Denali

Denali, the “High One”, is the name Athabascan native people gave the massive peak that crowns the 600-mile long Alaska Range. It is also the name of the immense national park and preserve created from the former Mount McKinley National Park (NP).

Imagine the scene roughly 20,000 years ago, during the height of the Wisconsin Ice Age, as sheets of ice crept as far south as Central Illinois. Yet the Alaskan interior was free of ice, covered instead by steppe tundra vegetation and inhabited by woolly mammoth. An environment suitable for North America’s first human residents, who likely crossed into this continent on a land bridge from Asia some 25,000 years ago!!

Captain George Vancouver was the first European visitor to document seeing The Mountain in 1794. In 1913, four men became the first to scale The Mountain after several others attempted and failed. After nine years of work, Charles Sheldon’s (a naturalist and hunter) dream of saving the area came true on February 26, 1917 when President Woodrow Wilson created Mount McKinley NP. In an effort to provide additional wildlife protection and conservation, park boundaries have been extended in 1922, 1932 and 1980. The last of these expansions - 1980 - expanded the Park to 6 million acres and renamed the park Denali National Park and Preserve. And, to Alaskans, the mountain is known as Denali (NOT Mt. McKinley)!

The only access to the park is via ONE 92 mile dirt road - and this is on a bus, as private cars are only allowed by a special permit. Along this road one will see the special landscape of Taiga (a Russian word for northern evergreen forest of scant tree growth near the Arctic Circle) and Tundra (dwarfed shrubs and miniaturized wildflowers adapted to a short growing season). If one is lucky, incredible wildlife will also be spotted - especially “The Big Five” of Dall Sheep, Caribou, Moose, Wolf and Grizzly Bear. And, of course, Denali herself standing at 20,320 feet - the highest mountain on the North American continent! (We were told that only about 10% of the people visiting ever see the top of Denali due to the clouds/weather conditions created by the mountain itself.)

Our home for the three days in Denali was the Denali Backcountry Lodge (Magic had to stay behind on this one) - again at the end of the road - literally - mile marker 92! The rainbow on the way in was a good omen -

The rain going into Denali National Park kept animal sightings to a minimum,
but the rainbow was beautiful.

All things considered, the accommodations were quite comfortable - at least we had a bed, hot and cold running water in the room and heat! It was ‘adult camp’ and lots of fun. We met lots of very interesting people from all over the world, went on several wonderful, beautiful hikes AND celebrated Kacy’s birthday while there -

Just about to arrive at our back country lodge.

Are you sure this is the way to the room?

We should have gone with the deluxe room option, huh?

Happy Birthday Kacy.

The best part of all - we saw ALL of the Big Five AND Denali herself!! The pictures will tell the story -

Mt. McKinley seems to always be partially covered in clouds.

View of Mt. McKinley from Wonder Lake.

All you have to do is wait a couple of minutes and the view will change.

Still not the whole enchilada, but showing a little more.

Getting started on our morning hike up Camp Ridge.

They say if we keep talking and making noise, the bears will avoid us.

I hope the bears don't see Elizabeth eating their blueberries.

If I could figure out how to combine some of yesterday's shots with today's,
we might have a picture of all of Denali/Mt. McKinley.

Denali is our background this morning.

Wow, one more time.

We finally hit the animal jackpot on our way out of Denali Park.
Our ride left at 6:15 am so the animals were just waking up also.

This bull moose is shedding its velvet.
Sure wish he would stand up and pose for us.

We really lucked out with our sighting of the wolf pack.
There were 14 or 15 in total.

They appeared to be playing here.

The Dall sheep didn't seem to be concerned with our presence.

At long last, a grizzly sighting. She had two cubs with her.
I couldn't manage a shots of all three together.

Nice teeth!

One of her two cubs.

This guy isn't going to be bothered by anyone.

The Caribou were plentiful.

More velvet shedding.

Move over a little, would ya!

Hopefully these pictures have shown you a bit of the beauty and wildlife here - and given you an idea of the importance of keeping this habitat for the life of the Tundra. We were overwhelmed as we returned to our world.

Love to all - E & G

The BIGGEST of Them All!!

Hi there!! Have you missed us this past week?? The National Parks - and our travel partners, Kacy and Dusty - have kept us VERY busy.

Alaska is an amazingly LARGE state - with VERY FEW roads!! It also has lots of National Parks - VERY LARGE National Parks!!

