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TRAVEL - ALASKA 2003
Note: All photographs on this page may be enlarged by clicking on them
ON THE WAY TO/BACK-FROM DENALI NATIONAL PARK (DNP) Some of the scenery and landscapes on the way to/back-from Denali were breathtaking. It provided a first glimpse of Central Alaska's magnificent mountain ranges, its boreal forests and Arctic/Alpine tundra. As this site states: Interior Alaska is part of a boreal forest ecosystem that also stretches across Russia, Canada, Scandinavia, and parts of the Korean Peninsula, China, Mongolia and Japan. Boreal forests represent the single largest terrestrial ecosystem on earth, making up one third of the world's forests. The trees here are small and hardy, able to withstand winter temperatures that sometimes drop to –50 degrees or colder. Common species include white spruce, black spruce, birch, aspen, and balsam poplar (cottonwood).
As stated by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), "Denali National Park & Preserve features North America's highest mountain, 20,320-foot tall Mount McKinley. The Alaska Range also includes countless other spectacular mountains and many large glaciers. Denali's more than 6 million acres also encompass a complete sub-arctic eco-system with large mammals such as grizzly bears, wolves, Dall sheep, and moose." A detailed map of DNP is available here
from the NPS (large PDF file). Since that is too large to show here, a cropped,
lower quality version of the NPS map (at full size) is shown below -
which shows a section of DNP that will help in understanding the
pictures below. We took a roughly
8 hour bus tour into the park (along the only road going inside the
park), starting at the Visitor Center (top right) and heading W/SW
towards the Toklat River. Some of the key points we stopped over at
include the Polychrome Overlook, the Toklat River and our last stop
before we turned back - the Stony Hill overlook (see small font in the
map in
between the Toklat River and the Eielson Visitor Center). We realized
only later that we could have gone all the way to Wonder Lake/Kantishna
- where the road ends (center left of map) if we had used the National
Park Service, but that would have meant essentially camping there
overnight). The Stony Hill overlook is the point where we took most of
our pictures of Mt. Denali (McKinley) - which is at the bottom left in
the map.
POLYCHROME OVERLOOK We'll start with some pictures of Polychrome Overlook, located along a very narrow mountain-side pass. This overlook, presumably names for the mélange of colors seen in the landscape, provides a spectacular view of the Alaska Range.
Polychrome looks even more beautiful in the Fall, as this website shows. RIVER BEDS We passed numerous semi-dry river beds in DNP. One of them is shown below. We stopped at the the Toklat River - whose bed was also mostly dry. Some pictures of this river bed are in the DNP II section.
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