Denali National Park

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Friday, 16 June

Will we see the “Majestic Denali” or not….. So far this season, as it was told to us, the Highest Mountain in North America has only been seen on an average of 1 sighting every four days. So I’m doing the math, we are here for 8 days, we should be golden.. Fingers crossed.

For the next four nights, we are in Riley Creek campground, which is in the front county of the park. Nice campground, no hookups, but nice.

Today we went to the WAC. The term “WAC” means something different to us Army types. In fact, Ann Marie was a WAC, (Woman’s Army Corps) when she enlisted in the 70’s……. The Wilderness Activities Center is the “hub” to get started here in Denali. We already had our reservations for the Natural History Tour bus at 230pm today, so we were going to find out more information about our next campground, Tek.

Teklanika (Tek) campground is our next move (on the Jun 19). It is at mile 29 on the park road, in the interior of the park. The park road is 92 miles long, but after Savage River, mile 15, no one can drive a personal vehicle, unless you have campground reservations, and then, once we arrive at the Tek, we must park the truck and use the park shuttle bus system. We got our new campground pass, and new (green) shuttle bus tickets that will take us all the way to Wonder Lake at mile 89. More on that later…..

At 230pm we jumped on the (tan) modified (slightly better seats) school bus and our tour guide’s name was Phil. Using a good internal sound system, Phil narrated many of the parks geological features, history, and of course wildlife. All but 8 of us on the bus were from the Princess Cruise line, staying at the Princess Lodge just outside the park. Everyone was commenting that they couldn’t wait to see some wildlife here in Alaska. I didn’t mention that we saw a female moose the night before as we were driving this same road, so close, Ann Marie could smell its breath…

After some time, Phil stopped the bus, as there was a moose down the hill about 1000 meters away. Too far to really see, except with binoculars. We got to the Savage River Bridge, and a Park Ranger boarded the bus to “welcome us” and provide us rules of engagement with the wildlife.

From here the road is dirt and gravel. We stopped at Savage cabin, to hear a narration of life in the 92 year old cabin that is still in use by the rangers. Boarded the bus and drove on to mile 20, stopped for a break, re-boarded, and turned around heading home. No wildlife.

At mile 17, at a scheduled stop to hear a narration from a local tribal Athabascan Alaskan woman, there was a bull moose. He was about 500 yards away from the bus and everyone  was going crazy. He was a big boy for sure, lots of steak and burger from him. But I was shooting with the Nikon.

At this point the group was happy to see  wildlife,  and the group then gathered around a dirt mound were this tribal lady was going to talk to us. She introduced  herself as being a “cute” Athabascan, wearing stylish clothes, and not a traditional costume.  I heard someone in the crowd behind me said, ”now that is what we are here for”…I’m thinking, yeah, she is cute, if fact she even said so but, really?
As I turned to see who made the comment, I see he was looking southwest at the Alaskan Mountain Range, and holy shit, there she was! DENALI !!!!!

The clouds were parting and there was the Majestic Mountain, the tallest in North America, Denali!!!!

It was a surreal, magical moment, and seemed like God painted the snow covered north and south peaks with white paint on  an amazing canvas just for us.

Awesome, beautiful, majestic, tall, cold, snowy, cloudy, huge are just some of the words to explain what we were seeing….It almost did not look real.

It was covered in snow and so tall (over 20,310 feet), and we are about 70 miles as the crow flies and it still looked huge!  From the North Peak to the South Peak of Denali is two miles as the crow flies. It is huge…..Wow……….

We are complete… We saw Denali! We are a part of the 25% club. Only 25% of visitors ever see her and we did!