Denali Was Out In Full Glory

Here was the view from the mile 135 Denali Lookout point last Tuesday afternoon.  The mountain was magnificent.  The tallest mountain in North America.  All 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m) were showing, just about.  Aconcagua in Argentina is 22,831 feet (6,959 m).  But Aconcagua is one of many peaks in the Andes range.  The whole of Denali can be seen from 3000 feet and up.  And Tuesday it was all out and clear.  

After about four years in Alaska, I wanted to make a post card of clouds, labeled "Denali as most tourists see it."   There was a couple from Toronto there taking in the sight and I wanted to let them know how lucky they were to see this great view.  And we became friends for the next couple of days, enjoying the park together.  

Below is that same view on Thursday afternoon on our return to Anchorage.  My postcard view.  You'd never know North America's highest mountain was hiding behind those clouds.  You can also see that a lot of snow melted in those two days.  

And below is a picture of Denali from the North (on the right), on the road in the National Park.  Still clear.  

Our Canadian friends got great views of the mountain.  Below it resembles a full moon just rising.  

But as lucky as they were with the Mountain, they were unlucky with animals.  I don't remember a trip to Denali when we saw so few big animals.  The few we saw were not particularly close. There were plenty of ptarmigan, gulls, and ground squirrels.  

First we hiked along the Savage River trail.  We've learned from past experience that this early in the season, the trail on the east side is still full of snow and ice in parts, so we hike to the bridge along the west side (right side in the photo) and returned the same way.  

As you get closer to the bridge (about one mile each way) you start to see these Tolkien rocks.  

And excuse me for putting all these photos up extra large.  Denali National Park is extra large and even this effort doesn't do it justice.  

We stopped at Sanctuary campground for lunch, where we saw this giant head in the rocky mountain across the way.  Anyone else see it?  Two of us did.

Just before Teklanika campground, there is a pair of small lakes, ponds really.  One had buffleheads and pintails and a kingfisher.  The other had northern shovelers.  

We parked at the Teklanika overview - which is as far as you are allowed to drive - and walked down to the bridge below.  You can drive in the first 30 miles only until May 20 when the tour busses start.  (Well, they already had some tour busses for the benefit of cruise line passengers, but not too many.)  Beginning May 20 you can only drive as far as Savage River (12 miles in.)  The road is still closed at mile 40 due a a huge avalanche a few years back.  So 20 miles further to Eilson, and then the next 30 to Wonder Lake aren't accessible. An Anchorage Daily News article say it won't be done until 2026.

It was only as we were headed back after a long day, that we saw the first large animal - a caribou.  There were two moose after that.  Denali - being far north with a short growing season and a long winter, is no Serengeti.  There just isn't enough food for the large herds in Africa.  But three large animal sightings is pitiful.   It was a VERY windy day, and perhaps that kept the animals hunkered down.  

Our new friends headed to their hotel outside the park and we got back to our campground.  I'd brought a bunch of the broken tree limbs from the back yard post winter clean up and some nice dry pieces of firewood and we quickly had a dinner cooked in foil.  First on the grill while the flames were high, and then on the coals a little longer.  

45+ Years And Flying Into Anchorage Is Still Amazing

 Especially on a glorious day like it was Monday.  It was even clear and beautiful in Seattle.

Over the always snowy Chugach Range still in Prince William Sound. 

Flying over the Chugach Range with Denali in the background.

The last edge of the Chugach, Anchorage lies ahead below and Foreaker and Denali in the background.  (Even my polarized filter can't eliminate all the rainbow in the plane window when the light is like it was.)

On a normal day you fly over the mountains, then past Anchorage out over the Inlet and then circle back to land from the west.  The wind mills of Fire Island in the foreground, then a bit of Inlet, then Anchorage and the Chugach Range.  Looking back toward where we came from.  

Looking down Turnagain Arm.

Another view of the Inlet - mudflats are showing 

Two more before we land 

The Anchorage Bowl still hasn't gotten any snow.  A bit late.  Probably as soon as I post this, it will show up.  

Denali Day At Denali

 There was sun and blue sky mostly this morning and when we got to the first point on the park road with a view of Denali, there it was.  There were a few clouds near the top, but on closer look they were behind the mountain.

