Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Second Denali trip

My friend Ang came in from Chicago last Wednesday for a visit. She tooled around town a bit, seeing the wonder that is Anchorage (Heh! That's fairly sarcastic) and driving down to the Portage glacier on her own. Then on Friday we drove up to see Denali. We stayed at a B&B in Healy Friday night so that we could catch an early bus into the depths of Denali. I reserved a campground at Wonder Lake which is as far into Denali as you can go- about 60 miles on a dirt road that winds around a lot of mountains. It takes about five hours on the camper bus (that doesn't stop often) to get there.

We set up camp at about 1pm and went off on a hike. We went up a ridge and looked down on the valley and Wonder Lake. Then, we went down to the lake along an animal trail that wasn't really much of a trail at all- lol! The mosquitos were ridiculous but they enjoyed feasting on her blood way more than mine. Heh! Wonder Lake is super deep- up to 220 feet! That's like a 22 story building down. Crazy. There's not much that lives in there- some lake trout and loons and a couple other things. Not sure if it's because it's so cold or what. I'll have to look that up.

We hiked around for about five hours or so and it only started raining as we were heading back to the camp grounds. A ranger gave a talk about Denali that was very interesting. The park only has 39 mammals species living there- a low number compared to other national parks, especially considering how much bigger Denali is than most parks (6 MILLION acres), but they also have all 39 of the original species. You know, until global warming kills them all.

On the bus trip in, we had a brown bear (no one calls them grizzlies up here- no clue why) walk right past our bus! That was really cool. We also saw eagles (golden and bald- the bald on the way up), caribou, ground squirrels, artic hares, ptarmagans, and we heard some loons. No moose in the park, but we saw a couple on the road driving to the park from Healy.

Most importantly, we got to see Mt McKinley. He was hiding from us most of the time- it was pretty cloudy during the trip, but he's visible near sunrise and sunset, so we got to see him at about 11pm on Saturday night. The pictures don't do him justice- that is one HUGE mountain! And he was pretty far away from us- probably twenty miles or so. He was only out for about five minutes and then hid in the clouds again. You can click on the picture for the larger version:



Here's Wonder Lake from the ridge we hiked up when it was still sunny:


And here it is when we got down to it (about a half hour later):


Here's the brown bear we saw on the way in:




Polychrome Valley during this trip:


Polychrome Valley during Memorial Day weekend- clearly spring doesn't start until June in Denali:


We left early because I underestimated the ground hardness, mosquito badness and the weather disgustingness. After about two hours of sleep Saturday night, we woke up at about 5 am Sunday to the tent's rain fly leaking after being poured on all night (and evening). Since we'd seen McKinley and could hike in the Chugach after sleeping in a nice warm bed, we caught the first bus back out. It was full, so we weren't the only wimps. Next time, I'm bringing air mattresses or something. It got down into the 40s and that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been raining and mosquito ridden, too. You'd think the mosquitos would beat it when it was raining. Not so much.

Anyway, we hiked on Monday (again, in the rain, but at least we'd had a hot shower and a soft bed) in the Chugach and saw a couple of bull moose. They were close enough for it to be neat and far enough away to not be too scary. Here's a couple pics of that- the first to show how far away they were and the second with my camera zoomed:




More pictures of the Denali trip here.

More pictures of the Chugach hike here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome pictures. Hope Denali is out when your next visitors are there. We were afraid we wouldn't be able to see it (it was very cloudy on the first day), but it came out when we went to the park. And, yes, it is truly a great mountain!! A.S.

Anonymous said...

Pretty cool pics. And the bear! Love that.

You've got some very cool friends to come up and visit you in the wilderness. It seems like you've got a visitor every couple of weeks or so!