Denali

Since Dan outed me on my “trip & fall” incident, I have to report that I am beginning to believe in the greeting card—“Falling is part of life, Getting up is living”. I am happy to report that I am healing nicely and I no longer look like I ran nose first into a granite wall (AKA the trail with plenty of granite rocks).

We arrived in Denali a couple of weeks earlier than our camping reservations. With a visit to the Mercantile, we were pleasantly surprised that it was relatively easy to move our reservation up. We filled up on fresh water and headed out to the Teklanika Campground at mile 29.1. The Denali Park Road is closed to private vehicles at Savage River except for campers headed to “Tek”. Once in camp, we can not move our vehicle until we check out. The weather forecast was not great but hey, it’s Denali!

We were greeted on the road by this Fox and a fleeing Ptarmigan. We are pretty sure the fox was not really hunting the bird at this point but this hen flew straight to the camper as if taking refuge. The fox trotted on by.

Lucky campsite 13 has a view of the River bed and sand bar. We felt very lucky to land here and were able to get our camper cleaned up from the muddy road before the rain began – saving us from inconvenient mud flows off the truck as the rain flowed off the truck.

Maddie is unsure about her fate as she is very restricted. For her own safety, she will be on leash and on the campground and park roads for the next week. This is one of our least favorite things about national parks in the US — very restrictive pet rules. In Canada pets-on-leash can hike most trails which is an excellent rule.

We were excited to see wildlife but more than a little unsure how we felt about grizzly bears. Our first sighting was from “the safety” of the Park Road, about 300 yards above this trio happily foraging below. Little did we know that we would see them again!

Our first full day in camp, after our Maddie walk, we took the park bus to East Fork where the road is closed because of the landslide at Pretty Rocks. We were scouting it with the possibility of riding our bikes up and hiking around the closure on the sandbar and river bed. We readily decided we would put our energies into more fruitful adventures as this would be a 5 mile portage and a steep climb with the bikes. It looked like a great place to run into wildlife but all we saw were ptarmigan and pikas. Very cute and fun.

Meanwhile, back in camp . . . The three bears (momma and two large cubs) decided to walk through our campsite. Literally. Ask us about that when we get home. It’s an interesting story that made us very bear aware – taking bear spray with us even if we were just making a quick, short excursion from the camper. Bear spray became the “in” accessory to every outfit. No matter what.

Two evenings later, the bears were back. Fortunately they didn’t come into camp. Here is a pic of momma taken from our camper steps.

After two days of rain, we finally had a partly sunny day and we were able to get out on our bikes.

The riding was epic—great gravel road and aside from Park Tour Buses and ranger vehicles we had the road to ourselves. Well, of course we shared the space with the wildlife.

It is hard describe how awesome this ride is. It is about 14 miles from Teknalika to the road closure with about 2500’ of climbing round trip. The climb from Igloo Creek to the top of Sable Pass, and really all the way to the East Fork River is one of the most beautiful rides we have ever ridden. We rode it one day, woke up the next morning and the only thing we wanted to do was ride it again. So we did! Yeehaaw!

We tried to book three more nights (the minimum) in Tek, but it was not available. For our last stop in DNP, we visited the sled dog kennel and demonstration. The canine rangers are beautiful and love their jobs. One of their jobs is to be available to the public. Here are a couple of the friendly rangers:

After heading south out of the park, we were uncertain where we would stop… either somewhere on the Denali Highway, or continue on to Denali State Park. Due to the ominous clouds to the east when we approached Denali Highway, we continued on another 30 miles or so the the Denali View North parking lot. It is sort of a campground too since camping is allowed, but it is really just a parking lot.

Late that evening (10:30pm) the clouds began to clear and the photographers among the camping lot starting shooting pictures. You never know what will happen with the clouds and this might be our only chance. Luckily, the morning broke clear and we were able to get some nice shots of The Mountain. Lots of fun.

After that lucky morning, it is time to return to the Denali Highway…!!