Great Short Denali Trip - Brief Intro

 Left Anchorage Wednesday to let the carpet guy install some carpet that's been long delayed for various reasons and then COVID.  Decided he could do it while we were gone.  Forecast was for rain and we had rain on and off on the road up.  

But as we pulled into our campsite the sun came out.  It was cloudy all day Thursday, but no rain, and the sun was visible thru the clouds most of the time.  Here's a view from yesterday.

It rained during the night but it stopped this morning and we're just back from a hike.  Going to head home.  This is just an appetizer.  

Some Things Change Slower Than Others - Denali Sunset

This was the view this evening from O'Malley on the Green where we went for an event.  The day started at six am when I turned on the radio - still in bed - members of the House Intelligence Committee questioning Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.  I thought he was a reasonable witness - well last one I saw was Lewandowski so the bar was low.  But he seemed respectful and caught in a difficult position.  He'd been recently hired (after much of the subject of the hearings had already happened) and he couldn't come out directly against his boss.

But in bed, I wasn't taking notes, so if I'm going to write about it, I need to review transcripts.  But today I was busy going through a to-do list that's been getting three or four things added for everything I actually get done.

So you get the mountains.  Foraker on the left, Denali on the right.  Everything changes.  These mountains change daily as the weather changes.  And the mountains are slowly wearing down.  But very slowly.


Denali is 20,308 feet tall (6,190 meters).  It's about 150 miles from Anchorage as the raven flies, (or  241 km.)  Unlike Everest and Anaconda,  it's pretty much a free standing mountain, towering over the rest of the Alaska Range..

Denali Day Two - More Bears, Some Ducks, Weather Change

We've been comparing how little snow there was this year compared to last year.  But now that I've checked last year's posts, it's clear.  Yes, last year was a heavy snow year and this year it was lighter and warmer.  But last year we were there May 3 and  May 4  and this year May 17 and 18.
You can go to the links to see the differences.

After Friday's magnificent day, Saturday gave us a contrast.  Clouds started coming in and by the time we were walking back up from the Teklanika bridge, the first drops began.  But even a rainy day in Denali is a treat.  So here are a few more pictures.

After a few caribou driving to Savage River (where the paved road ends) we (and many others) got to watch this bear fairly close to the road.

There were lots more caribou throughout the drive.  Saturday we were pretty much headed for Teklanika.  This is a campground 30 miles into the park with an overview and lots of bathrooms.  It's a stop for the tourist buses, which don't start running until tomorrow.  Well, that turns out to be not completely true.  There were tan guided tour buses that were running pretty frequently.  In any case, the Denali road is normally closed to private cars at Savage River.  But in the spring, as they clear the road of snow and repair any damage from winter, they open the road - up to Teklanika.  So it's a chance to drive in and stop where you want and watch animals, hike, bike, picnic.  Whatever.  Friday we'd hiked the short Savage River trail (one mile each way.)  It's a loose, but we only did the west side because there was a big glaciated spot that blocked the trail on the east side.  We met people who'd climbed around the ice, but we aren't that young any more.  

We did stop at a pullout about mile 25 and I rode the bike a couple of miles, until there were trees on both sides (and it's harder to spot nearby bears.  Though I don't think there's ever been a biker attacked on the road, but I'm not sure.  Very few people - under five I believe - have been killed by bears in Denali.

So after the bike ride we got to the first small pond before the Teklanika campground which had a Northern Shoveler floating around.  (I'm having trouble focusing my Canon Rebel on objects in the distance, so that's why this bird is so small.  If you enlarge it, you'll see how out of focus it is.  I need to work on this problem.  The manual is challenging and I haven't found good sites on this particular problem online yet.)

The next pond, just past the campground, had a bufflehead pair and a pintail duck.

The Teklanika overlook area was packed with cars - so much so people were parking on the road.  And lots of people had their bikes.  And on the hill not far from the bridge (about a mile away) there was a wildlife ranger (Jake) monitoring a bear sow with two cubs that was about 150 yards below the road.  Well, he said, that they try not to intervene with the wildlife, leaving them as free as possible.  Normal distance to be kept between people and bears is minimum of 300 yards, but since the bears were down below in the river bed and they'd been there for several hours, he wasn't concerned.  Though earlier there'd been about 40 people including barking dogs (they can be on the road on a leash) so he had to quiet down the people.

