Denali, Part I of 2

The adventure begins. After our last “civilized” (water, electricity and wifi) night, we headed up the road towards Denali. We have 7 nights reserved in Teklanika River Campground and one opening salvo at Riley Creek. We drove past the entrance to the park to find a store to pick up a few things we hadn’t been able to get such as milk, eggs and bread. Bread was the interesting item. We went into a convenience store and could find no bread. Once we got to the Grizzly Campground, we saw no bread in their store either but on later inspection, they had bread in the freezer. We didn’t look in the freezer so maybe they had it in the first place?? Oh well. We picked up a few things but couldn’t find everything we wanted. Once we got to the park, we visited the Riley Creek Mercantile and found everything else we needed plus a few things.

I digress. We landed in Denali and proceeded to the Wilderness Center. All Campground reservations, shuttle bus reservations and tour reservations are managed here. They also have some information counters and a film about the wilderness aspects of the park. I arrived at the desk (3 people working the desk) and in seconds got someone to wait on me. By the time all my questions were taken care of, there was a long line. When they were getting my campground pass ready, the person waiting on me remarked that we were staying in Teklanika for 7 nights: “that must be a record”. Apparently people stay there for 3 nights (required by the park) and head on out. We planned to use this as a relaxing point and wanted to really feel the “wildness” of the park. They make an issue that Denali has no trails in it. It is a “wild” place. You basically have to bushwhack wherever you go. There are some trails near the entrance but just nature trails and short “safe” trails for those who do not have the time or desire to “see” the park.

We arrived in the Riley Creek area about 11:30 and did a full trip around the Wolf Loop. They had spots marked for Campers 31 feet and longer. We found out that the type and length of your rig determines your fee. Tents are one fee, small campers are another and the bigger motorhomes and trailers are a third fee. The first long camper site we came across had a 2 man tent pitched right in the middle of it. We found a nice level site and proceed to set up (4 minutes). A little later on we met our campground host and had a nice discussion with her about working in National Parks. She gave us a lot of tips and sources of job listings. She and her husband are working at Denali this summer. They were at Yellowstone last summer and are looking for something in Washington State for next summer. This winter they have a job working for an RV dealer in Florida. The job consists of demos of RV Equipment for 2 months each in 3 different locations. They work 15 to 20 hours a week and get site, facilities and salary. They are retired and are living off what they are making while their retirements grow. Worth looking at.

We walked up to the Visitor’s Center. It was a brisk uphill mile+ walk in the rain. You learn to ignore the rain around here or you stay inside much of the time. They had a 22 minute film about the park. There was very little talking mostly pictures and sounds of the park. It was very affective. We hurried back to the camp stopping briefly at the Mercantile (a second time) to buy Cheryl a Wool hat (ok, I got an ear band; it was really cold, low 40’s). Then we hurried over to the amphitheater. There is a group of college student aged people who do nondenominational services in the National Parks. It was drizzling and cold but the service although sparsely attended was warm and friendly. We sang Amazing grace (sounded pretty good considering the lack of people) and another that I was not familiar with that didn’t sound so good as we were not familiar with the tune (we had no music, just words). We visited with them for a while afterwards and hurried back for something to eat before the ranger talk on park birds just 30 minutes later. We had some soup and a bagel and hurried back. Afterwards, we played dominoes until 1 am.

Today dawned late but held promise as there was no rain and some signs of blue sky scattered amongst heavy grey clouds. We drove up to Healy and topped off the propane tank, had breakfast and bought a few treats to scatter among the days of our wilderness experience (wilderness does not mean no Cherry Garcia!). We headed into the park. And soon found ourselves amongst the park shuttle busses. The sky never cleared but it didn’t rain and the clouds were higher today than they had been and we could see the mountains. We arrived without fanfare at Teklanika and drove around checking out the available campsites (they have a pretty good system. They know the total count by type (Tek is all hard sided campers) and do not try to manage the sites. You are given a card with the date you are to check out. You find a site to your liking and hang up the card). We checked out the farthest loop first and found a couple of possibles but when we headed around the first loop, we found a site that had a great view of the mountains and overlooked Teklanika River. Of course (nothing is ever easy) getting the dinning table side facing the mountains (or why bother) meant going past the site, turning the 35 foot camper around (one lane road) and driving about 50 yards the wrong way into the site. It took a while but it is well worth the effort and we will worry about how to get it out of here in 7 days. In exploring our site, we found some animal droppings. There were quite a few of them scattered around. They were oval, about an inch and a half long. We did not recognize them.

We had a nice simple lunch (bagel, cream cheese (for Cheryl) and peanut butter (who else) and headed out for a walk. We walked down on the river bed for a while and planned maybe later in the week to hike down the river bed. We walked up to the bus stop and headed down the road deeper into the park. Eventually the road came back to the river. We saw some birds and small ground squirrels and not much else. We did see some bear tracks on the edge of the road and another interesting “pile” of animal droppings (full of hair). We looked down on the riverbed and saw a mother brown bear and a cub. They were “playing” along the river. The mother chased the cub and rolled him over right into the water. Cheryl got some decent pictures (though a little shaky). It was really cute. Then we kind of lost them and saw some bears (mother and cub) on the other side of the river. They were quite a bit further away but I assumed that they were the same bears. A bus driver who had stopped to show his passengers the bears came out and said that they weren’t the same bears and since we had lost track of the bears on our side, we should hightail it out of Dodge as these bears have been seen several times on the road. We and the other hikers and bikers that had gathered went our separate ways hoping that was the last we would see of these critters for the day at least.

