Denali National Park

Every year in Denali National Park you can enter a lottery to drive your vehicle all the way to the end of the road. This is kind of a big deal because there is only one road and normally cars aren't allowed on it more than a short distance inside the park (to the first campground). Instead you must pay a noticeable fee to ride on a bus. There are many buses throughout the day, and you are free to get off of the bus at any point, catching the first bus that comes by in either direction when you are ready to continue.

The road starts off in forested valleys. There is a lot of wildlife too see almost immediately. We saw a single limping Caribou walking along the river here. It is eerie to see an animal you know is doomed to die. It may have gotten it's injuries from a very recent attack.

After the first hour the land opens up into vast plains and empty braided river valleys.The first distant view of Mt. McKinley along the road was peachy with haze early that morning.

If you do win the lottery you won't know until September, and the catch is that you have to wait until the end of the season, after the buses stop before they let you come by. There is a 4 day window for lottery winners to make the drive, and you have to obey the same excruciating speed limit as the buses. Because of the late notice and the short window just a couple of weeks later, it's generally not feasible for non Alaskans to take advantage of the lottery. We like it that way.

Lone Wolf

 Dall Sheep

I'm disappointed in these blurry Lynx photos. While only people from the lower 48 will get out of their seats to look at a moose, everybody jumps to their feet when a Lynx is spotted. I was caught off guard as we drove through an unattractive shaded area. Although i was sitting on the correct side of the bus, everyone else was jostling for position, rocking the bus all over the place while i was pulling the trigger.The Lynx was moving too fast to make any adjustments.

I've included this one just to illustrate how well the cat blends into it's surroundings. A few seconds later and it was gone. Lynx feed almost exclusively on Snowshoe Hares, and their population goes through boom and bust cycles to match those of the Hare. The Hare follows 10 year cycles and as of 2010 the population had passed it's peak and began plummeting. Many Lynx will starve to death as a result, and they will become an even more rare sight. The Hare cycle affects a wide range of other animals, including eagles, fox, coyote, owls, and even moose and sheep.

Golden Eagles will not lay eggs during years that coincide with a low Snowshoe Hare population.

This past September i went to the park on the last day the buses ran for the season. I decided to go only to the Eilson Center viewpoint (going to the Wonder Lake campground takes hours longer). It's the first time i've been there in almost 10 years, and in that time the park service has built an entirely new visitor center at Eilson.

A tour bus is already dwarfed as it drives towards Denali, at this point still distant at more than 40 miles (64 km) away.

 

This mountain has been climbed only once in January. One day i'd like to climb one of the mountains in that grey range. I bet the view is ridiculous from there. All i have to do is walk 17 miles from the road across trailless wilderness and cross a river, then climb the mountain.

Like my dog, Mt. McKinley appears much larger in real life than it does in photos. It's one of the biggest things you'll see anywhere on earth. In fact, it's MUCH larger than Mt. Everest in both vertical height and mass. Mt. Everest is 29,000 ft.(8,839m) but it rises out of the Tibetan Plateau which is already 17,000 ft (5,000m) high. So it rises 12,000 ft (3,657m) above you. That's impressive.

In Denali, you can stand on the banks of the McKinley River and stare at the summit rising 18,400 feet (5,608m) above your head, and you may be at a loss for words. It's much more impressive than the Grand Canyon. Here's a picture comparing the two mountains.

When it's behind the clouds, as it is 66% of the time during summer, and the clouds clear, people routinely can't find it because they don't look high enough. This happens so often that in the new visitor center the park service has drawn an outline of the summit on one of the windows so people know how high to look.

I imagine this is the kind of stuff you see in Tibet and Nepal. I should go verify that. This is some piddly wink mountain off the side of McKinley. It's called Peter's Dome.

It was well below freezing the morning of my bus ride, and also well past the peak of fall, but there was surprisingly little snow on the mountains, especially after our incredibly wet summer. But, even in a dead "waiting for winter" state of being the scenery was still spectacular, and the passengers on the bus, many of them locals, were a much more relaxed crowd that you'd meet in the summertime.

Back at the hotel the Nenana River was flowing swiftly through a more hospitable landscape.

Dawn from my room. Those clouds worried me without warrant. You can tell by now the day turned out great.

There were only two hotels still open, and the one i was in was half closed. It reminded me of back in the years when i worked in National Parks and we closed the hotels ourselves at the end of the season. Fortunately there was still an awesome beer and pizza restaurant open across the street.

This is the crazy entrance to some guys property. It's right on side of the road with no place to park a car. There is nothing on the other side of that door except a trail that runs down the side of a hill. The door says PRIVATE.

I always drive by this place, and i finally stopped to take a look on the way back from the park. The gorge gets narrow but twists around and goes for some distance clogged with trees.

I didn't realize i hadn't posted a full view of the mountain.