2005/07 Alaska and Back Again - Mount Denali |
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We wanted to see Denali (also known as Mount McKinley) the next day, so we drove to the park to see if we could get on one of the shuttle buses. You aren’t allowed to drive far into the park, so the only way in is on one of these buses, and the trip takes about eleven hours for the return trip. As we were late arriving, we found that the only buses with space left were the 5.30am and the 11am, and the 11am couldn’t take us all. So we booked for the 5.30 and went to bed early. The forecast was for cloudy with showers but we hoped for better.
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Denali National Park bus trip |
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Saturday July 23rd
We were up before 4 am on a cool, fine morning. The transport turned out to be an old school bus. We took the back seat, knowing that we’d be bounced around, but hoping that we’d get a better view, but within seconds of hitting the gravel road, the back window was a mass of opaque mud!
The driver explained the rules. We could only get out of the bus at particular spots, but if we spotted something and wanted him to stop, then we had to yell “Stop”, and he’d do his best to make sure we had a good view.
Our first surprise was a really great view of the mountain. Very few people are lucky enough to see the mountain at all as it’s usually covered by bad weather or just by its 
own clouds. It’s big enough that it makes its own weather. The large mountains in front of it look like mole hills by comparison.
The second was that the park is full of wildlife. We saw a grizzly with two cubs in the distance, then a moose and some caribou. The bus had to stop frequently for ptarmigan families wandering across the road. Then we saw another grizzly 
family, a lot closer, and a boar grizzly, hunting for marmot or squirrel. He was jumping around like a great cat, but must have lost his meal, because he eventually stood up, looking around for it. I’ve included few small fuzzy pictures of what we were seeing, but remember, these were taken at a great distance, barely visible without some kind of scope, 
and taken through a bus window.
The bus followed a narrow winding mountain road, with no barriers, up through Polychrome Pass, which is as 
colourful as it sounds. We could see why private vehicles aren’t allowed on the road, as there was no room for driver’s mistakes. The bus dropped us off at Wonder Lake. We could have just hopped back on the bus like most of the passengers, but we wanted to walk around a bit before sitting for another five hours. We hiked around the lake hoping for one of those fantastic views, but the mountain had mostly disappeared behind the clouds.
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Denali (4.01) |  |
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Obviously, the 5.30 had been a lucky choice as the later buses hadn’t had the views that we did. On our walk, we found these beautiful blue flowers, which we later learned were monkshood, and deadly 
poisonous.
We hopped on the next bus to get back. The driver had quite a history in the area, a climber who’d been partway up Denali. He and his wife live in a cabin in the wilderness, a spot they fly into each winter with their supplies and dog team. As he said, if they forget something then it’s May before they can return for it. They hope to shoot a moose or two or else it’s beans for the whole winter.
We didn’t see any bears on the way back, but we did see some sheep and a moose and its two 
calves, and Sandie spotted some caribou just above the bus and got to yell “Stop!” Unfortunately, everyone was very tired by this time, and Sandie was getting sick towards the end of the trip, and ended the day with a bad migraine. One of our last views was of this caribou that appeared to be buried in the gravel bar, but, I guess, they lay like that as they can’t sleep on their sides with that enormous rack.
It was 6pm when we got back but it felt like midnight to us. We had enough energy to cook outside but collapsed soon after.
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