They were digging for roots he said.  The vast majority of their diet is vegetation in the park.

Here you can see the mom digging.

She had her head down and her claws in the earth most of the time.

Jake noted that the cubs were making noises.  Eventually they get hungrier than roots satisfy, and they wanted to nurse.  I wouldn't know that that is what they are doing in this picture if he hadn't told me.  She's lying down and they're on top of her.









As we headed back up the hill to the car, the first drops began to fall.  Here are some contrasts to yesterday's pictures.


Here's from the viewpoint where I took the pictures of Denali.   This was an idea I had 40 years ago after our first several trips to the park - a postcard of what Denali looks like to most tourists.

Here's yesterday's view from the same spot.  You can't even see the foothills.

It wasn't all just a grey mass, mostly we could see more.

And for a contrast with yesterday's ptarmigan picture, here's one whose feathers are still more in the winter than summer phase.

And here's yesterday's ptarmigan picture again.  Much more brown, less white.

Here's one from yesterday.  I didn't put it up because she was mooning me.  But so you can see the contrast I'll post it here.

We only saw one moose yesterday - while I was on the bike and didn't have my camera.  And it was so close to the road I didn't want to dawdle.  And we see moose often enough in Anchorage, even on our street and chewing on the trees in front of our house, that moose are not that big a deal.  In fact, Friday, the first animal we saw on the tip was a moose beside the Glenn Highway still in the Anchorage city limits.

Nevertheless, they're still magnificent animals, and seeing them in more natural settings like this is still a thrill.  And this rain-dulled picture is pretty much what it looked like up on the hill.  There were a couple other moose with it.

We're back home with lots to do

A Brief Post to Share The Wonder Of Denali National Park

It rained as we drove up here, but the sky was blue when we woke up this morning with just puffy white clouds.  Lots of animals, a good hike, a little biking on the park road.

From our hike at Savage River.

Denali peeking through the clouds.

Ptarmigan - Alaska's state bird, mostly switched from (white) winter coloring to summer garb.

North Face of Denali.


It's really true about how nature changes one's body rhythms.  I just feel more alive here.  Even on a rainy day, but particularly on a day like today.  This is a brief stop at the visitor center to share this, I've got a campfire and dinner to take care of now.

VW Van Revival - Our Camper Has Been A Big Part Of Our Lives

Here's part of an article on how early VW Vans are the new hot vehicle in the old car

LA Times

From 1950 to 1979, the German automaker churned out over 4.7 million of them under different names and models —Westfalia, Samba, Kombi, Transporter — to create one of the most beloved lines of cars worldwide. Its basic frame — a raised, boxy body, a weak engine in the back, bench seats on the inside, a plethora of windows — attracted a devoted worldwide following. Aficionados turned them into everything from surf wagons and homes to taxis and work trucks. Even movable beer gardens.
“It’s the most easily recognized van or commercial vehicle on the planet,” says Brian Moody, executive editor of Autotrader.com. “Low operating cost, low purchase cost when Volkswagen made them. Globally, you can talk to a Brazilian who has great VW Bus memories. A Mexican. A European. An Indian. Not everyone had a Mustang convertible.”
But over the last decade, this once-humble workhorse has become something it’s never been: one of the hottest “gets” in the vintage auto world.

We got married in January, but we were both teaching elementary school.  So the honeymoon was postponed until summer.  We wanted to drive (from LA) to Machu Picchu but there were no Lonely Planet guides then and the Auto Club maps were blank as you got near the Panama Canal.  We decided my VW bug wasn't a good idea and we should get a van.  As we got closer to the end of the school year, we decided Machu Picchu was probably overly ambitious if we wanted to be
back in time for the fall semester.  So we
decided to head north instead - to the end of the 'road.  We looked on maps to find out where that might be.  There was Hudson Bay on the other side of the continent and there was the Great Slave Lake and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.



 And then, we decided a van would still be better than my bug.  So that's how we ended up with a 1971 VW camper.  I was hoping to find some pictures of it on that trip, but I couldn't find those slides.

