Monday, July 31

Today I drove the 120 miles from Fairbanks to Denali National Park in the morning and spent all afternoon in the park, mainly occupied by hiking two trails. I have decided not to pay attention to the weather forecasts here as every one I have looked at says “cloudy with a chance of rain” for every day in every place. In fact, yesterday and today were mainly sunny and in the 70s.

The map and video are here.

Denali NP is mainly known for North America’s tallest mountain, formerly called Mount McKinley, but recently returned to its original native name, Denali. The park is huge and the 92 mile long park road barely gets you halfway across it. Private vehicles can only drive the first 15 miles from the park entrance and the rest is accessible only by purchasing a bus tour or shuttle ticket, flying in, or by hiking, biking or sledding. I have a full day in the park tomorrow and will be taking the shuttle bus but, for today, I contented myself with an orientation at the visitor center, a drive to Savage River, where public access terminates, and there is a scenic loop trail along both sides of the river and a second hike to Horseshoe Lake and the Nenana River from near the visitor center. I figured that hiking was the best idea in case the weather is not as good on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The hike at Savage River was excellent with varying views of the river, its steep valley walls and distant mountains but the Horseshoe Lake hike was less rewarding. Supposedly there are a lot of wildlife sightings along this trail but I saw nothing larger than a hare.

After that I drove 15 miles further south to my hotel which is actually a collection of very nice cabins in a beautiful creek-side location surrounded by mountains.

Here are a couple of views from the Savage River Loop Trail.

and two views of Horseshoe Lake.

Tuesday, August 1

This was my full day in Denali and I had booked a shuttle bus ticket that allowed me to go as far as Eilson Visitor Center, which is only 62 miles into the park, but takes 8 hours round trip. I chose the shuttle, rather than the much more expensive narrated tour so that, if the weather was bad, I would not have to complete the full journey and waste the whole day.

Not only were my weather fears unfounded but the driver of our shuttle gave us a narrated tour anyway and it was a fantastic day. The weather was mainly sunny but, even more surprising, almost no clouds formed to obscure Denali’s 20,350 foot peak. The air was crystal clear and even our driver stopped the bus to take a photo. I’ll describe the trip through photos and video.

This was how the summit of Denali appeared early this morning from a distance of 75 miles. The driver suggested we took pictures from here as it would likely cloud over later.
The park road passes through scenery that gets better by the mile.
We saw caribou and bears right outside the bus.
And, when we got to Eilson Visitor Center, which is still 35 miles from Denali, the clouds were still minimal and the views were captivating. I took way too many photos but here are just three and a video.