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!