Long Day at Denali

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We even set the alarm clock this morning to get an early start. We had reservations for the 8:30 shuttle bus to Toklat Flats. The park road is accessible by private vehicle only until mile 15. Beyond that you have to take a shuttle bus. We made our way to the Wilderness Access Center and met our bus driver Morty who did a great job livening the ride up with stories about the park and helping us spot animals. As we drove, if anyone spotted an animal (except showshoe hares, Morty said there were to many of them and he just didn’t stop for bunnies) they would yell stop and let the other folks know where to look (for instance: Grizzly at 9 o’clock). It was quite an adventure, looking for animals seeing them in their natural surroundings and at times so close! One of the great things about the shuttle bus is that you can get on and off when you want and just catch another later on. We got off at Toklat Flats and thanked Morty and told him that we were going to hike around in that area for a bit. The thing about Denali is that there are very few developed hiking trails, but you can pretty much hike wherever you want. So, we started hiking up a place that looked like it would be fairly easy going. As we started up, a bus employee yelled up to us to let us know that they had seen a grizzly where we were headed….after a little discussion, we decided to hike down the riverbed. We hiked down a bit exploring the area and checking out all of the cool rocks. Gabbi asked if we could turn around and as we did, Danielle asked, “is that a grizzly?!?” Sure enough, there was a huge grizzly about 250-300 yard back upstream. We kept an eye on him and let him get to the other side of the riverbed before we headed back up to the temporary visitor center and bus area. It was a little unnerving being so close to a grizzly bear (out of the bus), but it was pretty cool in hindsight.

After talking with a ranger on duty, we decided to upgrade and go a little further into the park to hike on Stony Dome. We picked a place and asked our new driver Elton to drop us off. As we started along, we had a prairie dog pop up right in front of us. Then we worked our way to the top. The girls we’re troopers…there was no trail and the tundra was soft and the terrain was very steep. They did some complaining, but really enjoyed running down the mountain. We saw a ton of caribou scat, which at the time thought was Dall sheep and later discovered the truth. We had a little rain along the hike, but since we had read the guidebooks about how the weather changes even more than in New England, we were ready for it. We were even treated to a rainbow. We hiked down the other side and just missed a bus that was headed in our direction… The next bus was full, so we decided not to take any chances and hopped on the one that was headed to the next stop in to the park. We didn’t realize that we were only about 100 yards from the turnaround spot. John, the driver, let us know that he would have us back to the entrance by about 8:45. Wow, how you can lose track of time when the sun is still way up over your heads at 6:00. Good thing we brought enough food to keep the natives happy. Eventually, we made it back (switched to yet another bus because of windshield wiper trouble, turned out to be Elton again). Final tally, 11 grizzly bears, 2 caribou, 4 moose, countless Dall sheep, 4 exhausted Perry’s!

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