Speidel's Adventures: Denali National Park, July 14-18, 2009

We arrived at Denali National Park from our campground in Cantwell, Alaska (27 miles south), at about noon on Tuesday, July 14. The public is not allowed to just drive around in Denali. You have to buy a bus ticket and ride the bus. By the time we received our bus tickets & parked our Jeep in Long-term parking and drove the motorhome to Tecklanika Campground, (the only one for RVs), it was 2 pm. Tecklanika is 27 miles into the park, of the 95 total miles of park road.

There are lots of photos of wildlife in the park, but I will try to limit them. These next photos are of wildflowers found there, but not all. Almost the whole park is artic tundra.

These are Blue Monks Hoods wildflowers found near Wonder Lake on the third day.

Blue wildflowers in the rain of the first day riding the bus into the park. These were near Polychrome Pass.

These are also from Polychrome pass (in the rain) and are pink!

We had to ride school busses in the park, in order to keep the park more pristine. This is a view out the front on the first day, when it rained a lot. The roads were 1 & 1/2 lanes wide. This shows a drop off and the curves high in the mountains with no guard rails!

That first day we were able to see this caribou herd travel up a mountain slope. So even if the weather is not good, we learned to get out and look anyway.

This is the cabin of Fannie & Joe Quigley, some early settlers, trappers & miners in Kantishna. Kantishna is at the end of the park road, 95 dirt-road miles into the park. This lady named Fannie was as good a hunter and trapper as any man.

Going to and from Kantishna, we had to ford this mountain stream.

This is a closer view of the mountain stream. By the way, the tour buses that come from the cruise ships and other places, (also on school buses), are not allowed into the park beyond about mile 56. We don't know why.

This is an Artic Ground Squirrel, found at the Elison Visitor Center. The center was named for an early bush pilot.

Although rare in the park, we did see this Bald Eagle. Bald Eagles seem to stay in Alaska near streams & oceans where they can catch fish. This one must be living on rodents here. The park is home to a lot of Golden Eagles.

This is a view of meeting another bus at a scary point in the road where it turns. Notice how wide the road is (or isn't!). One bus has to stop.

If you look closely at this sign you will see nails sticking out all around it. This is to prevent the bears from eating it any more than they already have. You can see that they have already chewed on it. Evidently they like some chemical in the wood preservative. This restricted area was off limits for hiking since there was a known wolf pack here and they don't want them distrubed by people. We never did see a Wolf in the park, nor a Lynx, but did see a very distant bear.

This Snow Shoe Hare just sat and posed for me at the Polychrome Pass trail. The hare population goes up and down in 10 year cycles, as does the Lynx population that eats them.

This is a view of the glaciated river at the bottom of the Polychrome mountain. This is called a braided river.

This Fox was at Polychrome also. It is a Red Fox, as determined by the white tip on the tail but the driver called it a "Cross Fox" , because of the multiple colors.

More "wildlife" :-) This is Jim balancing antlers on his head and letting go. These antlers were amazingly heavy!

Here I am doing the same thing but never letting go of the antlers! This is the roof of the Eilson Visitor Center at about mile 66. This center is almost self sustaining in energy. It has a propane generator, augmented by solar panels and a hydro electric generator stuck in the creek. Two of the three days we were there, the lights & computers were out. (So much for alternative energy sources.)

This Golden Eagle on the rock is drying his wings. Note the colors in the soil of the mountain.

This is a beaver lodge in a kettle pond. The pond was formed by a large piece of ice off of a glacier that lodged itself into the ground and then melted. Rainwater has since kept it full.

The second day in, we found this canoe by Wonder Lake and thought it made a nice "touch" to our photo . Even though the day was cloudy & dreary, I thought the overhanging cloud was very pretty on the lake.

This is another view of Wonder Lake, without us!

Leaving Wonder Lake to return to our campground, we kept seeing these pink Fireweed flowers alongside of the road. They are so pretty! This variety in Denali are called minature Fireweed, because they do not grow as tall at the variety outside the park.

It was the third day that we saw this lone Caribou Buck in Highway Pass. The pass was named that because the herds often cross the mounatins here.

These are Dall Sheep on the mountain side. They are all white and are always near the top of the mountains where the wolves & bear cannot get to them. Here they are in a green area, but often we saw them in just brown areas where there was nothing to eat, but where they were safe from preditors.

This is a mountain view near Polychome Pass. Look at the various colors in the mountains.

This Caribou was at Sable Pass, a beautitul pass of lots of different low-growing, green vegetation. It was my favorite area.