Kacy and Dusty made their way from Park City, Utah to Anchorage and caught up with us in Glennallen, Alaska - our base for the next few days of our trip. We made our way to Glennallen around the northern side of the Wrangell-St. Elias NP - by far the largest of our National Parks! Almost six times the size of Yellowstone it contains 4 major mountain ranges (the Wrangells, the Alaska, the Chugach and the St. Elias) - 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US - 4 of them above 16,000 feet - more than 150 glaciers - and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. This park is only accessible by two rough gravel roads - Nabesna Road, which was the subject of the last posting, and the McCarthy Road, which is described below. We drove them both and they provided beauty all around!!

Mt. Wrangell, Alaska.

Our entry into the Wrangell-St. Elias NP was the McCarthy Road - a 60 mile, narrow and winding road that originated in 1909 as a railway constructed to support the Kennecott Copper Mine at the end of the road. It begins at the Copper River bridge, which crosses the Copper River - home of the Copper River Salmon. Because the Copper River is a glacier river derived from the glaciers in the National Park area (25% of the Wrangell-St. Elias MP is covered by glaciers), it carries the ‘glacier flour’, or finely ground rock, that makes the water very murky. Therefore, one can not see the salmon in the river - nor can the salmon see what might be ‘lurking‘ in the river to catch them. So - the local natives, who are allowed to subsistence fish on this river in the preserve, fish with a device called a fish wheel. It looks, and works, similar to a paddle wheel - but the ‘paddles‘ are ‘boxes’ that can catch the salmon and funnel them into a holding container. These were lined up on the river as we began our trip into the NP and we had to stop and watch - it was quite fascinating!!

Fish wheels on the Copper River.

Copper River salmon caught in one of the fish wheels. Breakfast - Yum;-((

The only unfortunate item on this particular morning was the rain - which prevented any good views of all the glaciers that surrounded us. But, no matter - the scenery along the road was beautiful. We were just glad we had the ‘KBUS’ instead of Magic - especially on the bridges!!

Bridge over the Copper River, originally built for the trains to Kennecott.

Surprised the picture is in focus, given how much my knees were knocking.
The bridge is almost 300 feet above the river.

I just liked this view along the road to McCarthy/Kennecott.

The little town of McCarthy is literally at the end of the road. Today it is a tiny community of hardy individualists - but, boasted a population of nearly 2,000 in the mining days. It provided the entertainment and the escape from the mining town of Kennecott 5 miles away!

This IS downtown McCarthy. (Dusty, Kacy & Elizabeth)

The Kennecott story is pretty amazing - as are the men that made it happen. In the summer of 1900, a couple of prospectors found the hills on the east edge of the Kennicott Glacier full of copper! In fact, one of the richest copper deposits ever found. The Havemayer family began buying up shares of the claim - and with the assistance of the J.P.Morgan and Guggenheim families - formed the Alaska Syndicate to build a railroad and develop the mines. For four years a crew built the rail bed and bridges through difficult terrain at temps down to 40 degrees below zero. At the same time, the mining claims were being developed at the Kennecott mines. About 600 men worked in the mines and in the mill town - they worked long hours at hard, dangerous work. Over $200 million worth of ore was hauled from this Kennecott Mill to the port of Cordova in the early 1900’s. Kennecott Copper Corporation invested in mines in Chile and the lower 48. By the time th Kennecott mine closed in 1938 the corporation had grown into one of the largest minerals companies in the world. Today the mine buildings are a National Historic Landmark -

The old Kennecott Copper Mill.

There is a train trestle in the back center, used to move the ore down from the mine to the mill.

A view from inside the mill's power plant.

What could follow this up?!?! Perhaps a drive to Valdez, Alaska with more glaciers, wildlife and yet more beautiful scenery.

Pronounced Valdeez, because the early miners didn't want to use the Spanish pronunciation.
We were not on good terms with the Spanish at that time.

The Worthington glacier in Valdez, Alaska.

After driving almost 300 miles of wilderness dirt roads over the past 2 days,
we spotted this bear and her cub in the town of Valdez

The Valdez marina.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm! We came to see bears eating ALL
these fish - instead we got sea lions!!

Oh boy, look at all those fish. Let's go get some more.

Tasty!

Valdez is, of course, the terminus of the famous Alaska Pipeline which starts 800 miles north in Prudhoe Bay. But, it has its real roots in fur trading and gold and copper mining, as it was the entry point for all those coming to work in the Kennecott mine.