Now we are back at camp. It is generator time so we are charging the batteries for the night and listening to music and writing. Nice way to spend the afternoon/evening. I think we will try to squeeze in another round of dominoes too. We are playing a best of 7 world championship match which is tied 1-1. I also see some fish chowder in our future. Have to get the fish stocks down to a reasonable level so I can fit in the halibut. Yumm.

We were walking around at 11 tonight and noticed that a couple of groups of campers were having a campfire. That in itself is not unusual in a campground but the idea that they were having this campfire in broad daylight at 11 pm made the whole scene surreal. Campfires are jolly times where groups of people get together and tell tall tales and regail each other with humor and wit. I do not believe that this can take place in the daylight. Some modicum of darkness is required to make a campfire raucous. Last night, after the ranger talk, we noticed a new group of campers had arrived in the campsite next to the trail we walked down. Father, mother and 2 kids had set up camp (pretty easy with a motorhome) and had started a campfire. They were toasting marshmallows. The reason that all of this was memorable was that it was raining and they were all sitting around the fire in lawn chairs with umbrellas. One hand holding the umbrella and the other holding the stick with the marshmallow. We did notice the smoldering ruins of some other attempts at campfires, probably during pauses in the rain, but few showed the signs of success. It is 8:00 and time to turn off the generator. I expect another round of dominoes.

Just back from our tour of the park. We took the longest tour and went to the end of the road. That gave us a pass for the rest of the week anywhere we want to go (these Tek passes are limited by the tour you purchase. What a great time. It was another long day though. The tour was 13 hours but we got a break by being an hour out along the route already so we saved an hour on each end of the tour. We got as far as the bridge over the Teklanika River before we stopped for a wildlife sighting. The bridge is just around the corner from where we saw the bears last night. The sighting was for a brown bear and cub. They weren’t playing this morning. They were eating berries and digging up roots and grubs from the base of small shrubs. We were pretty sure they were the same ones we saw last night. The day was dry but overcast with occasional breaks for sunshine, not too bad. We could see the mountains but not the high parts. It wasn’t long before we started seeing animals. We saw several bears then some Dall sheep, caribou and moose then more caribou. Later in the day we saw a big bull caribou right near the road. He had a tremendous rack and looked dignified even if he were eating grass. Soon after, we saw a 3 wolf pups playing near a stream. We watched them for some time. They looked cute but you had to realize that they would be wolves when they grew up. A little later, we saw a full grown grey wolf walking in the road. He went down a steep embankment and walked into some brush. We did get a close look at a moose but when it realized we were there it bolted. Most of the animals were aware of us but not afraid of us. Then would go about their business while we watched. It was a great day but hard on the old butts. At one of our rest stops, there was a bookstore and a small exhibit of hides, horns and scat (droppings). Included in the exhibit were the two scats that we had run across and wondered about. The first (in our campsite) was winter moose droppings (they have distinctly different droppings for winter and summer. The roadside “poop” belonged to a wolf. Ok, that mystery is solved. Tomorrow we hope to hike somewhere. There will not be a ride attached to this hike; I can pretty much guarantee that. Maybe just a day of rest with a hike along the river bed. Who knows? Have to run. Generator off time is once again approaching and supper beckons…left over fish chowder from last night.

I don’t know what is going on with my batteries. Every time they sit, they go pretty much dead. We go to bed at night with nothing on that uses the batteries and in the morning they are dead. This morning, I charged them up fully and by 4:00 they are dead again. Not dead dead but hanging on by a thread. I have checked all of the lights in the compartments (found 2 early in the trip). Generator on time isn’t until 8 so it gets a little cold by then (the furnace runs on propane but the fan runs on DC Power. I checked the water in the batteries and had to add some but it has gotten worse not better. Isn’t it always the way – far away from anywhere I can get it looked at. All I do is remind myself that last year I was living in a tent and there was no heat at all. At least this year I have heat that I can use at 8.

We decided to take a day off today. Our butts were still sore from the long bus ride and we decided that we would just enjoy the campground. We went for a walk before breakfast. We walked around the campground and then walked along a barricaded former utility road that turned into a path along a stream. After breakfast, we studied the topo map we bought. We were looking for some hikes for the rest of the time we are here. There are some really nice looking hikes that we can take right from the campground and we saw several that we would consider from the bus yesterday. The first we are considering is Igloo Mountain. They talked about it on the bus trip yesterday and we can see it from our camper. It is the mountain that we can see from our dining room (that’s kind of a stretch – it is a dining table area). It appears to be about 4800 feet but has an interesting long approach on this side from the Teklanika River that runs along a ridge along several smaller peaks. If we are really ambitious, this route can continue over Sable Mountain which is a little higher (not a goal but certainly a continuation if we are not exhausted by then). The drawback to this is that we have to cross the Teklanika. This is a braided river with one (or more) main channel. It is doable but we can’t see if there is another large channel on the other side. On the other side of camp, there is Double Mountain which is about the same challenge and also has a ridge leading toward the summit. I guess we will just pick one tomorrow morning and head out.

The wilderness here is just that: wilderness. There are no trails in the park (except in the entrance area). The purpose of the park is to keep the wilderness just the way it was. They do not allow trails to build up. When an area gets popular and it looks like overuse is allowing a trail to appear, they close the area until it returns to its pristine condition. This means that you never quite know what you are getting into until you cross over that first ridge. A lot of the park is tundra with a very limited type of growth making the walking moderately easy but you often run into areas of brush and scrub growth that you have to bushwhack through. If you meet 3 groups at any mountain top destination, chances are they came via 3 different routes. For us northeasterners who are used to having trails wherever we go (and books that tell us about all of the trails), this is different and a little difficult. Baxter State Park has the same philosophy as Denali regarding maintaining the wild aspect of the park but they have trails. I think this will be fun and we are both looking forward to it.