But the next summer we planned out a more realistic trip headed south.  We had seen an Academy Award nominated short of Mayan ruins and J fell in love with Tulum, and Palenque  and Chichen Itza looked good too.  We took around two months on that trip.  I found a slide of the van in (then) British Honduras.  We'd spent a night in the capital

We were on our way from the coast to Tikal in Guatemala.  We really didn't know if we could get there via this route until we started meeting travelers who were driving the other way and said we could.  The road from the capital (I remember it as Belize City, but Wikipedia says it change to Belmopan in 1971, the year before we got there) to Guatemala was dirt.  We saw that
there was a viewpoint a big waterfall 17 km or so off the main road.  We got there and had it all to ourselves.  So we decided to spend the night.  It rained all night and the road back to the main road was pretty muddy and we got stuck twice on hills.  A British army Land Rover towed us up to the top of the first hill and another Land Rover with tourists staying a little bird watching resort pulled us out the second time and all the way to the resort where we had lunch and saw some birds.

In 1977 we drove from LA to Anchorage.  We started out with a three year old and a three week old baby.  It was a great trip, even when the engine blew out on the Oregon/California border.  A tow truck got us to Brookings, Oregon  where the mechanic ordered parts that afternoon from Portland and we were headed out the next day about 3pm with a new motor.  We had a ferry to catch and he did everything he could so we could get it.  And we did.  Here we are after crossing the Canada/Alaska border after driving from Haines.

In 1980 I had a year long fellowship at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and we drove to DC.  That was a great year and van gave us no trouble. We were taking the kids to Disney World over the spring break. As the  break was nearing, the first space shuttle was set to take off.    It got delayed a few times until it was close enough to our planned trip.  So we took off a day early and drove all night to arrive at Cape Canaveral by 6am for the
launch.  It was delayed again.  So we went off to our hotel room at Disney World and the next day watched the launch from the balcony of our room.  It wasn't as impressive as being right  there, but we did see the white trail as it lifted off into space.  After Disney World we went back to Cape Canaveral as tourists and this picture was at the beach there.

By 1995 the floor of the van had holes in it.  It would get wet inside on rainy days and during breakup.  Our mechanic - Kurt Schreiber in Wasilla (that's another story) - told us we'd gotten our money's worth and it was time.   A young man who was working the summer at Denali bought it and took it up there as his living space.

We looked at replacing it with a new one, but the price was 10 times the original price.  But after two years, and a visit from old friends who rented a camper on their Alaska adventure, we realized how important the van had been in our marriage.  I wanted to be in the woods in a tent.  J wanted to be in a hotel.  The van had been our compromise.  And I was getting really antsy about not being out enjoying the Alaska summers.  So we asked our kids who were in Seattle and Boston at that time, to check out new vans to see if they were significantly cheaper than one in Anchorage.  (The kids had been concerned when we sold the first van.  We'd had since before they were born, the told us, and if we could get rid of the van, we could get rid of them too.)  The VW dealers in Boston laughed at our  daughter when she asked about campers.  They just didn't sell them at all.  Our son had better luck in Seattle.  He could get one for $32K ($5000 less than in Anchorage).  So he did and drove it up to Vancouver.  We met him and our daughter and my dad and step-mom there (luckily there were good non-stop flights that summer from Anchorage).  After we all had our Vancouver reunion, we drove back up to Anchorage.  Here's our first or second night out of Vancouver.

It took a bit of getting used to the automatic (no stick was available) and power windows and different interior arrangements.  But the pop-top was a great feature, we had a lot more power on hills, and J loved that the heater warmed the car to more then 10˚F above the outdoor temperature. And it even has another heater for camping in the cold.  The first time we were camped with snow around us our little digital thermometer said "cold" in the morning.  It didn't go below 32˚ we later found out.  But I could turn on the heater and J stayed in the sleeping bags until it reached 50˚.

So the article meant a lot to me.  We didn't get it because it was a hippie van (and really the earlier models were more in that image) but people assumed that for a long time.  We just liked that we could buy a car with a bedroom and kitchen for not much above the average car price.  And yet it's not any longer that the larger sedans and it fits in most parking garages.  And we've saved a lot of money being able to sleep in the van on long trips.  Even more important, we could easily spend the night in the woods, and even cook (in the new van) and eat indoors if the weather was terrible. And yes, the second one is outside in front of the house now.  It's 22 years old.  We did have some significant preventive maintenance done two years ago, including an undercoating so we don't get wet in the rain.   We're looking forward to our annual spring Denali trip for a few nights before the buses start and they close the road to cars at Savage River.

