August 30th
Denali was amazing. Words cannot describe the beauty of this national park; nor can pictures. The day that I left Oregon it was so hot and beautiful that I got a sunburn despite my sunscreen. In Anchorage and Moose Pass, the air was temperate and the leaves on the trees were green. The sun burned coolly in the sky and I hiked to Greyling Lake that Saturday and sampled some fine wild raspberries and blueberries. It seemed that summer was lingering yet.
However, as Michael and I hitched northward the fall colors slowly began to emerge on the mountainsides. In a sea of green, a single cottonwood had burst into yellow flame or the black spruce, birch, aspen and cottonwood type forest were sprinkled with oranges and yellows. The bare sub-alpine and alpine hills and crests were covered in blueberry bushes that had begun to redden and the ravines were like rainbows beginning with emerald green and spreading to blue to yellow to orange to red and then brown.
The Monday that we hitchhiked to Denali was sunny and the two spunky women that gave a ride from Anchorage to Willow had originally planned to pick blueberries just a couple miles outside of Anchorage. However, the day was so nice that they decided to drive 70 miles out of their way for us. The older woman regaled us with stories of her youth. She came her from Germany when she was 18 and promptly met and married her husband and went on to have all sorts of crazy adventures. They drove of as far as the Denali viewpoint in Willow. While we took picture after picture of the gleaming white behemoth through the haze, she schmoozed with some other tourists who were on their way to Denali and convinced them to give us a ride. They were from Germany and Australia and drove a small compact rental car and they looked doubtingly at our giant backpacks. However, with some grunting and stuffing and crowding, we were all able to shove in. We spent the ride pinned to our seats by our backpacks and a little worried for our lives as they took pictures out the windshield while driving. The car swerved dangerously into oncoming traffic as we all tried to glimpse Denali and the stunning scenery through the trees.
We arrived at the park headquarters at 5:00 and tried to orient ourselves. However, the ride had been long and it was difficult to suddenly switch from passive passenger to no-nonsense trip-organizer. In order to go backpacking in Denali you have to first register with the Back Country Information Center, watch a safety film, listen to a safety talk and get permits for the sections that you are planning to spend each night in.
Denali is divided into sections and each section has a limit to the number of people that can stay in it each night. There are no trails to speak of and no designated back country camping places and so I felt quite lost as I gazed at a giant topo of the park. I had to come up with five sections to stay in and they had to the best and the most scenic and I had no clue where to go. The rangers were helpful but they really are not in the business of telling you what to do or planning your trip for you. So Michael and I fumbled around with the map. We would decide on a section to stay in only to find it at capacity for the night. Apparently we were there during the height of backpacking season. We eventually mapped out what we thought would be a good solid trip and left the BIC with a couple of Park Service-issued bear cans and a permit.
Personal vehicles are not allowed in the park. Everyone is able to access the park by loading onto to forest green school buses that leave the entrance of the park at regular and frequent intervals. They stop often at rest stops and over looks and they always stop for a great view of Denali or animals. Passengers are allowed to get off the bus anytime they wish to disembark for a day hike or a backpacking trip. The buses also picks up hikers and backpackers waiting along the side of the road. It is really an ingenious system and it frees everyone from the steering wheel to ogle the scenery and animals. It also reduces congestion and pollution and completely does away with having to organize shuttles for through hikes or the stress of dealing with the uncertainties of hitchhiking. The permit/safety system for back country hikers and the buses are two things which I think every national park should embrace (I'm talking to you Glacier and Yellowstone) and perhaps other places where there is a lot of ignorant tourists who know not how to treat the land (yes, you, Russian River).
We boarded our bus Tuesday morning at 10:40 am. We road through black spruce forest areas. Our bus driver offered lots of interesting facts and trivia about the park and we learned quite a bit from her comments. Our first stop was at an overlook of a wide and braided stream bed. The wind whipped coolly through the cottonwoods and the sun glinted off the the icy muddy water coursing in its braids. The road continued to wind further into the park and the spruce gave way to open rolling hills with snow capped peaks in the distance. The alpine was awash with color. The willows were yellow and the low blueberries were burnt red and some ground cover plant was bright vibrant red. In the well-watered areas the grass was vibrant green and blooming wildflowers lent an occasional burst of purple or blue to the pallet of colors.
Once we left the spruce forest, we began to see wildlife aplenty. We saw bears many times; three of them, pawed in the huckleberries along side of the road, two were rooting up some vermin or another, one was trekking through the willows. Oh, we saw a lot of bears! We also saw a wolf feeding on a carcass in the hazy distance, caribou grazing along tundra, ptarmigan flocking along the side of the road and Dall sheep dotting the craggy mountain sides.
