Denali National Park

The first interesting thing we saw on our way to Denali was actually a gas station. “What is this!?” It turned out that this was meant to be a hotel. Interestingly, it was built first and then found out that it would never meet the fire code. So, it was just generously discarded. By the way, the name of the gas station was “Igloo”. This hotel was supposed to be the Igloo too. If you would like to visit it, this gas station is about 25 miles south of Denali, on AK-3.

After arriving at Denali NP, we checked in at the visitors’ center, where we got our shuttle bus tickets and our camping permit. That night, we camped at Savage River campground. The road in Denali NP that allows private vehicles ends two miles beyond the Savage River campground. We set up our tent, cooked a quick meal and then walked around. Roughly 9:30pm, we took the picture below (left). Although the sun officially still sets for some three to four hours each day there, but to us, it just never got dark. Our sleep deprivation started getting worse and worse each day. We woke up around 5:30am the following morning. Well, early enough to catch our 6:45am shuttle bus (below-right: waiting at the bus stop).

After we got on the bus, we realized being early was always nice. There were only 8 of us on the 50+ people bus. Maybe it was good luck, or, it’s just that we were early enough, we saw five grizzlies that morning.

The first insteresting terrain we saw was the Alaska Range (above). On our way in, other than bears, we also got to see quite a few other amazing animals, such as caribou, dall sheep and moose. Unfortunately, all of them were quite far away. All I got with my 80mm lens were the following (after quite some enlarging).

Very soon after seeing the grizzlies, awesome snow covered peaks started showing up on my view finders.

Three different views of Denali (Mount McKinley)

Three other views of Denali along the road near Eilson Visitors Center

Of course, my dear boss always looked good in the viewfinder. The right picture was taken inside Eilson VC in front of the wall-size picture of the Mount McKinley.

After some five hours on the shuttle bus and 75 miles on the gravel road, we finally arrived at the Wonder Lake. One unforgettable experience we had there was the mosquitoes, hoards of them. As soon as the bus door opened, an army of mosquitoes swarmed around us. Insect repellent was a must. Actually, you can see in the middle picture (below) that my wife still had a spray can of insect repellent in hand when we took that photo. Encouraged by the postcards we had previously seen, we got off the shuttle and hiked two miles to the reflection pond. Unluckily, by the time we reached the reflection pond, a very thick low cloud occluded the peak of Denali (right).

While we were hiking back to catch a shuttle bus out, it got even cloudier. We got a quite different view of Denali there, although not a complete one.

We also took some been-there-did-that pictures on our way back (below) in front of the occluded Denali. The black thing on my waist was the bear deterrent we had.

On our way back, we asked to be dropped off at Savage River checkpoint. We hiked the mile long Savage River trail. Savage river is a rather low volume ice river meandering between valleys carved out by glaciers. It was a very easy trail, we also hiked along the road for two miles to go back to our camp site.

That does it for our Day 1 in Denali National Park. We fixed a dinner on our camping stove and then crawled into our tent. “Hrr .., Hrr…." "Jian !!! Stop snoring!" " Err.., I didn’t snore, ….”