walks and talks...

Back in Denali National Park, I had a second day to play tourist before spending time with the park staff so I took the opportunity to do some hiking. Armed with my trusty bear spray I walked north from the headquarters along the Rock Creek Trail to climb the steep track up Mt Healy. The Rock Creek trail wound through pretty stands of birch and spruce with a bountiful understory of ripening berries, although disappointingly there were no bears lazing around enjoying a meal of them. The sunshine dappled on the path through the trees and squirrels angrily chirped as I passed, interrupting their late summer schedule of food caching. Amazingly, I didn’t meet another person on this part of the hike, the only company were little brown birds that sang melodiously, unperturbed by my presence.

Rock Creek Trail

In stark comparison, the Mt Healy Trail was hectic with hikers as I slogged up through the same pretty Taiga forest as on the Rock Creek Trail. I was greeted good-naturedly by numerous groups of people, young and old, mostly returning from the walk. I passed a young woman on her way up, carrying a grinning baby in a backpack with a whining toddler at heel. Impressive! The track was slowly eroding from the volume of foot traffic, and the higher it climbed, the narrower and rougher it became. I paused regularly on the relentless slope to regain my breath and to enjoy the sweeping views south along the valley and into the canyon below; hotels sprawling along the highway flanked by the milky white Nenana River, carrying its load of finely ground glacial flour.

Along the track, fireweed, a pinky-purplely, native wildflower found throughout Alaska, had finished flowering and the foliage was beginning to turn bright red, signaling the end of the summer along with small pockets of birch, leaves turning yellow, glowing golden in the bright sunlight. On the final stages of the hike, the trail narrowed even further, traversing the ubiquitous talus slope, decorated with lime and black spidery lichens, marking the transition to the treeless spongy herbs of the high alpine tundra.

Finally, after what seemed like many hours of pushing myself uphill, I reached the lookout spot and sat down to sip the last of my water, enjoy my cherry Lara bar and take a badly over exposed self portrait. The view was dramatic and expansive, stretching off in every direction with a stiff arctic breeze reminding me that I was at altitude. Over the left shoulder of Mt Healy, way off in the distance, Denali was partly visible, shrouded with a neck ruff of white puffy clouds. I thought of the 75 buses that would be making the daily pilgrimage out to the mountain, Denali partly obscured from view.

The walk down was tough! My feet cramped trying to grip the surface of the trail through soles of my thick boots with my knee and ankle muscles strained against the cruel slope. I passed many more groups of hikers on their way uphill, puffing and red faced, no doubt exactly what I looked like myself, not long before.

Back down the mountain I called into the visitor centre and read about the hike I’d just done. Rated strenuous – yeah that was about right. It was meant to take 4 hours return and I did it in just under 3 with the Rock Creek Trail thrown in as a bonus. I was happy with that, despite knowing that hiking times are always wildly overestimated to take account of the slowest walkers - whining toddlers perhaps?

It wasn’t a surprise that Denali’s main visitor centre display was excellent and engaging, after seeing the visitor centre at Eielson. The arts, culture, nature, and history of the expansive 2.5 million hectare (6 million acre) Denali National Park and Preserve were all creatively interpreted along with the recurring theme of bear chewed food containers. I sank down in the comfort of the huge theatre with a hundred or so mostly aged cruise line passengers to watch a film on the park. As the lights went down, the old man sitting next to me loudly kissed the back of his hand like a teenage boy at the movies, his wife chastising him for such a crude display. I smiled to myself in the darkness.

Over the next couple of days I spent time meeting and talking to the myriad of staff at the headquarters about a diverse range of topics including bear research, fire management, forest fuel measurement, aviation, and climate monitoring. I gave a brown bag talk on parks from home that lasted for over 2 hours because there were so many questions to answer at the end. At the brown bag talk I met Lucy, Denali’s research administrator, a woman who mushes sled dogs in her spare time. It’s Lucy’s job it is to regulate research carried on in the park, as well as collecting the data and published reports for the archive once it’s completed. Lucy invited me to a talk by one of the four artists in residence for 2010 in the park, the author and Alaska’s current writer laureate, Nancy Lord.