Our drive to Fairbanks followed the Pipeline - which again drove home the complexity of the monumental task of building this thing. The consideration given to the perma-frost in the ground, effects of warming on the ground, potential earthquakes, passing over lakes, glaciers, roads, etc. etc. etc. etc. Amazing that there has not been an oil disaster with it.

Alyeska Pipeline.

The further north we go, the bigger the mosquitos.

Fairbanks, with a population of 31,000, provided an interesting city tour, a drive to Chena Hot Springs (with more moose sightings) and a little down time to do those mundane chores of laundry, etc. - and a few nice dinners;-)

Dusty and Kacy putting the finishing touches on a delicious pesto chicken pasta dinner.

Alaska - Siberia War Memorial in Fairbanks, AK.

Ice Queens Kacy and Elizabeth. It was very cold in the Ice Sculpture Museum.

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church built in 1904, in Fairbanks, AK.

At last, a moose spotting on the road to Chena Hot Springs.

Slurp, slurp... This moss and algae really hits the spot.

Kacy testing the waters at the Chena Hot Springs.

Next stop is Denali;-) We are all soooo very excited for this little adventure and there are high hopes for lots of good pic’s with that blog posting. See you again soon -

E&G

The Bad and the Good of - FINALLY!

First the Bad part of FINALLY - the road between the Cottonwood RV Park on Kluane Lake and Tok, Alaska was FINALLY the road we had read about - and more - or less depending on how you look at it!! The trip was only 220 miles - BUT, it took 8 hours to drive it;-( There aren’t any words to describe it to you - and the pictures will not do justice to the bumps, rolls, fissures, breaks in asphalt, gravel, dirt, tar, construction, pilot cars, etc., etc., etc.!! The only good part of this drive was that Gary FINALLY got his shot of a moose - a real one and not another sign on the road;-)

Finally, after a month on the road we spotted a moose.

Finally, the rough sections of road we had been warned about.
To only partially quote Bruce Willis - "Yippee Kye Yeah....".

Tell tale skid marks. Thankfully not ours.

These deep fissures, which had been partially filled, sometimes ran for 50-60+ feet at a time.

The Good part of FINALLY - We FINALLY made it to Alaska!! And, thank goodness we had the cute little town of Tok, Alaska to humor us at the end of the long drive.

Please note that the mosquito on top of the thermometer is not to scale.
They are actually much larger - with more blood dripping (all E's!).

Well - you just saw the best part of Tok! Seriously - the Visitor Center gave us a list of the 5 things to do in Tok and they were visit the 5 gift/trinket shops in town. So, this little town proved to be a one-nighter (instead of the scheduled 3 nights). Our RV park there did have a one hour free blue grass performance-and it really was great;-) Made our evening. We left laughing and singing “I met my wife in a Porta-John line”!!

Tuesday we were on our way to Slana, Alaska - the entry to the northern reaches of the Wrangell-St. Elias NP. This was an unplanned stop, but the Hart D Ranch and RV Park was our home for a couple of days and served us well -

We were the sole occupants at this the Hart D Ranch on our first night here.

Wednesday, “The Road Less Traveled” was our activity. Nabesna Road basically begins at the Hart D Ranch and winds 42 miles into the Wrangell-St. Elias NP. The road is gravel or dirt and crosses creeks/rivers. (It depends on the time of the year as to whether it is a creek or a river. Early spring when it is a river - you don’t cross and go to the end of the road!). A drive on this 42-mile long road is much the same today as it was when the Alaska Road Commission built it in 1934 to connect the Nabesna Mine (the end of the road) to the port in Valdez. The drive is an adventure in the midst of the Wrangell, Mentasta and Nutzotin Mountains. Along the way one finds lakes, streams, hiking routes and opportunities for wildlife!

Another moose sighting. This mom and calf hung around for several minutes.

A distant view of the snow capped Wrangell Mountains.
Our next segment will be to go around to the other side of that range and explore some old mines.

Part of the old Nabesna mining road built in 1934. Narrow, but still serviceable today.

Along the old mine road we spotted this plywood crypt. No headstone or other identification,
but you can see the flowers (I think they are artificial) on the left.

Elizabeth driving through one of the creeks that flow across the road.
It gives a clearer meaning to the phrase "good Lord willing - and the creek don't rise.

Tomorrow is on to Glennallen where we FINALLY meet up with our friends from Park City and investigate the Wrangell-St. Elias NP from the other side;-)

XOXOXOXO - E & G