FRIDAY, AUGUST 23

FRIDAY, AUGUST 23:

     This was the day for our bus trip into the heart of Denali. If you want to see Denali in any depth, you need to take a bus.  There’s only one real road in the Park, which goes about 95 miles deep into the backcountry.  You can choose tours of various lengths on this road; they’re priced accordingly. The busses stop at various rest stops along the road, and on the shuttles, you can actually leave your bus, spend some time at whatever stop you want, and get back on another bus.  However, they advise doing your exploring on the way back, as you may not find a seat available outbound when you want to re-board.   It’s easier to find one coming back.  We opted for the full-length ticket, which we were told would pretty much take 11-12 hours round trip, accounting for stops.

     We left early – at 7:15.  We thought that by choosing a relatively early morning departure (they had earlier ones, beginning at 6:15!), there’d be more of a chance to see wildlife.  And we were right, at least at the beginning.  Not more than 10 minutes after we left, we saw a big bull moose very close to the side of the road!

Not too long after that, some caribou up on a ridge.    

 

And some more caribou  a little later.      

  

 

     That was the end of the wildlife sightings for a while.  After about 3 hours, we stopped at the Eielson Visitor Center, about 65 miles into the park. This is a smaller visitor center which mainly services that end of the Park.  We stopped here for 45 minutes, long enough for us to watch a great film on “Climbing McKinley” and to have a quick look at what the visitor center offered.  On a clear day, you can view Mt. McKinley from here.  Or you can take a couple of hikes.  However, today was anything but clear!   Rained most of the day.  And very windy and cold.  So we just hurried in and out of the building as quickly as we could. 

     Continued on down to Wonder Lake, almost the end of the road at about mile 85.  Again, on clear days, you can have the quintessential view of McKinley reflected in the lake.  Too bad it wasn’t to be today.  But at one point it seemed as if there was a little clearing in the sky, and we had a brief decent view of the closer peaks of the Alaskan Range.  Denali was there behind them, somewhere.   Our bus driver encouraged us to pick some ripe blueberries here from the roadside.  Yum  they’re almost at their peak!  But we saved some for the bears!

 

     Turned around and stopped again at the Eielson Center.  This time, our bus was only making a quick potty stop, and we wanted to stay longer.  So we took everything off of this bus and made arrangements to transfer to a later one.  We spent time at a great exhibit commemorating the 100^th anniversary this year of the first expedition to make it to the summit of The Great One.  There were 4 men, one of whom later became the 1^st superintendent of Denali Nat’l Park.  It took them several months just to prepare for the climb.  They used sled dogs to transport their supplies & provisions several hundred miles over snow, from Fairbanks,  to the base of the mountain.  Then they used the dogs as far as they could go up the glaciers & ice to the base camp.  Then they turned their care over to two teenage Native boys, who tended their base camp & dogs while the 4 climbed the mountain.  It took them about a month to make the actual climb.

      It’s astounding what it took to climb that peak.  We learned things we’d never realized before about climbing this mountain.  While it’s not even in the top 100 highest peaks in the world (only the highest on the North American continent), it ranks #1 or 2 worldwide in elevation gain.  It goes from 2,000 some feet elevation at its base to 20,000+ at the summit – a gain of 18,000 feet to climb.  Mt. Everest, on the other hand, only has an elevation gain of 12-15,000 feet (depending on which face).  Plus, McKinley is virtually 100% snow and ice – it’s less than 200 miles from the Arctic Circle; all of the other big peaks are much closer to the equator.  McKinley’s summer temperatures easily approach Everest’s winter temps!  So it was a huge human accomplishment to be the first to do that.  And still is!  Some 1,200 or so people a year attempt to climb it; about half make it to the summit each year.

     To celebrate the pioneer climbers’ centennial anniversary, their descendants gathered to climb it as a group this year.  The great-grandson of Harry Karstens, one of the climbers, knew for 15 years that he wanted to re-trace his ancestor’s footsteps, literally, on the 100^th anniversary. He enlisted descendants of the others, including those of the 2 Natives who were the ground support.  Most had never climbed a mountain before.  But they accepted the challenge, trained, and re-traced the route their great-grandfathers’ or great-uncles’ took (almost all contemporary climbers use another route now, and are actually flown in to a base camp around 7,000 feet high).  One of the Park Rangers we talked with was there on duty when they came back down, and they were all totally humble about it – no fanfare.  Just wanted to honor their family members who accomplished this extraordinary feat. 

     This little Visitors Center also houses some artwork of some of the Artists in Residence program.

 

It’s a very inviting, warm place, and we could have spent more time visiting with the Rangers.  But our bus was waiting.

     The trip back seemed long.  The road isn’t paved most of the way, so it’s slow going and bumpy.  Even the animals must have been trying to find refuge from the rain, as we saw very few on the way back – some Ptarmigans (Alaska’s State bird), and some Dall Sheep on a hillside.  More caribou.

 

     We surely would have wished for better weather for this trip.  Besides not seeing McKinley, visibility was pretty low throughout the trip. The colors of the Polychrome area barely showed up.

 

                                         Above:  a braided river flowing down from a glacier

The school bus windows aren’t the best for vast scenic views, even under optimal conditions. But we’re not sorry that we took it. We got a feeling for the vastness of the park, for its wilderness quality. No luxurious lodges or restaurants or gift shops out here (in fact, not a morsel of food can be purchased outside of the main Visitors Center area). Very few designated trails. Mostly, you’re on your own to hike wherever you want, primarily on tundra.

                                             Back to tree line again:

And we learned a lot from our bus driver.  He gave a very interesting running commentary, even though that’s not necessarily part of the Shuttle bus protocol.  But after listening to him, we’re not sorry we didn’t opt for the more expensive Tour bus option with the more formalized narrative.  His was plenty sufficient. He was great about stopping for animals & photos as long as the passengers wanted him to. And turned out that he and Bill were at BU at the same time doing their graduate work!   Our 2^nd driver was a prototypical Alaskan.  He lived in a cabin a few miles from the park, and did this during the summer months to make enough money to live on throughout the year.  One definition of an Alaskan spioneer:  finding a way to make live out your dream.

     And we got a little taste of what the fall colors will look like here.  Our last photos of the day were of another bull moose grazing against golden-turning vegetation.  This may have been one of the nicest moments of the day.