Denali’s artist in residence program invites the selected artists stay for ten days each at the historic East Fork cabin at mile 48 on the Park Road. Expansive views from the cabin of the braided East Fork River, the mulitcolour Polychrome Mountain and the snow capped peaks of the Alaska Range all provide inspiration for their unique interpretation of the park. This year the artists include a sculptor, a metal smith, an artist and an author. After their period of residence they donate an artwork to the park’s collection and give a public address about the experience. Nancy’s talk was fascinating. She told us how she explored the park with researchers and rangers. Nancy said she had kept notes in a catalogue of journals and she would write up her stay on a self-enforced writing sabbatical in an artists camp for a month when she expected to produce her next work. Inspiring!

patchwork quilt created by an artist in residence
(view from the East Fork Cabin: the braided East Fork River, the mulitcolour Polychrome Mountain and the snow capped peaks of the Alaska Range)

       

  

sled dog afternoon

The trip back in from Eielson was considerably faster with less stops to look at wildlife than the outbound journey. I guess everyone was tired and was happy with the wildlife we’d seen on the way out. I sat on the side of the bus that gave me majestic views up the wide pretty valley as well as a bird’s eye view over the sheer cutting at Polychrome Pass. Through the pass, the margin for error on the road was less than I’d imagined and I froze in fear as the front tyres of the bus turned perilously close to the edge as we rounded the tight bends. No wonder they don’t let punters drive out into the park by themselves.

A dust storm was brewing in the bed of the Toklat River when we pulled up for a comfort stop, and the large domed tent that housed the summer’s temporary visitor centre and souvenir store was flapping loudly in the stiff breeze. Inside, along with the pelts of a bear, a wolf and a mountain goat, draped over a rustic wooden frame, there were food tins and other assorted items bears had chewed, to demonstrate how savvy and the bears are at finding even sealed metal food containers. You could also buy a t-shirt, a postcard, or a coffee table book, so the hoards were happy. Outside on a bench there were a range of antlers and horns from moose, caribou and sheep that the people were holding on top of their heads and taking photos like tourists do.

A family joined us on the bus at this stop and sat across the aisle from me with their two daughters; one in her early teens, the other about 5. As soon as we left the Toklat River stop, the little one started asking her Mum how long the bus trip was going to take. About an hour out, her mum finally told her “It’s only five minutes”. Subsequently I experienced the longest five-minute hour of my life. This five year old's persistence and tenacity were a feat to regard and will no doubt hold her in good stead through her adult life enabling her to achieve whatever she chooses to take up. Her parents and sister had an equally remarkable capacity to ignore the incessant and repetitive questioning. I must be getting old!

I was overjoyed to finally get off the bus into the sweet silence at the park headquarters and decided to stretch my legs by walking down to visit the Denali Sled Dog Kennels. The final presentation for the day was just about to begin, and Sarah, an intern, who I’d met the night before at C camp, where the seasonal workers were accommodated, said “Hi!” over the cacophony of the dogs barking excitedly in anticipation.

The 25 or so resident dogs lived chained to little wooden dog houses that they sat on top of, proudly displaying their names on a routed wooden sign. They live outdoors all year round, and over summer have an important role educating and delighting the 50,000 visitors that come to see them. The dogs are habituated to people and it is fantastic that visitors are allowed to pat them and get to know them up close.  The show was great, Sarah was engaging and informative and for only having worked there a few months, she came across as a veteran with all the answers to the questions the visitors threw at her.

She told us how Harry Karstens, Denali’s first superintendent had brought the sled dogs to the park to assist with his most urgent task of controlling the poaching of wildlife. As a veteran dog musher he knew the best way to travel through the frozen country was on a dog sled behind a team of eager huskies. He established the kennels to breed the parks’ own healthy, well trained working dogs.

In the early days each ranger was assigned a team of seven dogs and an area to patrol in the park over winter. Patrols lasted for months at a time with the rangers living in cabins they constructed on the boundaries of the park to protect them and their dogs from the harsh winter. In 1926, Karstens told Grant Pearson, a ranger he had just hired, that he was lacking in experience but was considered capable of learning. Of his first assignment, Karstens told him “I’ll send you on a patrol trip alone. You will be gone a week. If you don’t come back by then I’ll come looking for you, and you had better have made plans for a new job”. Pearson must have proved himself as he remained on staff!

Even with the advent of snow machines (mobiles) the dogs have been kept on as a uniquely Denalian cultural tradition, and because of the wilderness designation of the place. The wilderness areas are protected from the intrusion of mechanical transport, and dogs are the perfect solution to allow the rangers to carry out the park mission of protection over winter. Sarah told us during the show that the official definition of wilderness was “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where a man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Untrammeled she further explained means ‘free or unrestrained’. Mmmm, untrammeled! It certainly struck a chord with me!

