Alaska: Denali National Park

[nate]

Pics for this one are here:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~olmsnj/images/outdoors/alaska_denali_0810/

I'll outline some of the hikes and stuff later but the rough outline of the pics is up for now, so, enjoy!

There are no words to describe the beauty of Denali. Glad we hit it in the fall at the tail of tourist season -- things were not busy at all, colors were beautiful, weather was good, etc.

[Ben]

Your other pics were great, these are incredible. Denali is definitely on my list of places to go, and this reinforces it 100x over. The standout would be Mt McKinley, beyond impressive looking. I'm always interested in the logistics of trips like this, so
How long was your trip?
Assuming you flew there?
Did you camp at all? Backpack?
Were you on marked trails?
What was the weather like?

Did any of the locals up there mention global warming and what they thought of it?

[nate]

Good questions.

We went for 2 weeks: 1 on Kenai, 1 in Denali. Flew in to Anchorage and drove from there -- it's a very nice drive. The drive down to Seward is a couple hours and is absolutely amazing. Alaska did their stuff right and there are tons of turnoffs to take pictures, whale watch at certain times, etc etc. The drive north of Anchorage to Denali is longer but pretty cool, especially when you get in the area of the park and there's just nothing on the road... like, no fuel for 100 miles in one spot. Until you get in the middle and northern section of Denali the road is darn near perfect, but then has some pretty good dips and bumps from frost buckling. The section to Seward from Anchorage is bliss -- it's hard not to drive 80mph down it (65mph most of the way) around the beautiful swooping curves in the mountains. That and the NC stretch of Blue Ridge Parkway south of the Smokies are a couple of my favorite 2-lane highway drives so far.

Didn't camp this go-round -- and, am glad. Denali was nothing like I expected. We'll camp probably the 90%+ of the next time (aiming for maybe next year!) now that I have an idea of exactly what to fly up there with. We did backpack but mostly with (long) day equipment -- JIC survival gear, food, foulies, revolver, camera, etc.

There are only marked trails at the front of the park. There are others but they're very few and far between. Mostly it's true off-path backcountry hiking to get where you are going. We picked a random mountain to climb that looked like it'd have a good view (and, damn, did it ever!) and found an animal trail going up it and followed "bear crash" paths through the underbrush on the way down. In the park proper (away from the crushed asphalt touristy trails at the entrance) pretty much nothing is marked except possibly the trailhead if that.  Compass is a very good thing. Our theme was to just pick somewhere to "see what there was to see". I truly love finding passes up/through/down mountains. Trails are aight.

Weather was uh... interesting. We had ridiculously good luck. Seward had 31 days of straight rain, the 31st of which was the day we drove down. After, it was blue skies and perfect temps -- 50's to high 60's. The day we left it rained again - hahaha!  Denali was crazy. It rained most days but never caught us on the trails, and usually it was only in one section of the park or just really early morning and/or evening. One day it rained for the 11 miles to the park and the 14 miles we drove into the park, and it stopped in time for us to get out of the car at the end of the drivable section at mile 15... and turned to deep blue skies in like 15 minutes. After that long day we got back in the car and within ~5 minutes of driving out it started raining again. We maybe got hit with ~20 drops of rain, once. It was epic. Soaked my trekking pants blazing a trail through underbrush a mountain but the sun coming out dried things quick (including said pants) and there wasn't really any discomfort.

Didn't really talk to the touristas about global warming. Exit Glacier has receded quite a bit over the last 20 years. However, based on the data we heard nobody attributed it to global warming as much as just the natural progression of things over time.

[nate]

Oh, and McKinley is awesome. On a lot of days it isn't visible unless you get far into the park. From the park road (have to take a shuttle bus, though) you get about ~30 miles from it and it's just crazy big. It was pretty overcast when we first saw it and no direct sun shafts poking through the clouds but it was just brightly glowing from sun reflecting off of it a long ways off. Pure awesome. But, it's one of those things that even to hike from the road to McKinley and back is probably a good week of effort. It puts things into perspective for sure. Peters Dome is pretty nifty looking. The pic I have of it almost looks like a painting or something, but rest assured that's how it looks IRL. Got at least one other decent McKinley pic to throw on my images site as well.. will do that shortly.

[Ben]

Thats a good idea to go up there and see what its like, then you'll know what to bring to backpack the next time. Would be daunting to go there blind and head out into the back country

Any idea how big the park is? I'm surprised how hard it is to get to McKinley, but i think thats cool and they should keep it that way, thats the way it should be

I never would have thought there would be a fall colors season there either, thats real surprising. You would think all thos low lying bushes and weeds would just turn brown and wither away like all the low lying stuff here does.

[nate]

Park is 6.8 million acres. Random journey into backcountry doesn't really scare me but I'd prefer to not fly all that way with gear that doesn't get used, etc. Next time will definitely be a different trip!