June 16, 2010 Denali Wilderness Tour

We went to the Denali National Park Visitor’s Center. It is a beautiful new facility located about 10 minutes from what I can only refer to as the Denali tourist center. There is a beautiful movie with exquisite photography. The displays told the story of the park’s development and the native Athasbaskan people. There were numerous hiking trails but due to time constraints we were not able to explore at this time.

Upon the insistence of our informal traveling companion we cancelled our participation in the Denali History Tour and rescheduled on the 8 hour Denali Wilderness Tour. Our tour guide, Justin Haskins, was a man passionate about the park. He is truly a student of the park and its flora and fauna. (Justin spends his winters doing kayak tours in Key West so we will have to look him up in December.)

Because of the strict usage guidelines the park is one of the few, if not last, remaining natural ecospheres. Travel in the park has been severely restricted since the 1970’s. Public vehicles are only allowed in the first 15 miles. After that you must take federally sanctioned public transportation. The park does grant a few car passes but they are mostly reserved for professional photographers. Ken Burns was able to secure a pass for his filming of the PBS series National Parks.

Starting out at an elevation of about 2000’ the tour follows a glacier river bed through Primrose Ridge, Igloo Mountain,and Cathedral Mountain to the Polychrome Overlook. You continue on over the Toklat River through Highway Pass to Stony Dome. Denali is technically a sub-arctic desert (who knew we would be in an Alaskan desert). There were willow, birch and white pine in the low lands where moose sows and there offspring reside during the spring and early summer. Higher up there are very short grasses, lichen and tundra flowers.

I had brought along my 200mm telephoto lens and now have good reason to investigate the purchase of a much longer lens should we decide to make this trip again. We saw an abundance of wildlife residing in their native habitat (aka far, far away from our vehicle). Unfortunately most were beyond the capabilities of my camera. However we had brought along a decent pair of binoculars, that had belonged to my father, that were very useful. Maybe it is time to consider purchasing a monocular hunting scope.

Denali encompasses 6,000,000+ acres. There are five big mammals residing within the park and we were blessed to see them all. The park was originally established to protect the dwindling number of Dal Sheep that were facing extinction due to heavy hunting. Currently there are about 2,500 Dal Sheep in the Alaskan Range. There are five species of sheep in all of North America. The Dal sheep are the only white ones. It certainly helped us to spot them against the green/brown terrain grazing high up on the mountain slopes.
There are 2,000 Caribou in the park and we observed galloping herds of Caribou, both the females and males sporting beautiful racks. They favor open tundra and dwindling ice fields where they can find lichen and escape the bugs.

Ok, so what about moose? There are about 2,000 in the park and we spotted a bull moose with a huge rack grazing in the willow shrubs. The mothers cruelly force their young into independence when they are only a few months old. Only 11% of the young moose will live through their first year. Most succumb to the predator Grizzlies.

Now for the grizzly bear. There are only 300-350 in the park (1 per 22,000 acres). The bears eat roots, berries, bulbs, tubers and fresh vegetation at this time of year. Of course they also prey on the squirrel, caribou, moose and sheep. I usually think of the grizzlies as being brown but here they are more golden with darker legs and undercarriage. We saw a large mother with two large cubs sleeping and sunning themselves in a field. Unlike the moose, the bear cubs stay with their mothers for 3-4 years. At the time we were preparing to exit the park at about 10PM a grizzly was walking up one of the side access road and crossed right in front of our bus. WOW!!! These animals are huge!

Now, for the fifth of the big five…the wolf. There are only 60-100 adults living in the park and we had two sightings although we suspect that it may have been the same animal. The first time the wolf was digging feverishly tearing at the ground with his jaws. We suspect he was going after either squirrel or snowshoe rabbit. We do know that he was successful as he trotted away from the hole looking very satisfied with him self.

Aside from the big five we saw a red fox, numerous golden eagles, snowshoe hares and arctic ground squirrels. In addition we saw a very rare Sher hawk. Our guide stated that he had never seen one inside the park before and if we were serious birdwatchers could check that off our life time observation list.

The only animal we did not see was the Lynx but we will save that for the next trip. We got back to the hotel about 11:30 and went to sleep at 1A. Guess what??? It was still light enough to read a book or newspaper.

Ok, I have rambled enough for today. I will tell you all about the mountain tomorrow…it was AWESOME!!! Look for photos entitle Wilderness Photos.