The Finale!!!
The third part of our Alaska adventure was a 4 night/5 day trip into the Denali wilderness. On the way we took the Denali highway (about 160 miles of good dirt road across Alaska), again this was a beautiful drive, but with the smoke in the air we couldn't see to well. We did however run into Gillespie lake (Gillespie Pride!!!), a few caribou, and a glimpse of Mount McKinley... the tallest mountain in North America.
Click on the pictures if you'd like to enlarge them to see better.
A lake or a river???? River! I still can't get over that all that water is moving! (I am soooo from Utah where we call the provo river big ;-)
Mt McKinley in the distance. This is the best view we ever had. As we drove in the clouds were high, but gradually lowered as we got closer.
We made it! We got to Denali around 3pm which was really good because we had a lot of stuff to do before they would let us loose. We went and found the backpacking headquarters so we could get started. We had to watch a movie and listen to a lecture about what to do and not to do in the backcountry, they had a lot of rules and suggestions that are good but at the same time it made us feel like they were going to watch us the whole time. A lot of the bear and river crossing stuff would have been nice to know before we went to AK, but by now we were veterans :). After about an hour of lecture we picked out the units within the park we wanted to camp in, got maps and made sure that our bear canisters were good. Then went over to the visitors building and got our bus passes. There is only one road in and out of Denali and you have to get a bus pass to get on it. We got our backpacking passes which were cheaper :-) and the nice thing is they would let you off or pick you up anywhere on the side of the road. By then it was about 430 and the last bus left at 5. We hurried over to the parking lot, got changed, packed our bags with 6 days worth of food and equipment and barely made the bus. Off to the next adventure!
The bus ride into Denali
Mt Mckinley in the clouds at 20,320' ft.
On the hill side is where we saw our first bears in Denali. From the bus we took this pic of a mom and two baby grizzles. Click on it and you'll be able to pick them out in the middle of the pic.
This was our first unit we hiked into. It followed the North Toklat river down and then we'd cut across a pass and come back down the main fork of the Toklat river. These are glacial rivers and very cold and unpredictable. They are braided which makes it nice for crossing, but at the same time you are always crossing and never have dry boots.
Some geology for the rock lovers!
I struggled to keep my composure on our hike in. We did a lot of bushwhacking through sharp brush and weren't making very good time. That night we hiked for 4 hours and only made it about 3 miles, finally at 1100pm we stopped and put up camp and ate dinner. The best part was it was still light for another hour making it easy to set up the tent.
Greg up early to make breakfast.
A foot print, little wolf prints, and big wolf prints near where we set up camp.
Drying out. It had rained a little that night and we needed to dry out before stuffing it all back into the backpacks. We camped right on the river bed and it was actually very comfortable for being on lots of little rocks.
Ohhhh, that's cold!!!! The worst part is that the river is so dirty you couldn't see the bottom to know if it drops off or not, you have to feel your way and go slow. Which meant numb legs!
We hiked about 2 more miles down the river then turned west and started heading up to the pass that would take us to the main fork of the Toklat. We followed this little stream behind us all the way to the top then followed another one down the other side. It was fun and very pretty.
More wolf prints. They were all over the place in this canyon. The whole time we kept our eyes open hoping to see one. Finally we saw two run from a group of brush to behind some big rocks. That completed seeing the "big 5" as they call it (caribou, bear, dall sheep, wolf, and moose).
Looking down to to the other side of the ridge, where we were heading :-)
Once we got down to the river we had about a 2 mile hike to the next fresh (not silty) water where we could camp for the night. This meant lots of river crossings. This river was a little more sketchy than the other because it was bigger. We did a good job of deciding when and where to cross, but it took a lot of time and effort and made for another long day.
Finally around 10 pm we made camp and took off our wet dirty boots. I was so tired and hungry. It was about a 15 mile day if you count when we went up the wrong canyon for a mile and had to back track :-) Good times!!!
That night we ate alfredo pasta with chicken, a corn tortilla for each, vanilla pudding, and we split a pop tart. And Greg probably added fruit snacks and trail mix, his favorite!
The next morning we threw on the packs and headed to the road to get on the bus and head to our next area.
This unit was somewhat similar then the last. We followed a river up the canyon and were hiking on gravel bars the whole time. It became really cold this day, cold and wet. As you can see we were hiking into the wet clouds. That day it rained for about 4-5 hours straight. About half way through the storm we put up the tent and waited it out. When it stopped Greg got out to explore... and about 20 min later I was so bored in the tent that I went to find him. We saw some spectacular views!
The Muldrow Glacier is between us and the mountain. It's huge and comes straight off of the north face of Mt McKinley.
That little yellow dot on the gravel bar is our tent!
We went on a hike up towards Anderson pass. We were walking on rock covered ice for most of it. We were doing really good till we had to keep walking around these crevasses. Since we were very ill prepared to fall in one of these we decided to turn around a mile short of the pass and go back to camp. Plus the clouds that day stayed around 10,000 ft, so the view wouldn't have changed much for us. It was way fun though and a good 10 mile hike round trip.
We stopped and had lunch by this glacier (below). While Greg was consulting the map we heard a steady steam of noise coming from the glacier, ice falls, rock falls, sounds of thunder as the ice cracked, etc.
This is the kinda stuff we were walking on... bunch of ice with a little dirt and rocks on top. This little ice cliff was about 50 ft. high.
This is gneiss ....a metamorphic rock. There were a lot of really neat looking rocks around here.
Clouds settled in at 9-10,000 ft. not giving us the view of McKinley we were hoping for.
Another cold rainy day on our way to a different camp spot.
That night it actually cleared up a little and Greg was able to get some really good photos of the glacier and surrounding areas.
The next morning before we headed for the road, Greg wanted to show me the glacier from where he had been the night before. It was only a hundred yards away on top of a hill (the lateral moraine). So we packed up camp, left our bags and headed up the hill. We were almost to the top when all of a sudden we saw a huge grizzly bear standing up on her hind legs. Greg and I stopped dead in our tracks about 25 ft from her. She stared us down, sniffed the air, grunted, then plopped down on all fours behind the brush. Greg and I slowly started to back away, never turning our backs, and all of a sudden two more heads popped up. Her two cubs stood up and wanted to see what was going on and sniff us out. Remembering I had a camera I snapped a shot of the cute little cubs as we were backing up(pic above). Greg, being the glacier loving guy he is, wanted to just side step these three bears to the adjacent hill. I said there is no way I'm staying that close to these teddy bears and headed down the hill. Greg also agreed and came with me. We got to our packs and my heart was still pounding out of my chest, it was a little too close for comfort ;-)
Bear scat, probably from that cute big family of bears we had just seen.
At the bus stops they had put out the racks of caribou and moose for people to look at.
The most massive caribou I have ever seen!
This completes our Alaskan Adventure. Both Greg and I have dreamed of doing something like this since we were little. Alaska has always been in our dreams and now we both can say that we have done it! We've been out in the middle of nowhere, seen spectacular views, all sorts of wildlife, and carried our lives on our backs for two weeks. I loved every minute of it and can't wait to go back.
