Denali Hike

We had another beautiful, sunny day so we took the bus and asked to be let off at the Sable Creek Bridge. From there we could easily climb the hills on the north side of the river. Easily might not be the right word as the hills were not only very steep, but brushy in the lower areas. Once we reached higher elevation, we were hiking on dry tundra so then we only had to deal with elevation changes.

It was beautiful up on the ridge and we could just see the top of Denali peeking over some closer mountains. As we sat to eat our lunch a group of hikers in a ranger led Discovery Hike appeared on another ridge. For the price of a bus ticket into the park, the rangers will lead groups of 11 on hikes of varying difficulty. For the rest of the day they watched us and we watched them as we worked our way up and down the hills. No other animals.

For our return trip we went down the side of the mountain and followed a moose trail along a stream to the road. There we, unfortunately, had to sit and wait for 70 minutes before a bus with seats available arrived – two full ones passed us up.

After a dinner of leftovers and smoked salmon, we visited with friends and David went to the ranger talk, “What’s that poop on your shoes?” From what he learned at the talk he identified some scat we had seen on the mountain as wolf. Wolves are the one large animal in the park that we have not seen. We are told there are only 50 wolves in the park.

-- Janet (text) and David (photos)