Yes Virginia, There Really Is a Mt. McKinley

We got up early and took a tour bus out of Denali National Park and Preserve with a goal to see Mt. McKinley. With temperatures at a frigid 39 degrees, a hot cup of coffee served as a hand warmer while boarding the bus. As we mentioned yesterday, these are not scenic cruiser buses with the amenities one might expect (restroom, etc.) No, these are Blue Bird school buses with green paint. 51 other people left the Wilderness Access Center with us, headed in a westerly direction. Our goal: to see Mt. McKinley. The sky looks promising and if we are lucky, the common cloud cover will not encompass the “High One” (Denali) as the Athabasca Natives described it.

Our first ten to fifteen minutes were spent hearing about escape hatches, windows, doors etc. in the event of an accident. While not quite as bad as the lecture one gets on an airplane where you are shown how to use the oxygen mask and flotation device, the explanation provided by the bus driver was enough to make a few passengers uncomfortable. She even explained what type of medical equipment was on board and how to use the walkie-talkie in the event she became incapacitated. Wait a minute, are we sure we want to go? Yes. We had packed a lunch, wore layered clothing and had our cameras ready to shoot anything that moved and anything that looked like it was over 20,000 feet.

The first fifteen miles were relatively uneventful. As mentioned earlier, all vehicles can travel the initial fifteen miles. This makes for lots of traffic and consequently, very little wildlife. We did see lots of joggers, walkers and hikers. Brave souls in temperatures barely above freezing.

When the park was called Mt. McKinley National Park, it was made up of 2 million acres. When 4 million additional acres were added in 1980, the name was changed to Denali National Park and Preserve. Six million acres is larger than the state of Massachusetts!

Once we moved past the fifteen-mile marker and the ranger station, the terrain quickly changed. We were rapidly ascending and the land changed from taiga (evergreen forest) to tundra.

The road had changed from a somewhat paved, two-lane road to an unpaved one-and-a-half lane road. Now, keep in mind that we are talking about a road making hairpin turns. Picture a bus coming one way, met by a bus coming the other way. Hmmm, what to do? The experienced drivers somehow make it around each other. Well, almost all of the drivers are experienced. Unfortunately, one driver pulled too much to the right (fortunately on the inside of the hairpin curve) and landed the bus in a ditch. All passengers were guided off the bus and onto another one. The poor driver had to board our bus. She wasn’t talking. She wasn’t looking at anyone. She appeared to be on the verge of tears. Looks like that summer job is toast. Lol Fortunately, no one was injured. Now we understood the purpose of the talk.

Every turn presented a different viewpoint of the Alaskan Mountain Range. Of course we all wanted to see Mt. McKinley. Only 30% of visitors are lucky enough to do so. In fact, one man wrote an article for a newspaper back East. He had been to Denali 17 times and had never seen the mountain. He wrote that the mountain was a myth and that it really didn’t exist. Apparently, some of his readers took his jest for truth. We are here to tell you that indeed, it does exist. It is majestic and breathtaking. There was still some cloud cover, but we were thankful for what we saw.

The bus trip to Fish Creek was 63 miles, one way. We felt every bump, dip, crevice and crack. We left at 8:30 in the morning and returned to base at a little over 5 o’clock. Long, but rewarding day.

Not only did we see Mt. McKinley; we also saw some incredible wildlife. We saw caribou, grizzly bears, wolves, ptarmigan, Dall sheep and marmot. Our guide told us that seeing wolves was very rare and that they are spotted only 20% of the time. Again, we hit the jackpot. Now, none of the wildlife was near enough to fill a camera frame, but it
was awesome to actually see them. We craned our necks out the windows of the bus. We
became friends with the folks sitting on the seats on the other side of the bus so that we could look out their windows and they could look out ours when the moment called for it.

The grizzly bears were a sight to see. One was spotted early in the day. It was feasting on a caribou carcass. The caribou had been killed by a pack of wolves. The grizzly came and intimidated them. They sat on the sidelines, watching the bear enjoy the fruits of their labor. They were waiting for the bear to be full and leave the carcass. The bear ate and then lay on his back, basking in the sun. He was in no hurry to “clear the table”. We saw four bear in the afternoon. It was a mother and three cubs. The cubs were playful. Nothing was serious for them. One in fact, was chasing and playing with a bird. This was better than National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. Remember, none of these creatures was close enough to capture a breathtaking shot, but they were close enough to click a record shot and commit the image to memory. Lots of binoculars were used and shared on the trip. (the grizzly shot is massively enlarged)

We enjoyed our packed lunch along the way and made acquaintances with folks from Utah and Indiana. There were also multiple languages spoken on the bus. This is another attraction that draws an international crowd.

Tomorrow, we head south towards Anchorage. We hope to stop at a small town called, Talkeetna. It is one hundred miles south of Denali but is reputed to have an awesome view of the massif.