Here's what it says right now:

Road Open To: Mile 15
The Denali Park Road is currently open to Mile 15, Savage River. If wintry conditions occur, the road may close at some point closer to the park entrance. Though many trails are snow-free, Savage River Loop and Savage Alpine Trails have significant ice.

We'll wait until the road is open to Teklanika.  

Screws And Nails - More Denali

Sanctuary Campground has seven tent campsites.  It's along the Sanctuary River and it's  23 miles into the park.  It's the first place we camped ever in Denali, back in the summer of 1978.  You could drive in back then.

Before May 20, the campground is closed and there's a gate with a long bar that blocks the road into the campground.  But you can park and walk into the campground, which we did.  I got one leg over the bar and as the second leg came over I heard this ripping sound.

I looked back at the bar to see how this happened.

My pants were ripped (that's why I brought another pair), but there isn't a lot of room between my pants and my leg and I was only thinking about the bloody mess I could have made.  Lifting your leg over the bar isn't a slow move that you can just stop - as the rip shows (it happened in less than a second).  We do have first aid stuff in the van, but I'm so glad I didn't need any of that.

While at Sanctuary, I got this picture of a snowshoe hare.  This is a beautiful fur coat worn by its intended owner.

And there's an old cabin at the entrance to the campground but I'd never noticed before how they bear-proofed the door.

I guess that would discourage bears from hitting the door too hard.  But I don't think the screw in the bar blocking the road was intentional.

Getting A Handle on Denali National Park's Vast Expanses

We're back as of Sunday afternoon.  Our upstairs ceiling popcorn is gone and a new ceiling in place.  Everything is still shoved into spaces to allow for painting the ceiling and walls.

Saturday at Denali was Denaliesque.  I recently saw a Mongolian movie and thought, wow, those huge vistas remind me of Denali National Park.  The sun was out most of the time, the clouds here and there not threatening rain or snow.  The (still) white vistas - humans generally just don't experience stuff like this.  You see for miles and miles unpopulated land surrounded by mountains.  With the late snow everywhere it was almost too much.  After you enter the park, about four miles in, you're past all the park buildings - visitor center, camping and touring building, education center, housing for workers, sled dog kennels, and then there's just one road that goes for 90 miles.

Only 30 miles are open now (until buses start May 20), so what we saw is that part of the land you can see from the road in the first 30 miles.  There are a few structures inside the park - at campgrounds basically and lots of restrooms at the bus stops.  After May 20, you get past the first 3 miles or so only on the buses.  Or if you have a camping spot at Teklanika.  All the other camping spots are tent only and you get there by bus.  And there's a big visitor center at about mile 60.

The picture above is the road into the park (though we were driving back to the campgrounds at the entrance when I took this.)  You can tell we're still within the first 15 miles of the road because it's paved.  We're looking east.

And here's a panorama view - I've photoshopped three pictures together.  You see about 20-30 miles into the distance and probably 30 or so miles across from left to right.  If you click on the picture you can see it bigger. (Large vertical images work great here, but horizontal ones don't.)

Just think about what a 25 by 30 mile area in your city would encompass.   In LA that would be approximately from Santa Monica to East LA and from Beverly Hills to Palos Verdes.   It's most of the LA basin with one road and for 85 miles of that road just a few structures and outhouses.   Get a map online of your location.  Seeing such vast distances with nothing but one road and just a few structures stretched out of 90 miles on the road is always mind-boggling, even after 40 years.

And here's a map of Denali National Park and Preserve to get all this into even more perspective.