But even before we got to that point, we saw a porcupine.  I remember seeing one live porcupine in the wild in Alaska a long time ago, so this was a big deal. 

And then that first glimpse of Denali.  It's in the middle and looks like a cloud in the first picture.

But then, that's what the telephoto lens is for.  

I've got about 15 or 20 pictures of Denali today. I'll limit myself to these three.  It just dominates the view and may explain why we didn't see too many animals today.  We also didn't drive in that far because we knew we also had to go home today.  So we didn't go past the point where you could see the mountain.  

At one view point, I just climbed up the tundra above the road and kept looking back down at the expanding landscape and the mountain.  

Denali is still very much in early spring.  There are few (I don't remember seeing any) new green leaves.  And driving home, past the Denali viewpoint at mile 135, the trees seemed to go from just budding to full on new green.  But on my tundra hike I did see a few of these.  Don't know what they are.  

We came upon this ptarmigan while we had some classical Indian music on.  It seemed to pay close attention to the sitar and flute.  

This is a white crowned sparrow we encountered as we did the Savage River trail again, this time with sun shining on us.  

We saw a moose and a caribou outside the park on the way home.  A man was taking a picture next to his car along the highway.  I thought of the mountains to the east.  When suddenly a caribou dashes into the road in front of me and doesn't a 180 when he sees my car rushing toward it.  I guess that kind of quick change of direction is good wolf dodging genes.  Was the man waiting to take a picture of a caribou being hit by a car?  

This sad picture was near the road to Willow.  Remnants of a fire now that many years ago.  

The Riley Creek campgrounds now distinguishes between the under 30 foot and over 30 foot spaces.  Our VW camper doesn't take up much room, but for the most part the bigger spaces have more privacy.  So the space we normally have had we couldn't use.  We'd reserved online as in the past, but this year there was no place to do it live.  The Mercantile - the shop at Riley where you normally got your receipt - was closed.  And they had cards on all the A sites (>30 feet> telling you not to park there.  

Also, with the gas tax Anchorage added last year, gas is cheaper in Wasilla.  And amazingly, the cheapest was at Trapper Creek - $3.04 for unleaded.  

Caribou Day At Denali

 We saw lots of caribou, close by while hiking, and off in the distance today.  

And a couple of moose.

And a bear.

Lots of lichen on the rocks.  And a few ptarmigan.  

The hike along Savage River.

That should do it for today.  

Drive To Denali

 This is going to be quick.  I'm outside the visitor center to get WIFI and the mosquitoes are out.

We see good views of Denali a ways past Wasilla, but clouds were moving in.  When we got to the big view point at Mile 135 it was cloudy.  Was the white cloud on top the peak?  

It was the peak and as we watched, the clouds cleared up a bit and we saw more of the peak.

I just couldn't do this icy lake justice.  It's much more beautiful than the picture.

Near Summit Lake, we saw our first caribou.  We also saw a couple of moose, but I was driving and couldn't get a picture.

It was sunny all the way up, though it started raining slightly here.  The sun is out, but so are the mosquitoes.  

Mushrooms And The Buses - More Denali Pictures

 Here are some more pictures from Denali - the Alpine Trail and the Healy Overlook Trail.  

This was the Alpine trail.  Nature's a pretty good landscape artist.  

I'm not sure what these black mushrooms are, but they're pretty cool.  

I think these are puffballs.  

Ever since I read Richard Wright's  The Overstory, I realize that 'rotting' log just doesn't convey the process of giving back life that trees do after they die.  They're homes and food to untold species from small mammals, birds, and too many insects to even think about.  And then they give back all their nutrients and atoms for other trees and plants to use.  "Rot" has too negative an image.  And this is why we compost most of the food scraps from the kitchen.  Watching the compost heap full of scraps and leaves and other green plants slowly turn into rich compost - a factory of worms and all sorts of little critters - transforming the 'waste' into new plant food reminds me every year  that nature doesn't need humans to sustain the planet.  

Best as I can tell from my mushroom field guide is that these tan fungi poking up out of the ground like fingers are possibly strap coral mushrooms or pestle coral mushrooms.  

