Denali — YOFO Adventures

After a fun adventure to Wrangell St Elias National Park and Valdez, we were once again at a crossroads. Left takes us south to Seward, gaily forward leads to Anchorage, right heads north to Denali. Instead of our usual flip of a coin, we tried to think this one through (not very YOFO-like, we know). We have three separate WOFOs with family and friends planned for later in the summer and the common denominator is that they all want to see Denali. We figured that we needed to do a little advance party recon. At 325,000(ish) acres with only 92 miles of road, there’s a whole lot of Denali NP to get lost in. So we hung a right and headed in the direction of “the tall one” as our Alaska highlight reel keeps on rolling.

This li’l cutie started approaching us so we quickly left the area.

“Strategery” done, on to tactical decisions: we don’t like long driving days so our first night after leaving Wrangell St Elias was to revisit the Matanuska Glacier Area. We knew there was a campground there that was about halfway to Anchorage. It had great views and on our first brief stop there we had bypassed a short interpretative trail. We are so glad that we went back - we hiked the trail this time and encountered a baby moose! We were looping around the trail and heard the most curious animal noise. We peaked through the trees and only about 20 yards away we saw the little cutie eating leaves and calling for his mom. Since momma moose can be very dangerous, especially around their calves, we next looked for her. Mom was nowhere to be seen, so we snapped a few pics and then skedaddled. We never did see momma moose and felt a little bad leaving the few days old calf all alone. But unlike some goofball tourists in Yellowstone who loaded a baby bison into their car, we did not scoop up our li’l Moosen and take him to a ranger station. If the wolves or bears get an easy meal, oh well, hakuna matata, circle of life and all that stuff.

Before heading north to Denali we decided to take our time and spend a few days in Chugach State Park in the Eklutna Lake Area. It was a great place to spend the weekend and we’ll be hitting other parts and areas of the park as we continue our Alaskan vagrancy program. We didn’t get kayaks out on the lake - it’s long and they recommend sea kayak lengths in case the wind picks up, but we did hike and mountain bike. Our hike took us up, up, up along the Twin Peaks trail and then over to an amazing viewpoint on the Pepper Peak trail. Next day we biked the lakeside trail and “discovered” an airstrip on the glacier side - much fun and the picnic table was a welcome lunch spot and turnaround point. By the way, we’ve since “discovered” grass-field airstrips all over Alaska, as well as many lakes where planes routinely land. Large parts of the state are only accessible by plane; Alaska has nearly 4 times the pilots (per capita) as the rest of the US, and 6 times the number of private aircraft.

That gravel stripe is an airstrip…that ends in/at Eklutna Lake

We had a day to spare before our Denali reservations (one of the few places we’ve actually scheduled) and decided to check out Denali State Park which is just south of the National Park. They’ve got a new campground at the K’esugi Ken area - electric hookups - so we were living large. (Side note: for us living large is having power, which means that we can make hummus in the food processor, and pancakes on the griddle! Side note two: “we” in the previous sentence equals Dean, for the two readers who might be unaware of Dawn’s culinary challenges.) They’ve got a nice trail in the campground area and a great hike up Curry Ridge. We were in luck and Denali was out in all her massive glory.

Denali is huge. Recommend using two hands minimum.

We had a bit of a tight morning when we finally arrived in to Denali. Because we want to do all the things, we had to drive two hours, get checked in, grab maps at the visitor center, drive the hour plus into the park to our campground, get set up, and catch a bus all in the span of about five hours. Channeling a former version of ourselves as Plebes at West Point, we were pinging, but somehow managed it and caught our scheduled bus from the Teklanika (Tek) Campground with a few minutes to spare. Not bad for a couple of old grads!

You don’t have to climb for views, but we’re sure glad we did.

Tek is a campground with some unique rules. With the exception of Tek campers, private vehicles are only allowed out to mile 15 of the park road. After that point, the paved road goes to gravel and only park staff, tour/shuttle buses, or Tek campers can drive past the checkpoint. If you’re camping in Tek, you can proceed to the campground at mile 29 and set up, but then you must leave everything parked for a minimum of three days. You’re required to buy a bus pass to go further into the park. But, if you head back toward the entrance of the park instead of deeper in, you can get stuck paying for another bus ticket back to the campground. (we didn’t realize that last bit til check-in). A little weird, sort of cool, and kind of a racket (bus tickets aren’t cheap). Oh, and cell coverage dies a mile or so past the entrance vistors’ center. (Yes, there’s a reason we mention that, but you’re going to have to wait for it!)