At Polychrome Overlook we had a stunning view of a braided stream bed in the foreground and a row of rocky and snow studded mountains in the background. Though I couldn't see them, I felt that each twisted valley and canyon of the mountains held a glacier. I felt the cool wind on my cheeks and could somehow sense the almost stagnant flow of the ice behind the misty shrouds of clouds hung up on those cold wet rocks. My senses were overwhelmed by sunlight, bright blue sky, dazzling white Denali, the polychrome colors of the Toklat river valley, the great green buses and the elusive glaciers just waiting one bend away from my sight. There...each one with its own canyon that it had been chewing out for centuries. Each one sliding slowly with gravity and melting, sending away a braided stream of muddy, silty water. The land here...so new under my feet. The out wash planes just beginning to support vegetation. How is soil built under these conditions? Where, in the rocky waste land did these hearty plants find nutrients? Everything seemed so raw and new here, at the edge of the earth. Mysteries of geography and geology are, at the same time, revealed and proposed; this valley was so obviously carved by a glacier, but how did life find its way after the cold ice receded?
About five hours into our bus ride, at Eileson Visitors Center, we had our first view of Denali since yesterday. The sky was clear and the mountain was out and it was huge and in our face! The bus driver informed us that such stunning views of the mountain had only happened about 10 times this summer. We were lucky. The mountain is so tall that it creats it own weather and it is often hidden by a blanket of clouds even if it is sunny nearby. Denali towered over its brothers, a bright white mound against a bright blue sky. It's relief is greater than that of Mount Everest. It was difficult for me to believe that from its roots to its peak, this is the tallest-"looking" mountain out there. It was also difficult to be peaceful here amidst the tourists and the interpretive signs and the clicking cameras. I, myself, couldn't stop taking picture after picture. There is something about human nature that wants to preserve and remember. We forced ourselves to stand silently for a minute in reverence and recognition. I let all the hype slide away, all the pressure that I had built up to see this national treasure. I let the mountain sink into my eyes and I let the wonder flow around. People should see this place, not to "check" it off there list but to truly appreciate the power of nature; its creative force even as it destroys. Oregan was in the full throes of summer, Moose Pass was at summer's tail end, and here in Denali the mornings are frosty and the hills are aflame with fall colors. Again, at the edge of the world, everything happens so fast.
We were dropped off by the bus driver at around 6:00 pm on the edge of a section at the end of the road near Wonder Lake. We stood and watched the bus pull away and I felt small and a little helpless. We had everything we would need to survive...two smart adults with a lot of backpacking and hiking experience between us. But there, at the foot of this giant mountain with winter knocking on the door, with no trail in site, amidst the grizzlies and the howling wind, and the green bus growing small in the distance, I felt frightened and unsure. Of course, this passed quickly as we walked along the stream bed of Moose Creek for a couple of miles. Denali was still alight with alpine glow behind us and as we walked a new set of mountains emerged in front of us, pink in the setting sun. We set up camp in the middle of the blueberry bushes, throwing the safety talk's warnings of being disturbed by foraging bears to the wind. We cooked dinner and found ourselves with too much food and too little of appetites. We decided to bury the food far away instead of stuffing ourselves. I felt uneasy about this as we were in grizzly country and the slightest scent of food can bring them running. However, I couldn't eat another bite. The wind howled all night and I slept little. It blew so hard that the tent was practically lying flat and by morning only two stakes were left in the rain fly. We were supposed to get up at 4:30am to catch a bus to our next hiking destination but the wind, the cold and the darkness made us rethink our plans and we decided to catch a later bus.
We started Wednesday's hike from a bridge just west of Polychrome Overlook. We hiked along the braided stream bed of a tributary of the Toklat River for more than four miles. The water was muddy gray glacier melt off and as we hiked further and further into the glacial canyon the wind blew cold and stiff. I did not want to spend another night in the wind so we searched for a place that was sheltered from the gusts and finally settled on a dry narrow river bed. Twilight had descended by that time. As we ate dinner, I saw a strange silhouette on the mountain ridge above us. We couldn't tell for sure what kind of animal it was but in moved back and forth along the ridge and we watched it until it disappeared in the darkness.
Thursday morning was glorious and filled with animals. As we hiked along the stream bed to the glacier, a whole herd of caribou descended from the ridges and milled about in the valley bottom. There were close to fifty of them and we skirted around them as best we could. We did come face to face with a whole group of juveniles and we played a game of chicken; we approached them and they approached us until, in a flurry of hooves and rocks, they turned swiftly and ran away on nimble feet. Just past the caribou herd we encountered a family of snowy white Dall sheep. We had spotted them on the ridge earlier that morning and they had descended while we watched the caribou. The going became even more gravely and hummocky as we neared the glacier. We had to crawl up and over moraines and go well out of our way to avoid treacherous stream crossings and steep banks. The wind was cold and the rain began to smatter. The mist, it seemed, clung to the mountains and we lingered in the rain and cold only long enough to take in the glacier and its slow great flow.
