After my first visit to Denali it was one of my favorite parks in the park system. I also knew that I was going to be heading back to Denali at least one more time. The 11 days in the park was cut short as there was a wildfire in the park area causing the park and surrounding area to close down for a few days. The first day in the park was cancelled but I still was able to go can camp at Teknaleka for six nights. Having seven nights would have been better but I understand why the park was closed for a few days. The employees who live in the park were evacuated and I am told that they were put up in a school for the entire time they were displaced. The employees were very happy to make it back to work and get out of the school and back “home.”
Hiking in Denali is not like any other park you have come to in the NPS system. The maintained trails are only in the lower park of the park, and are only a few of them. Most of the park is hike where you want to hike except for some special areas for animal migration patterns. The idea is that you get off of the bus (not the tour bus) and go into the “woods” to your destination. Know that without trails you are going to have to do some bushwhacking but for the most part you are just walking on tundra. Park service information does ask that you don’t hike in a single file but staggered to prevent trails from being made by footprints. The tundra is fragile and as such too many people walking in the same spot will cause a trail due to the tundra breaking becoming dead. It takes about 1/2 a century for tundra to repair itself, you can see why it is important to keep it growing. I did hike in a river bed, over stone and not in the river, at the East River. I also hiked the park road for a few miles in order to get some good photos of the mountain when it was visible.
Being I was in the Tek campground I was able to take the bus multiple days. Anyone can get on and off the bus in a single day but you need the Tek Pass ticket to do multiple days. I took advantage of the bus pass and rode the bus multiple times a day between hikes. The evening bus runs did not have many people on them and they did however have lots of animals to view. During the times on the bus I was able to see dozens of Dall’s sheep, five brown bears (two were cubs), five moose (out by the turn around), twenty caribou and plenty of ground squirrels. The ground squirrels look and act like prairie dogs. The squirrels are a snack for the bears but I did not see any bears snacking on my journey.
Bus drivers for the park’s green bus are a varied lot of people. Some of the drivers are wonderful and they are on the lookout for wildlife and will talk about what is being seen etc. Then there are some who don’t say a word and when you ask to stop for an animal they are put off by the request. I have to say that the first group is the best and these drivers have been in the park for almost 20 years each. Driver’s like Dale (got married in the park), Nancy (lives 8 miles from park year round) and Darin (from Buffalo and is an avid fisherman) are the kind of drivers that the park can be proud of and need more like them. I know that I have missed a few drivers in the extraordinary category but these were the last few that I had while at Tek.
My next few days was down at Savage River Campground, mile 12 or so, and it is a quiet campground of some 50 spots. It has two loops and flush toilets at one end of the campground and vault toilets in the rest of the campground. The campground had ranger talks virtually nightly, but the schedule for talks showed that there were a few open dates. I missed a few talks as it was not posted and I was doing other things. Tek campground the first 6 days also had ranger talks and I made one of them but the rest of the time I was in search of wildlife during the talks.
Denali is so peaceful and quiet outside of the 3 miles to get to the administration building and sled dog area. I am not sure if the fires kept people out of the park but it has been very quiet in the park for the first 8 nights. Let’s hope the remaining continue to be quiet. The rain has held off mostly but there have been some sprinkles in the area, not enough the clean Dundee.
Savage River campground is nice and I enjoyed my 5 days down there but it went way too fast. It seems that I just got to the campground and I had to leave. I enjoyed myself with the peace and quiet of the park but also not having all of the generator noise and other people sounds. The campground allows views of the mountain if it is visible and we had total mountain 3 times in 5 days. Day two of the total visibility I took a few buses to get to see the mountain on the road but a cloud was covering part of the mountain. That was a bummer but was happy to see what I was able to see. I hopped off the bus and took a hike on the road through the pass and past the sheep’s crossing. A car was parked at the crossing, was in the no driving area during the time from the top of the hour to the 10 minute mark. I was able to speak to this ranger and we spoke about the road, the wildlife management which they do for a role here. I was very happy to speak with this ranger and learn about the bears and other wildlife in the park. The ranger told me that on the road past the construction site there are tons of bear poop on the road, guess they are using the road and not humans now. Another bike rider told me on his way down from the Visitor Center on the closed road about the bear poop. He had to ride his bike in a river to get around the construction site and then bike a long way!