Sure-footed Dall Sheep avoid predators by clinging to precarious ridge lines.

So, we’re set up in Tek, and on the bus to the Eielson Center (located about 60 miles into the park. We’re ready to see some critters and they showed up for us. Moose, caribou, Dall Sheep, golden eagle, ptarmigan, and a raven nest with little ravens were all out and about. Sadly, no bears came out to play. Denali was a bit bashful, we could only see her bottom half. The views from the road and from Eielson are stunning. There was a short, steep hike up a ridge line across from Eielson, so of course we hiked up it. The views got even better, and we probably would have lingered longer at the top but didn’t want to risk missing the last bus back in to our campground.

Eielson Alpine Trail delivering the views.

That night, we realized we forgot to make a couple of key phone calls before landing in the wilderness of no cell service. It’s still slightly early in the season here, so the first scheduled bus heading out of the park wouldn’t arrive until 1:50 PM, and the last bus heading back toward Tek was around 3:00 PM. Even if we wanted to risk paying for two more tickets (we didn’t), the timing was not going to work out. So, what, you might ask, was the YOFO solution to this quandary? A 53-mile gravel-bike ride. Now, we’ve done some riding, but nothing over about 30 miles, since, oh, Teddy Roosevelt NP back in June 2017. Still, how bad could 14 miles of gravel and 13 miles of pavement (each way), with some stout hills mixed in, possibly be? So we girded our loins, told the squishy bits to shut up, and mentally committed to it as another adventure. We held onto the hope of the possibility on the return trip that if a green bus went by with open seats that we might catch a ride (bikes too). Alas, we watched the last bus pull away in front of us as we were mounting up to ride back to the campground. In the repeated whingeing of our legs, we had to pedal: The. Whole. Damn. Way. It was more fun that it sounds, and it was a picture perfect day. We got even more pictures of Denali. And we’re pretty sure we’re in some other visitors’ photos of “wildlife”. In case you don’t think the story is goofy enough, the pair of bike shorts Dawn grabbed apparently has a rather gaping hole from catching on saddle bag Velcro (that’s the story and we’re all sticking to it) which we discovered after it warmed up and we removed the long pants. It was embarrassing enough without being in an “embarrassing spot”. Sigh.

We got back on the bus the next morning to try to get in a hike. When it comes to hiking, Denali is more like Great Sand Dunes NP than it is like Grand Tetons or North Cascades. There are a few short hiking trails near the main entrance but beyond that it’s all just wandering in the wilderness as far as you want in whatever direction you want. The ranger’s guidance is basically, “take a map, get off the bus wherever you want, there are no trails so off you go; oh, and try not to die out there.” There are something like 40 topo quad maps that cover the park, and, in awesome planning mode...we had randomly guessed three to download (side note: we use a great mapping and GPS app called Avenza). So, we targeted an area near Polychrome Mountain that was on our map, hopped off the bus and started a-wandering. Slowly, but with great enthusiasm, since 1) there be bears, 2) legs were a bit toasted from the bike ride, 3) bushwhacking through brush and willow is slow going, 4) the ground, a wet, lumpy thick layer of moss and peat literally bounced under your feet! We quickly realized that our original plan was too ambitious for the day and since some foul weather was threatening, we revised the plan. We hiked hiked/scrambled up peak 4222, traversed a gorgeous ridge line with 360 views, and then dropped down toward a valley with a creek, which we followed to a pond and then found our way eventually back to the road. Making it up as you go pathfinding really does not get better than that. It was a lot more fun than we expected, and we didn’t even mind getting rained on while we hiked the road waiting for a bus. We caught a bus going the wrong direction because it was the first green one we saw and it had seats! It gave us a chance to talk to the driver a bit who loves hiking and camping in the area. (PS: raise your hands if you think we’re plotting to do something like that with the WOFO-ers!)

Off trail led us to a ridge line. The “social trail” had heavy Sheep scat usage.

That about wrapped up our first Denali NP trip. We’re already looking forward to going back to explore more and giving ourselves more shots at seeing wildlife. We frequently apply the great Gretzky’s advice to our adventures, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” So we will keep visiting amazing places, keep our eyes pealed for wildlife and soak up all the beauty Alaska has to offer.