We retraced our steps with the wind at our backs. In order to get to that night's section, we had to cross the braided muddy glacial river. The safety video had cautioned us with grave warnings of hypothermia and even death as a result of improper stream crossings. Fortunately, the water was low this time of the year. However, the hype surrounding stream crossings made me feel as though I was about to do the most dangerous thing I had done in a long time. In reality, it was a cinch. We put on sandals, hiked up our pants and waded knee deep into the freezing cold water. It was flowing fast, but not fast enough to make me lose my balance or sweep me off my feet. It took all of 30 seconds but in that 30 seconds, my feet became numb with the cold and it took all of 30 minutes of hiking before they felt more like feet with nimble toes than heavy cement blocks.
We hiked up the side of the valley and followed sheep and goat trails though the rocky talus slopes. We eventually made our way out the valley and up onto a rolling hill covered in red blueberry bushes and green heather. We found a sheltered place out of the wind and set up camp. Then we watched the Caribou retreat from the valley below us back onto the slopes across from us. The alpine glow struck the craggy peaks behind us and a coolness descended with the darkness.
Friday, we hiked up and over the ridge and descended into another glacial valley. We left our packs in the braided stream bed and hiked up towards the glacier. We couldn't see it yet but we could tell it was there...around the corner because of the muddy water flowing past us, the shape of the valley and cool wind in our face. As we hiked, I spotted something moving ahead of us and upon further inspection identified it as a grizzly and two cubs. We scrambled up the stream bank and approached them from afar. We were about a soccer field away from them and 20 feet straight up a steep bank but I still felt a zing of excitement run up my spine. A grizzly is a great and awesome animal. The lore surrounding them makes me respect and fear them. However, at a distance, they looked like cute rolly poly blond bunches of fur and fluff. Their coats were frosted blond and they pushed their snouts into the ground, rooting for vermin and other tasty things. The sow was especially big and furry and her head was huge and ringed by a healthy collar of fluff. The babies were aglow and even more rolly poly. They seemed butt heavy but that did not hamper thier frisking about. After awhile, we realized that there were three cubs instead of two. When the mother caught our scent, her head shot up and then she spotted us. In less than a second, she had rounded up her cubs and darted up the valley side away from us. We were able to watch their ascent as they high-tailed it along a goat trail. The mother threw us worried looks and the cubs fell behind. She left the goat trail and ran straight up a gravel shoot. The cubs, not entirely sure why they were running, fell behind and she did not wait. Eventually, all four were but a sihouette on the ridge and then they disappeared over the other side. We continued up the valley to the glacier. It was covered in dirt and was not nearly as impressive as the bright blue ones but it was still awe-inspiring.
As evening closed in and we made yet another stream crossing, the rain and storms rolled in. We sloshed up a ravine of mucky chalk-like stuff and sunk in ankle deep. The wind blew cold and we were saturated by the sleeting rain. We quickly set up camp and cooked dinner. We shivered as we ate and even the hot noodles couldn't warm us up. The rain was a dismal affair indeed and I had to wear all my layers and use hand warmers in order to get warm enough to sleep. Even though it was our last night in Denali, it was our first with rain so I could not complain. The rain had stopped sometime in the night but we had to pack everything up damp and dewy. We got to see more bears and moose on the bus ride out of the park. I also got to see my friend and fellow fire fighter in Oregon, Jen. She is a park ranger in Denali. I also saw a fellow Moose Pass resident who was working on the road construction crew!
We were out of the pristine and wildlife-filled park and on the highway with our Anchorage sign by noon. After an hour of thumbing, we were picked up by some seasonals from Fairbanks who worked for a gold panning tourist company. They dropped us off at the local brewpub in Anchorage where we had some beers and recharged our phones and cameras. I was able to hitch a ride to Moose Pass and spent most of Sunday drying out and reconnoitering after having been gone for almost a month.
Alpine glow
caribou on highway
Denali Highway with Denali in the distance
Rachel, Wonder Lake and Denali
Day Four: It rained and rained and rained. But we didn't let that stop us as we hiked to Crow Pass and Raven Glacier. The rain and the rising and lowering clouds seemed to make the experience even more surreal than it already was. The rain put my new event rain jacket to the test and it proved itself over and above the competition. I stayed dry to damp while mom became soaked in her gortex.
That, sadly, concludes my hiking adventures in the Chugach National Forest.
