A wildlife day in Denali National Park
On Monday (August 10th), I dog-sat while the rest of the group took a shuttle bus to the Eielson Visitor Center and back. On Tuesday, it was my turn. Cathy and MJ really wanted to see the dog sled demonstration, but other than that, noe of them had any plans for the day.
I got off to a bad start. I had reserved a 06:30 bus, but somehow didn’t hear the alarm, so didn’t get to the Wilderness Access Center until 7:30. Luckily, the policy is that you can get put on standby for the next available bus, and a lot of people didn’t show for the 08:00 bus so I was able to get on that one.
The weather was iffy and looked if anything could happen. It was raining a bit at the Teklanika rest stop at Mile 29, which we reached just before 09:30. A grizzly was on the far side of the river and could be seen going in and out of the bushes along the river.
Twenty minutes after leaving Teklanika, we got our first grizzly beside the road.
A few minutes later, he became our first grizzly on the road 🙂
Climbing up to Sable Pass, 2 grizzlies were feeding on the slope to the north.
Nearing the East Fork of the Toklat River at 10:10, we added caribou to the day’s list – a fine young bull.
Much of the load of snow now very visible towards Polychrome fell during Cathy’s trip the day before.
It was our driver’s first year in Denali, and he didn’t know what to do about this fox that trotted down the road in front of us for miles – he’d been told to never get too close to any animal, so as to not stress them. Our driver let another bus go past us, and that driver just drove by the fox, but we waited until the still-stress-free fox decided to get off the road 🙂
Love the colours and patterns.
The road approaching Polychrome Overlook.
The view from Polychrome Overlook, shot and processed as an HDR image, turned into a painting!
The road between the Toklat River rest stop and Stony Dome is often good for bears, and this trip was no exception.
From Stony Dome, we got a fairly good look at Denali (the mountain known Outside as Mt. McKinley).
We reached the Eielson Visitor Center, at Mile 66, just before noon. This is a beautiful facility, and is my usual choice as the destination for shuttle bus trips. I don’t find continuing on to Wonder Lake at Mile 85 to be good value in terms of time, and Kantishna, at Mile 92, even less so.
With half an hour to spend at Eielson, I decided to climb the fairly steep trail above the center, as it had been years since I’d been up there, and I thought that I might be able to reach the snow. This looking back down the trail.
I didn’t reach the snow, but got some great views. As I was going back down, a grizzly was following me down the trail, though at a respectable distance. I told our driver, who radioed the rangers to let them know the bear was headed their way.
Four of 6 caribou we saw along the road near Stony Dome.
And 10 more on the Toklat River.
I posted this photo on a tour bus drivers’ group I belong to on Facebook, to give the drivers who complain about Washington, DC, some perspective 🙂
Traffic on the Denali road!
The fireweed and snow provided some stunning views.
These 2 bears in Sable Pass brought our day’s total to 12.
Back on the paved public road, just a few miles from the Wilderness Access Center.
I walked back to Riley Creek Campground, where we had another wonderful dinner with our friends and discussed the next day’s drive across the Denali Highway, notorious for its roughness.
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