Moominmama's Adventures: Denali National Park

In which Moominmama explores Denali National Park and hikes a stretch of the backcountry with a park ranger...

Denali, the highest mountain in North America, is a ghostly and elusive presence over the Denali valley that makes up most of the national park. Clouds often obscure the peak, and even under clear skies, it often appears like an afterimage. The south peak (the smoother bump) is the high point. The north peak is the one more pointed. At 20,320 feet, it is shorter than Mt. Everest (29,029 feet), but it rises from a plateau at 2,000 feet of elevation. The plateau at the base of Mt. Everest is already at 17,000 feet before the mountain rises above.

I expected to feel more like I was in the mountains in Denali National Park. Denali is part of the Alaska Range, which looms over the park but at quite a distance. 

Closer is the Outer Range, which I did get to climb. In this late-day light, the rock looks almost pink.

But the bulk of the park is in the valley between the two ranges where the one road, currently cut off at mile 42 by a landslide, provides the only access besides air flight.

Surprisingly, there are very few maintained trails in Denali! Serious hikers must learn to bushwhack through the taiga and the tundra.

Not foolhardy enough to brave this on my own, I signed up for a ranger-led hike that took a group of us to an area called Sanctuary River for the day (see photo below). 

There, we headed across a landscape with few trees but many bushes! This included dwarf birch which, at about knee-to-mid-thigh height, provides ankle-entangling branches growing on a mossy ground that feels like walking across a soft mattress. 

If this ground was frozen, it would be permafrost. But it's not -- so it's a workout lifting feet and getting them back onto the squishy ground. It got easier when we reached stretches of pure tundra, where the bushes were replaced by layers of lichen and tiny plants on rockier ground.

But passing in between the two types of terrain, we found an abundance of berries: low-bush blueberries, cloudberries, crowberries and sour cranberries. We also needed to be wary of bears, who would be just as interested in these tiny fruits! 

Reportedly, bears' favorite and highest-calorie berry is called a soapberry, which grows closer to the river. So we didn't find those until we descended the knoll we'd climbed toward the water. Technically edible and even nutritious, they have a terrible bitter aftertaste. (I speak from experience.) They apparently turn foamy if you boil them to make tea, which is how they got the name soapberry. 

We did not see any bears, but we did see their scat, full of berry seeds. More of a surprise was the wolf scat. The park is home to a number of wolf packs, and Sanctuary River is one of their preferred home bases, though the ranger said they were using a different location to raise their young this year.

Aside from evidence of animals, the largest creature we saw on this hike was the feared Alaska mosquito when we got to the river and started up the stony bank back to the road. 

I had better luck with wildlife viewing when I wasn't on foot with a group. In fact, an introductory bus ride along the park road led to a surprise meeting with a caribou, who passed the bus as if he completely understood the rules of traffic (stayed in his lane) and focused on his destination.

Most of the rest of my wildlife viewing, including a mama bear with three cubs, took place thanks to binoculars, and I don't have any pictures to share!

One of the interesting things I learned on this bus trip was that Denali exists as a national park thanks to the Dall sheep. Difficult to see except as white dots high on the rocky tips of the mountains, they were hunted nearly to extinction before advocates called for the creation of the park, and its first superintendent set to work to stop any poaching. 

During the winter, he did this by dog sled. And Denali National Park continues to use dog teams and sleds to patrol the park and transport materials during the winter. Snowmobiles, they found, can be fickle at minus-30 degrees. 

One of the most popular activities in the park is to go visit the kennels and see the dogs. Several times a day, the park rangers hook a group up to a wheeled sled to show visitors how a dog team works.

First, they get the dogs excited about showtime by having the audience send up wolf howls until the dogs respond in kind, excited and bounding around hoping to get chosen for that day's demo.

It was a lot of fun. They send the chosen dog team down a short wooded path that breaks open in front of the seating area so you can see them run in. 

But in addition to entertainment, these dogs will be used to pull scientific equipment around and even construction materials, like the beams and cables that made this suspension bridge.

This bridge was on one of the few maintained trails, where the moss and spongy ground has been removed and replaced with dirt and gravel.

Moominmama used one of the trails to finally get up into the Outer Range, a fun hike that transitioned from boreal forest to the bushy taiga, to tundra and finally bare rock.

I leave you with a photo from my very last hike to the Mount Healy Overlook. This week has been exhausting and wonderful as my visit to Alaska starts drawing to a close. 

Next stop is Fairbanks, which is currently enshrouded in smoke from several nearby fires. From there I will spend two weeks descending through the Yukon and British Columbia to arrive back to the lower 48! More adventures to come -- but after Fairbanks, not Alaskan ones.