Mt. McKinley - Denali

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 – Day 47

Sunrise is about 1:52 AM – Sunset is around 11:45 PM.  (That’s a little over 2 hours of night – well not really night, more like twilight)  We awoke to the alarm clock at five A.M.  (Something that the Lewis’ have been known to do, when on vacation. ) Today it was a bus tour deep into Denali National Park.  There is only one road in Denali; and unless you are on a bus tour or have a special camping permit you will not get past the Park Ranger at mile 15. The Park Road or the “Road” as it is referred to, is only fully open for about 4 months each year.  The rest of the time it is covered in snow or more typically ice.  As early as 1972 this single lane road/trail was closed to the public to preserve the “wild” nature of Denali, a far-sighted measure back then.  And it shows today.  You can spot wildlife from the roadways and the animals have not become habituated to humans. 

  We were able to spot about 6 grizzlies today, including a sow with 2 cubs, who were having a great time playing in a snow field.  The distance precluded any good pictures but the binoculars worked well to observe them.  As we rounded one corner of the road we were head to head with a moose and her calf; but they quickly vanished into the thick willow bushes beside the highway.  We also saw a number of caribou, golden eagles as well as some migrating Dahl sheep.  It is very unusual to see Dahl sheep this close as they are usually high in the rocky slopes to avoid their predators. Because they were migrating, this brought them into an exposed position in the valley between mountains.

Our tour was originally scheduled to only go to mile 53 of the road, but our driver/interpreter noticed that the clouds appeared to be moving away from Mt. McKinley’s summit, so he pressed on for another ten miles to the Stony Hill Overlook at mile 63. (This vantage point is still 36 miles from Denali.)  This is a rather precipitous uphill climb on a single lane roadway and any downhill traffic is to yield to uphill traffic.  We finally arrived at the overlook and we were not disappointed.  Denali, which means “high one” in Athabascan, (we refer to this as Mt. McKinley) was partially in view.  Scott our tour guide said that it was about 3/4 visible.  He assured us that Denali is only visible about 20% of the time.  For 80% it is totally hidden in clouds.  At this same stop was when we saw the female grizzly and her 2 cubs.  One of the big advantages of taking these tours is that there are 50 pairs of eyes looking for the movement of wildlife. This lets the driver concentrate on driving although he did provide almost a continuous monolog about the park and it’s residents and history for almost the whole 7.5 hours that we were out.  When you come to Denali, you’ll want to book a tour with the Aramark people, this was the Tundra Wildlife Tour.  Aramark is the concession operator for Denali so you really don’t have much choice; although this does not seem to be a disadvantage here. 

Tomorrow we have planned for a “down” day; just going to relax, go through some of the shops; do some cleaning and maybe go out to visit the huskies in the park one more time.