stopped for a lot of bear-shaped bushes and caribou-sized rocks along the way but there were some good calls as well and so, in time, we saw a variety of animals.

The most exciting spotting was of a grizzly foraging several hundred yards from the road.   He was very intent on what he was doing and didn’t even glance our way.  Matt told us there are only about 300 grizzlies in the park and we learned later that they are somewhat smaller than grizzlies elsewhere because their diet doesn’t contain a lot of protein.  Most of the rivers within the park are glacier-fed and contain too much silt to support a viable fish population so the bears have a mostly vegetation diet. 

We made several potty stops along the way.  Most of the rest areas also offer viewpoints of various aspects of the park so in addition to instant relief there were photo ops as well.  Eielson was reached just in time for lunch and we shared the time with a couple traveling from their home in Denver.

The term “the mountain is out” is used with some frequency by the park employees.  That means that McKinley, the mountain known to the Athabascans as Denali , has emerged from it’s cloud cover.  Only about 30% of the visitors to Denali National Park get to see the mountain and so we considered ourselves lucky that we were able to watch the uppermost peaks emerge from the cloud cover, not a postcard view but better than nothing.  For those who missed it, or will not have the opportunity to travel here, the National Park Service has been considerate enough to provide a webcam so you can view it anytime – no guarantees that it will be visible when you try, but you can try again and again...

During the return trip we were afforded the opportunity to see two foxes, one in the act of hunting a ground squirrel and the other in a foot-race with the bus for some distance.  A lot of animals use the road as a convenient way to get from one place to another and don’t seem particularly bothered by bus traffic.

 

We also saw  caribou, known as reindeer when domesticated.  Both males and females grow antlers and must have incredible neck muscles and not be prone to headaches because those antlers are doggone heavy.

 

Although we don’t know these things for sure, we surmised the most significant spotting of the day was of a lynx.  It didn’t linger to have it’s picture taken but faded into the scrub along the road, leaving us with the impression that we’d just seen a ghost. 

When we got back to the Wilderness Access Center we decided, based on weather reports we’d seen back at Eielson, to purchase tickets for exactly the same trip the following day.  There’s a longer trip to Wonder Lake on the menu but it’s almost 20 miles longer and takes 11 hours.  Not having cast iron bottoms, we thought the longer trip wasn’t worth it and that 8 hours was about the limit of our endurance. 

We hurried home, had a quick crockpot meal, and hit the sack to get rested up for a do-over on Wednesday.  Bill and Carolyn, it turned out, had signed on for the same trip whereas Russ and Rochelle (they of the cast iron butts) were on their way to Wonder Lake.

And we had a rare warm sunny day for the trip.  Our driver, Anna, got us on our way, again with the admonition to sing out if we spotted any wildlife.  We hadn’t even left the parking area when we spotted a moose, at least its nether regions disappearing into the woods.  Bill surmised it was the same one he’d seen the day before at the post office.  Further along the road we saw a clutch of ptarmigans, the state bird of Alaska.  They are masters of disguise, being in camo in the summer and stark white in winter.

The mountain was out and we got several good looks of it along the way.  By the time we got to Eielson the clouds had begun to form but the mountain was still very much in view.  It’s not a terribly attractive shape but there’s a brooding presence about it as it hovers over the lesser mountains in the range.  And we have to count ourselves lucky to have seen it emerge from it’s hiding place behind clouds.

The trip back to the park entrance gave us the opportunity for quite a good look at some Dall sheep clinging to the sides of bare mountains, moving from spot to spot with apparent ease.  With the binoculars I was able to watch one large ram bound downhill, creating a mini avalanche as he went.  Anna pointed out that sometimes the sheep make errors in judgment but usually they stay safe on those inaccessible rocky slopes.

On the return portion of our second trip, I spent more time looking for wildflowers rather than wildlife.  As a recovering gardener, it was exciting to see all those wonderful alpine plants living where they are supposed to live, growing from crevices and surviving on the thinnest of soil layers.  Most alpine flora is small, even dwarf, due to a lack of nutrients.  We could see that most dramatically in the spruce trees as we gained elevation heading into the park.  The trees were abundant and tall near the park entrance (about 2000’ above sea level), were smaller and sparser in the transition zone and disappeared altogether by the time we reached the tundra.  The tundra is not barren but is covered with low growing shrubs, mostly from the willow family.

For as much territory as we covered during our visit to the park, it’s hard to comprehend that we barely scratched the surface and that the same will hold true for the majority of visitors.  Only the boldest will ever venture into the more remote sections and even fewer will see the park in the “off season”.

And now for a change of pace, we’re off to Anchorage.