On the road with a tour – Denali Wilderness Tour
The Maher group was yet again blessed in Denali National Park yesterday – the variety of animals we saw was wonderful, and some were in unusual places compared to my last 25+ trips into the park.
We left the McKinley Chalet hotel on the Tundra Wildernes Tour (TWT) bus at 6:30 am and got back at 2:15 pm – in that 8 hours we saw 3 moose (2 cows and the bull seen in the first photo), 3 grizzly bears, several distant Dall sheep, a black-coloured wolf (from 2 locations along the road), several caribou (including an opportunity for excellent skyline-silhouette photos), a harrier hawk, a gyrfalcon, a cross fox and lots of smaller animals and birds.
As always, we had an excellent driver/guide. Lisa Frederics, who has run the Iditarod, has endless stories about huskies and mushing, and her knowledge of the park and its inhabitants is very good. Her book, Running With Champions, is available at Amazon and other retailers.
Some people recommend taking the NPS shuttle buses into the park because they’re substantially cheaper than the Tundra Wilderness Tour. Certainly the box lunch on the TWT isn’t worth the extra $50, but they do have more comfortable seats, more legroom and a great video camera / monitor system that lets people get a close-up look at distant wildlife, or a very close-up look at medium distances.
This group photo below was shot at Stony Dome, elevation 4,700 feet. This is where the TWT turns around when Denali (a.k.a. Mount Mckinley) is or might be visible – at other times the Toklat River is the furthest point. Although it doesn’t show in the photo, we could just see Denali through the clouds. She started to clear as we pulled away, and a half-hour later we got a clear view of her right to the summit.
Following the tour we drove 3 hours to the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, a beautiful lodge to relax in. Today, although Denali herself isn’t visible, we have a great view of the Alaska Range and the Chulitna River valley from the restaurants and huge viewing decks, and we’re not leaving for Anchorage until noon. Some members of our group have already taken a shuttle into the village of Talkeetna, a colourful little community that we seldom get an opportunity to see.
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