Original map from National Parks Maps  - This map is fairly large, but at the link it's much bigger

The entrance to the park is to the east where the little black rectangle is to the right of the red line. The first part of the road - brown on the original map here - is the 12 paved miles.  It ends at the red #1 on the map.  (I added the red because the yellow line is harder to see and to show you how far the road was open.)  #1 is where Savage River is, where we snowshoed on Thursday.  I didn't mention it in that post, but it was two years ago when we were there at the same time a young summer Park employee, Michael Purdy, had fallen and died and had not yet been found.  I wrote about that here.  A Park employee told me that his sister was in the park a week or two ago for the anniversary.  You can also see how different the trail looked in late April 2016 compared to early May 2018.
#2 is about where I took the panorama above from.
The Black Bear Paw is Teklanika Campground - the road is closed about a mile past there for now, though beyond it you can walk or bike.
#3 is Eilson Visitor Center (above the 3) - about 60 miles into the park with good views of Denali on clear days.
#4 is Wonder Lake campground, the end of the 90 mile road into the park.
#5 is the North Peak of Denali - the tallest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet (6,140m)

So what we saw last week is only 1/3 of the road in the park.  The panorama is of just one tiny part of the park.  The vast majority of the park has no structures at all.  And the views further in are even more expansive.  Even if you don't see any animals (not likely) or the mountain itself (much more likely), the landscape itself is worth the trip.

Looking through the trees across to a small mountain off in the distance.

Here you can see the slope of the land.  I took this from the road.  J is walking up the road in her red coat.  Since walking on the snow, even with snowshoes, is a challenge, we took turns walking along the road with the other waiting up ahead in the car.  You see much more on foot than in the car.

Here's an area where the snow had an icy glaze.  But if you tried to walk on it, you break right through the ice.

This is just past the gate that closes off the road at the Teklanika rest area.  I'm looking down at the Teklanika River, which at this point is mostly covered with snow still, just those few squiggly pieces of open water.  If you look closely you can see the bridge in the lower right corner.

And below you can see some of those squiggly spans of water from the bridge.

It was a beautiful day - I know that's relative.  The sun was out and the sky was mostly blue.  The temperature was in the 40's but there was a brisk wind in most places and especially on this bridge.    It was also a Saturday so there were a fair number of people who driven to the Park for the weekend from Anchorage and Fairbanks.

This post has taken a direction of its own - the vastness of the park - so I'll save some of the people   and critters we encountered for another post.

Moose's Teeth and Denali Patterns

I read in my cloud  spotter's guide yesterday that Alfred Stieglitz was the first professional photographer to take pictures of clouds, not just as part of a landscape, but as abstract art.  I guess that encouraged me to follow my druthers as we drove through the park today.  Today's clouds, for the most part, were one mass of grayish haze that the sun tried to burn through now and then, but that also included intermittent rain and snow.   This first one is the mountain above Savage River.

Another snowy landscape.

Snow/Ice on the side of the road.

More formations in ice and snow and dirt as the plowed snow on the side of the road melts and sublimates.

Rocks below the ripples of Sanctuary River from the bridge.

OK, time to get more representational.

A view from the road.

Another view from the road, in an area that had less snow cover.

A magpie flies across Sanctuary River.  At this point a car stopped and a woman asked if anything was moving.  I said, "Just a magpie and the water."  She said, "I love the magpies."  I said, "I see them at home everyday so they aren't that special."  She said she was from North Carolina so she never sees them."  "You're right," I said.  "They are really beautiful birds."  And they are with their striking black and white patterns and their dark colors that turn green and blue in the right light.

But here are much better magpie pics from  my front steps and here in my back yard.  The magpie made it across the river.  A number of years ago my daughter and I watched, at this same spot, a mother moose with a very young calf cross the river.  But the calf couldn't make it up the snow bank on the other side.  The mom tried to push it up, but after a while it got tired and the current carried if off down the river.  It was real life nature.  The mom climbed the bank and wandered off.  No one to to comfort her and I know she had to have feelings about this.  But someone down the river was in for a tasty treat.  The natural world is harsh, which  is why civilization, in its best meaning, is important and worth striving to keep alive and improving.


And while I was hoping to see some caribou today, again we only saw moose, which we can see in our on front yard.   But again, they are still magnificent and fascinating to watch.  Here's last year's calf (I think).

And her mom.  I've labeled this picture "Moose's Teeth" which has a little more meaning for Anchorage visitors.  Moose's Tooth is the most popular place for pizza and beer in Anchorage and also the name of a  peak in the Alaska Range.  She was with the calf eating on the side of the road just a mile or two from the visitor's center.  The elevation is lower here and there isn't as much snow and the vegetation is a little closer to greening.