Rangers still patrol the frozen back-country during the winter, and the sled dogs faithfully help to ferry provisions and people in the still inhospitable climes. It’s cute that each set of pups born in the park are named along a theme. Just before I arrived a competition was announced among staff that sought suggestions to name the latest litter. It eventuated that Mumma Keta’s (from the salmon litter) brood of 3 males Mixtus, Sitken and Lucor were all named for the scientific names of bumblebees that occur in Alaska.

Once the dogs pass away their routed name signs are added to the wall of fame in the kennel office. Other litter themes have included the northern lights, aspects of Wonder Lake, rivers, landforms and volcanos. My favourite dog was Pyro from the volcano litter, he was so vocal and affectionate and his handler Ranger Matt who let me get a photo taken with him…like tourists do!

 

Denali at last!

The scenery passed as if in slow motion on the train ride to Denali. The relaxed pace was no doubt designed to take advantage of the view and it was punctuated with an entertaining commentary provided by the train’s young host, Tara. Along the journey Tara pointed out fascinating and unusual landmarks including a 13 storey house near Talkeetna, built by a man who added a floor each year to maintain his view over trees as they grew up; a peak in the Chugach mountains that her brother had climbed, but she had not; and Sarah Pallin’s nondescript gravel driveway alongside the railway tracks in Wasilla. It was like a Hollywood tour of the stars houses, only on rail, and no stars really. After the first couple of hours, my fellow travelers and I conspiratorially smirked and rolled our eyes skyward at some of the more entertaining descriptions Tara shared with us. All the while, the scenery waxed and waned between wild rivers, deep gorges, forest cloaked mountains, tiny settlements and lush wetlands interspersed with fleeting glimpses of the base of Denali, it’s head in the clouds, well off in the distance.

Upon arrival at Denali National Park I was met by Susanna from the park headquarters who was holding a sign with my name neatly typed on it – the first time I’d ever had one of those held up for me! She kindly helped with my luggage, took me to the visitor centre to book a bus trip into the park, then to the outrageously overpriced grocery shop for some supplies and dropped me off at my park accommodation. I was booked into the guest accommodation next to the ranger’s office in the park headquarters compound. The headquarters consisted of a gaggle of historic log construction buildings, newer offices of a more modern construction, staff houses and an apartment building all painted alike in mission brown with bottle green roofs. Many of the older buildings had been converted from their original use as sheds or workshops to office space as the park staff increased over time.

In the office, I caught up with some of the fire crew I’d met at Lake Clark and their friends. Heather, Wes, Emma, Sarah and Kelvina welcomed me warmly and later introduced me to the Salmon Bake, a restaurant in the Canyon just outside the park. Locals and seasonal workers all refer to the Canyon as ‘Glitter Gulch’ – a short strip development between the Nenana River and the George Parks Highway, where the cruise lines have built huge glitzy hotels to accommodate their guests on the landward leg of their Alaskan journeys. A jumble of shops has followed including the ubiquitous souvenir shops, the mountain equipment store, a few restaurants, fuel stations, a gravel RV park and tiny over priced grocery shops.

Denali National Park, I learnt on this visit, owes its protection to some old world sheep with curly horns – Dall sheep (to be specific) and to a bloke called Charles Sheldon who studied them and thought they were worth protecting. The area was a well known haunt of these tasty creatures to game hunters, who pushed them to the brink of extinction when Sheldon, a hunter naturalist from Vermont, visited and realised the coming of the railway and it’s hungry workers would certainly wipe out the remaining individuals. With help from a number of supporters, he was able to convince congress to protect the area and its wildlife in 1917 as a national park. The first superintendent of the park, Harry Karstens, a veteran of the Klondike stampede, had accompanied Sheldon on his first trip to the area in 1906 and was a staunch advocate of Sheldon’s. Sheldon liked Karstens too, describing him as ‘brimful of good nature’.  

The ‘Park Road’ is a dusty 143km (84 mi) artery that runs into the heart of Denali National Park wilderness area with only the first 24km (15 mi) open to the public. To travel the remaining 119km one must catch a park bus or a go on a cruise tour bus, ride a bike, or simply walk. The return trip takes over 12 hours if you go all the way to Kantishna at the end, although you can choose a shorter journey.

