Hiking and Biking Denali National Park

A couple of the rangers and bus drivers mentioned hiking the ridges above an area called Polychrome, so that's what we did one day. At the very start we found a couple of game trails to follow, but after that, we just bushwhacked our way up to the ridge. Bushwhacking is an accurate description as many times we just had to push and stumble our way through brush.

Once above a certain elevation the brush ends, then it's just a matter of finding your way up.

The view at the top made all the effort to get there worthwhile. Then we set off along the ridge line for a couple of miles. We had decided to hike to the end of the ridge, then drop down to the river and hike back along it to a bridge where we could catch a bus. The question was, how to get down without ending up on a cliff. Hiking down unknown terrain has always made me nervous because you can't really tell where there's a cliff or impassable section until your there and it's too late.

But we did make it down. This is the way we went. We first went left down the slopes, then crossed back over to the right along the knolls. Next we dropped down and crossed the ravine and followed it down from the right, staying above it and the brush. We lucked out as we ended at a manageable place to drop to the riverbed. But the fun wasn't over. As we hiked down the river, it swung over to our side and cut into the bank, which made for some climbing up and down along the edge of the river.

This is a picture of the ridge we hiked. The first half of the ridge is in the sun, but the second half is more difficult to see. We came down the second peak and slope from the right. For much of the way down we were walking on thick moss, like a foot or more thick in spots. It was such a weird sensation since with each step you weren't sure how far down your foot would go.

For our next hike, we decide to hike along one of the riverbeds in the park. These beds are really wide and were formed by glaciers. The rivers sort of run all over the place down these glacier beds, constantly changing course and braiding. On this particular day we were hoping to find a way across the river to a small ridge on the other side, but that was not to be. There had been a pretty good rainstorm overnight and the river was just too high.

It was a nice hike anyway, especially since we came across this nice set of sheep horns along the way.

On our last day in the park, we decided to ride back to our campsite from the pass about 14 miles away. We thought we could glide down first half of it through a canyon where we've been seeing lots of animals, and then have to peddle the last half. As it turned out, we only had to peddle for a few tenths of a mile as even the parts we thought were flat had enough slope that we could just coast along. Unfortunately though we saw no animals where on previous days we had seen lots.

The highlight for me this week in Denali was having Christine there to share it with me. Along with all our adventures, we got some great father/daughter bonding time.

I've got great kids.