The Snow Shoe Hares go in cycles with their populations and they are at a ten year high. As a result they eat the bark off the willows in the winter, since that is the only food they can find above the snow. If you look closely you will see how these willow shrubs were stripped. You can tell how deep the snow was by how high they ate on the plant. Some areas were really almost completely obiviated of willows.

This was another Red Fox, that we saw at Polychrome Pass another day. He had a strange looking tail. Maybe he was in a fight and lost part of it.

There were about 4-5 Foxes on the road this day and sat there until they were ready to move. This one went down over the moutain side and it looked like he was eating vegetation.

Our third day into the park, July 17th, we had a beautifully clear day so we were able to see Mount McKinley many times. This was one of my favorite viewings near Polychrome Pass. It shows many different colored mountains in the foreground.

Several days we saw Golden Eagles. Here is one in flight.

This is the view of Mt McKinley as we came up Stoney Dome. There is a small cloud forming about half-way up Mt McKinley but otherwise is very clear. People are only able to see the mountain about 20% of the time, so we felt very blessed on our last day to see it!

This is a closeup of Mount McKinley.

"Mount McKinley has a larger bulk and rise than Mount Everest, although the summit of Everest is higher measured from sea level 29,028 feet (8,800 m). Everest's base sits on the Tibetan Plateau at about 17,000 feet (5,200 m), giving it a real vertical rise of a little more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). The base of Mount McKinley is roughly on a 2,000-foot (610 meter) plateau, giving it an actual rise of 18,000 feet (5,500 m), the greatest rise of any mountain in the world." -From Wikipedia.com.

McKinley's peak is at 20,320 feet.

"The mountain is also characterized by extremely cold weather. Temperatures as low as −75.5 °F (−60 °C) and windchills as low as −118.1 °F (−83 °C) have been recorded by an automated weather station located at 18,700 feet (5,700 m). There is also a higher risk of Altitude Illness for climbers than its altitude would otherwise suggest, due to its high latitude."-From Wikipedia.com

Believe it or not, Susan Butcher, the Iditerod Champion, of several years, even took her dog sled team to the summit of Mt. McKinley.

Here we are in front of Mount McKinley, the tall mountain on the right. This is at Stoney Dome, about 56 miles into the park.

Here are small ducklings that we found on one of the kettle ponds in the park. (The mother was nearby)

See, I told you,! Here she is!

The third day, as we were heading toward wonder lake and passing some kettle ponds, we spotted a moose who walked over and started eating plants off the bottom of the pond for us. That was so great to watch as she lifted her head and the water dripped off.

See the water running off her mouth!

Look at the ripples on the water as she lifts her head. This was fascinating to watch.

No, it is not the same photo as the previous one! Look at her legs.

We rode the bus all the way to Wonder Lake, again, this third day. Jim and I walked about 1/2 mile down to the reflection pond. On the way, we saw Mt McKinley in the distance but the clouds were rolling in. This is Jim on the road with McKinley in the background on the right, just above the clouds.

This white, spikey wildflower was found beside the road as we walked to Relfection Pond near Wonder Lake. (I am going to have to identify lots, when I get home!)

This is Reflection Pond, where if conditions are "just right" you can see a reflection of Mount McKinley in the water. If you look closely, you can see Mount McKinley and it's reflection (Sort of) in the pond!

After getting back on the bus at our rendouvous point, we encountered this Caribou coming down the road straight toward the bus!

The Caribou came right at us until we were very close and then ran for the bushes! What a beautiful animal!

This is a mountain view across from Elison Visitor Center. That is a small stream in the center gorge.

Jim asked someone to shoot this photo at Eilson for us. It is almost our "theme slogan"!

This shows the red color and the green vegetation on the mountains near Polychrome, as we headed back to the Teklanika campground.

This is a close-up of the colored rocks on Polychrome Mountain.

At Toklat River, the Park Service was working gravel to keep the Toklat River away from eroding the rest stop. They also used much of the gravel for the roads in the park.

This is another mountain view, showing the different levels of vegetation from Black Spruce down to lichen and other small plants. The wild blue berries in the park grow on small bushes close to the ground, but the berries are normal size.

Saturday, July 18th, as we left the park, we stopped at the Denali Visitor Center near the entrance and went to the dog sled presentation. Jim is tanding on the back runners of the dog sled.

The girl in the middle is carrying one of the dogs by the collar to hitch him to the sled. This does not hurt the dogs and protects their feet from being stepped on by the handlers.