I selected the 8 hour return trip to the Eielson Visitor Centre and after a night of socialising with my fire friends at the Salmon Bake I was wondering why I’d signed up for the 7:30 am pick up. Woolly-headed I dragged myself out of bed and jumped on the classic American school bus that stopped for me outside the park headquarters. I have to say I was pretty skeptical that we would see any wildlife driving along a dirt road on a school bus but I was open to the experience nonetheless. I knew at worst the scenery would be great, but really, I was hoping to see Denali (aka Mt KcKinley) in all its 20,300 feet glory. I was ready for disappointment though as I had been primed not to expect the mountain to reveal itself.

Matt, our bus driver and amateur comedian introduced himself a short distance up the road and warned us not to address him as ‘driver’. ‘Ah! the delights of the public’ I thought! He told us if anyone saw any wildlife to shout ‘STOP’ and he would pull up so that we could all get a look at whatever it was had been spotted. At the 24 km gate, a park ranger boarded the bus and gave a mini talk about the history of park and his love for the place. It was passionate in content if not a little wooden in delivery. I wondered for a moment about his job; sitting in a tiny ranger station, stopping people from driving further along the road, giving his spiel to each of the 75 or so buses that pulled up at the gate every day. I was quickly distracted though as we rattled off up the hill and down the other side to a spot where the illusive Denali was revealed in all its glory off in the distance. Matt pulled over the bus and we all shot a dozen or more pictures, as he told us how amazingly clear the view on this day was and how lucky we were to see the mountain, as it had often been obscured over this summer in low cloud.

Back on our way and it wasn’t long before someone shouted ‘STOP’ and we all jumped up from our seats to get a view of a half a dozen caribou grazing on the grassy slopes below the road. Soon after someone else spotted some Dall sheep that looked like white dots on the cliffs high above us as we motored through a narrow gorge. Then moments later we stopped by a flock of Dall sheep that I could have almost reached out and touched through the bus window. Unbelievable! The beauteous scenery stretched off in every direction and my only annoyance were the windows of the bus cut the view in half with a frame exactly at eye level. Irritatingly one had to crane one’s neck or compress down to see the whole view past this redundant vehicular architecture.

Matt kept us entertained with park facts and stories of naïve passengers who thought that he was serious when he said there was a Starbucks at the next toilet stop. Continuing on, the road took us through Polychrome Pass, formed about 65 million years ago when the pacific tectonic plate slid under the continental shelf and forced magma to the surface. Volcanism! The whole landscape is geologically young and beautiful. Funny that. The place lived up to its name with a rainbow of colours on the volcanic bluffs and as though on cue, a troop of 3 brown bears lumbered along the water course right below us. I start to wonder if I had become overly cynical (remembering I was skeptical about seeing any wildlife).

The road then snaked precariously along a narrow cutting that seemed to be composed of purely unconsolidated gravel and for once I was thankful to be sitting on the ‘wrong’ side of the bus. The vegetation changed from taiga with it’s low trees and scrubby under-storey to tundra where the trees disappeared altogether among the braided glacial streams. Denali towered impressively above us as we reached the Eielson visitor centre, a building that was cleverly hunkered into the slope below the road, leaving the view to the snow coated mountain unfettered and wild.

In the visitor centre, large picture windows were designed to capture fantastic views of Denali with information provided in a variety of entertaining and engaging ways. The mountain, the park and its inhabitants were interpreted through a range of mediums including art, film, stories, signs and audio. I was impressed. I watched a film about climbing Denali and was astounded to learn that over 1,500 people attempt to summit every year. Climbing Denali is a quite a process, without sherpas to carry the equipment, mountaineers must climb up to deliver supplies and equipment to each camp, then retrace their steps down to the previous camp to overnight, and carry up a second load, hopefully becoming acclimatized to the altitude in the process (or not as the case may be). Climbers often become ill and mountaineering rangers who stay on Denali for the climbing season are often called to rescue or render first aid to foundering mountaineers. Sure sounds like a tough ranger gig to me!

Before I left the visitor centre, a ten year old boy was sworn in as a junior ranger, by the on site interpretive ranger, having completed a workbook on the park. Among other serious commitments, he solemnly swore to protect the park for his lifetime – neat!   