I just liked the look of this clump of tree trunks on the side of the trail.  

And when we got to a road we thought (correctly) was a shortcut to our car, we passed the bus lot.  It would appear that they are using a lot few buses this summer, even though they are only allowing half as many people on.  We had no interest at all on a bus ride with strangers for hours and hours.  But if this were my first and probably only trip ever to Denali National Park, I might have thought differently.  

There was another row of buses to the left and another to the right.  

More Denali Pictures and Thoughts

You can drive into the park 12 miles to Savage River.  From there on you need to take the bus or get a special permit to drive.  At Savage River there's a wonderful 2 mile loop trail which I've posted about in the past.  While people stopped in the parking lot, relatively few went on the trail.  And only we had masks ready to pull up if people were nearby.  The first view is from the bridge looking southeast.

There are lots of rocky outcroppings along the trail.  

And lots of lichens.  

The trail comes along Savage River on one side for a mile.  Then you cross a bridge and come back the other side.  You can see the sun on the water despite the mostly cloudy day.  

The Alpine Trail starts near the Savage River campground, and if you take the whole trail, gets you to the Savage River Trail parking lot where the pictures above are from.  We started on the Alpine Trail once and got a ways in, but turned back.  Then we went to where it ends and watched a mother bear and several cubs go up the trail we would have been arriving on had we continued the hike.  

The Alpine Trail is  lovely with totally different terrain and vegetation from the nearby Savage River trail.  Here's a tiny waterfall in the creek you go by.  

And this is from the road driving back to Riley Creek Campground.  This is an example of why you may easily miss the wildlife around you.  There is a herd of caribou in this picture.  No, don't even try.  I could barely spot them in the original higher resolution version of this picture and I knew where to look.  We found them the most common way to see wildlife - see other people looking through binoculars out into the distance.  It took a while with my binoculars until I saw them.  They were the only large animals we saw.  And a ground squirrel and a bunch of tree squirrels.  There was also a golden eagle flying around at this spot.  

Despite the forecast of rain, we had a rainless Wednesday and the sun was making its location known through the clouds enough that we could see our shadows most of the time.  It was a fine day and the campfire at the end led to a delicious meal.  

I look at this picture and it's hard to believe we've had this van since 1998.  It replaced the one we'd originally bought in 1971 after we got married and honeymooned on a road trip from LA to the Great Slave Lake in the Canadian New Territories.  Followed by a summer trip to Mexico, British Honduras, and Guatemala the next summer.  Then we had kids  and didn't take a long trip until we drove up to Alaska.  I remember when we finally sold the first one after 24 years (and my mechanic telling me the holes in the floor couldn't really be repaired), that my son told me that he and his sister got worried.  After all, we'd had the car longer than we'd had them and they were concerned we might get rid of them next.  We finally got new sleeping bags last year, but we still have some stools and a hatchet that were in the original van.  (As I write that I realize they're in the picture.)

And I'd also like to compliment the folks who designed the Riley Creek campgrounds.  The spots of the cars and tents had absolutely no mud even though it had rained a lot before we got there.  And you're a very good COVID distance from the other sites.  Though you have to go into the Mercantile (a small grocery there) to claim your reserved campsite.  But the visitor center is closed.  There are two masked rangers behind plexiglas barriers giving information to tourists, many of whom were not wearing masks.  This was really the most contact with others since early March and only our second outing.  And we only did this to let the carpet guy install our carpet that came last fall, but they held up installing until the kitchen floor was put in.  But the bamboo flooring didn't come til really late.  It got in, but there wasn't time to put in the carpet.  So our life has been on hold to a certain extent since last fall when we started putting as much stuff as we could downstairs so we could clear the upstairs.  Then the virus hit and I didn't want anyone spending a couple of days in the house.  

But we've had time to learn more about how the virus spreads and other friends have had workers in to do things with no bad consequences.  So we decided on the Denali trip to be out of the house while the carpet went in.  But the carpet installer had a longer estimate for the work than the salesman.  So only the living room and the hall were done, not the upstairs bedrooms.  But I'm delighted that this got us up to Denali.  And the carpet looks great and we're going to be very careful about what comes back upstairs and what gets given away or tossed.