Day 7: Denali National Park

Denali National Park, as I said in the previous summary, is one of the biggest national parks in the US (third largest, according to Wikipedia). It's centered around Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America, which is also called Denali ("the high one" in the native Athabascan language). Alaskans tend to refer to the mountain as Denali, while those of us in the lower 48 call it Mt. McKinley. There's apparently a pitched battle over the name of the mountain, with Alaskans trying to get the official name changed to Denali, while congressmen from Ohio (McKinley's home district) try to keep it as Mt. McKinley.

Although the park itself is quite large, it's also very difficult to access. As I mentioned earlier, the park is about 5 hours from Anchorage (and considerably longer if you try to enjoy the ample scenery). The park itself has exactly one road through it, which becomes closed to normal traffic about 20 miles into the park. After that point, it becomes a narrow, gravel road that winds through the mountains to the tiny city of Kantishna. You could see McKinley from almost anywhere in the park, but it's incredibly difficult to do so -- the mountain is only visible through the clouds very rarely. Fortunately for us, the sky was completely clear when we arrived in the park, and we were greated with this view:



After that, our trip to Denali started with a hike around the Savage River area. Savage River is the last place that non-ranger traffic can stop in the park (in fact, the turn-around point is a bridge over Savage River). As such, it's a ways into the park, and doesn't see as much traffic as other hiking paths closer to the visitor center. The river is fantastic, but not quite as savage as we were expecting. We had hoped to see ample wildlife, but we didn't really see anything bigger than a ground squirrel.



Once that was finished, we set of deeper into the park. There are two ways you can do this. The first way is to purchase a shuttle pass and head into the park on your own. This would be pretty exciting, but it was a bit more adventurous than we wanted to do, particularly in the very rainy and somewhat chilly Alaskan interior (with bears!). Instead, we signed up for a "Tundra Wilderness Tour", which is a bus tour through the park. The bus goes from the visitor's center to a place deep in the park with a particularly good view of Mt. McKinley (if it's visible at all). Along the way, the tour frequently stops for animal sightings.

This tour was absolutely amazing. We saw all sorts of animals, from Bears to Caribou, Moose to Pika, we saw nearly everything that the park has available. Unfortunately, we were only allowed to leave the bus a few times -- a few scheduled stops, and then once when we found some Dall's Sheep on the road -- but the overwhelming scenery and wildlife was amazing. We highly recommend the Tundra Wilderness Tour for seeing Denali.



More photos are available in my Picasa: Denali and Savage River.