      

planes...trains

My last day at Lake Clark I spent dreaming about going to Twin Lakes to see Dick Proenneke’s cabin. Richard Proenneke was an interesting character who ran away to Twin Lakes in 1968 when he was 51 and built himself a cabin on the shore of the upper lake. His friend Babe Alsworth from Lake Clark used a float plane to transport him in and out and deliver supplies from time to time. His claim to fame, other than being a masterful carpenter and a hermit was that he filmed himself building the cabin and while hunting and trekking through the area, and he kept a daily journal.

He planned to make the film of his adventures and take it on a travelling road show to make money out of it, but the area got into his blood and he did not leave the solitude for nearly 30 years. Instead a friend of his, Sam Keith published a paraphrased version of his journals (that Dick was never totally satisfied with) and he became famous before it was fashionable to have 15 minutes of fame in this country. Keith paraphrasing Proenneke…

What was I capable of that I didn't know yet?

Could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year?

and was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me?

His cabin stands as something of a museum in the park, where you can visit (if you can get there) with all his personal effects still in place, as it was the day he left and moved to the lower 48 to finish up his days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss

Apparently Dick Proenneke’s story is not unique in itself, just that it was so well documented he became the pin up boy for people escaping city life and living on their wits in this wilderness.

Back at Lake Clark NP the head of the National Parks Service, John Jarvis, was scheduled to visit the park at the end of the week and much industry was devoted to making the place ready for him to inspect. The weather was not in favour of me getting to Proenneke’s cabin so I returned to Anchorage on a milk run flight that took me sightseeing south from Port Alsworth via Lake Iliamna on the northern end of the Alaska Peninsula, right above the Aleutian Chain. At 124 km long, Iliamna is Alaska’s largest lake and is as impressive as it is beautiful. The flight north to Anchorage was terrifying for me as we dodged thunderclouds all the way home with absolutely no visibility until we arrived in the city. I sat white knuckled for the whole journey praying I wouldn’t become a statistic.

Back in Anchorage I continued my volunteer work at the NPS. On the weekend I headed out to the Chugach State Park with Doug and Jan, my friends from the Fish and Wildlife Service to go for a hike up to Rabbit Lake, just behind Anchorage. It was steady climb up above the clouds and we searched in vain for blueberries along the way and found only sour crowberries as we laughed and chatted along the track. The panoramic view to the west across Turnagain Arm and to the north of Anchorage gave a great perspective on the height of the mountains behind the Cook Inlet, and on the position of the city.

The hike was challenging and rewarded us with a view of the pretty and tiny Rabbit Lake, with the Suicide Peaks towering above. I discovered ‘Lara bars’ that Doug shared as a snack near the lake – yummy health food bars of dark sticky munched fruit and nuts. The cherry ones are the best! On the way back down we met heaps of people hiking up, many with dogs in tow (some with cute panniers) and the weather deteriorating to a steady drizzle. At one point we could hear bear bells approaching from up the side slope at an alarming rate. We all looked at each other with wide eyes, expecting to see whoever or whatever was wearing the bear bells to have a bear in hot pursuit. We three were relieved it was just a dog enjoying the freedom of a run on a Sunday afternoon. Some people say the bear bells are really dinner bells as they alert the bears to where to get an easy feed! A pizza at the Moose’s Tooth – easily Anchorage’s best and most popular pizza restaurant - rounded out a satisfying and enjoyable day. We all resolved to hike again while the summer still lingered.
 

The next week arrangements were made for me to visit to Denali National Park. As the train pulled slowly out of the depot (not the station?) and passed through Elmendorf Air Force Base on the outskirts of Anchorage, the conductor advised everyone that we would be traversing the site of a cargo plane (C17) crash from only a week before where 4 servicemen were killed while practicing for an air-show. Ploughed earth, trees snapped like matchsticks and wreckage was strewn either side of the train tracks for a couple of hundred metres and was in the process of being collected and boxed up in containers by the military for the air crash investigation. The awful carnage prompted me to consider the fragility of life, and the necessity of being present and aware, especially on this amazing adventure.

There have been numerous air crashes in Alaska while I have been here over the summer, which is not surprising given the number of aircraft and the number of pilots in this state. Pilots per capita are the most numerous here of any state in the US with 1.3 per 100 people compared with .03 per 100 in most other areas. To date I think 21 people have lost their lives since I arrived – including the Ted Stevens who was a very well known ex-senator of Alaska. Most recently a contract float plane disappeared with 3 national parks employees aboard in poor weather in Katmai National Park and hasn’t been found yet. Very sad.