Denali National Park Encore

On the way out of the Denali National Park last month with Christine, we stopped at the reservations desk. I was able to reserve a campsite in what has the be the best campground in the park, Teklanika, for another three days. I could only make a reservation for 3 days, but that still worked for me.

My first day there, I hopped a bus with my bicycle and went to the second pass into the park. From there I road the bicycle back to the campground. Unlike last time with Christine, I had to climb up and over Sable Pass. Christine and I started at Sable Pass and road our bikes mostly downhill to the campground. It was a bit of a climb up to the pass but I was rewarded with a caribou coming out onto the road in front of me and later, a bull caribou with this huge rack was standing not far from the road.

The second day it pretty much rained the entire day so I took a bus ride to the end of the road and the little resort area called Kantishna on private land. It's 92 miles in the park and takes the better part of 6 hours of bus riding to get there. You will notice that I took no pictures. That's because the area wasn't very scenic, much less scenic than anywhere else along the ride in. And it costs a fortune to stay at one of the resorts there, which also weren't impressive looking. The campground at Teklanika is a thousand times better.

The third day however was one of the best days I've had in the park. I Got up to clouds and decided to hike Polychrome Ridge again. Riding the bus there we could see that the weather ahead was clearing, so I told the bus driver I changed my mind and would continue to the Visitor's Center and maybe hike up the Alpine Ridge. Sure enough, Denali broke out of the clouds and was just unbelievable. But like when Christine was here, when we got to the visitors center, the clouds started forming around the mountain. And there were lots of people going up the trail. So I stayed with the bus and headed back to Polychrome.

I should mention that the visitors center in the park was closed for several days. The sewage system had a break and filled the crawl space under the center with sewage. The buses could only stay for a couple of minutes for folks to take some pictures and head back out. Which is why so many people were on the trail, that's the only way the rangers would allow people to get off the buses and stay.

OK, so at Polychrome the bus driver lets me and a few others off. I started up to the ridge using a different, and as it turns out, a much easier way up than the way Christine and I went before. No Brush. On the way up, I saw two ladies and a boy a ways behind me. I could tell they were deciding whether or not to continue.

And just at that moment, a ram sheep crested the little ridge in front of me about 100 feet away. So I signaled to the folks below to come up here, there's a sheep right here!!! And they did. Since we were about half way up and I encouraged them to continue up with me to the ridge at least, and they were welcome to trek along with me the rest of the way if they wanted. Which they did. Just before we got to the top we passed a couple. We told them about the goat just out of their sight and continued on.

When we got to the far end of the ridge, the couple caught up to us. I mentioned how Christine and I went down from there, but that at the very end, where we skirted the river to get up to the road, the river has since cut into the bank and taken out that route. They could go higher at that point and kinda walk this very narrow ledge above the river. A mountain climber or teenager would think nothing of it, but I wasn't about to try it. Or they could wade the river. I told them my plan was to go back to a saddle and then down it's ravine to the road.

So off we went, I now had five others blindly following me. We followed several game trails towards the bottom, just above the brush, and without much difficulty, popped out onto the road.

And this is our little band of trekkers. Eric is from France and Michelle, his wife, is from the Caribbean. They live in San Francisco. Shah is Turkish and a microbiologist also from San Francisco. Sharon, Shah's friend, and her son Jacob are from Florida. I have to hand it to Sharon. She was definitely out of her comfort zone, but trooped right along with us. Shah was constantly saying “Jacob is a great boy” and I'd have to agree. He even picked some wild flowers for his mom along the way.

This was a wonderful end to my stay in Denali. I'm looking forward already to coming back sometime.

Next up, another thing on my Bucket List, get above the Arctic Circle.