A Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community

Acknowledgements

SEARCH eRiposte!

TRAVEL - ALASKA 2003 

Alaska 2003

Note: All photographs on this page may be enlarged by clicking on them

MT. McKINLEY (DENALI)

Mt. McKinley also known as Mt. Denali is North America's tallest mountain, at 20320 feet. It is part of the majestic Alaska range. We had been told by a few people that seeing Mt. McKinley's peak was not usually easy since it tends to be enveloped by clouds. There's a common phrase that the tour guides used: "Mt. McKinley creates its own weather". Although this is not necessarily something that is/was unique to this mountain, the point they were making was that the very cold air near the top of the mountain tends to commingle with the rising warmer air from the valley floor and result in condensation/cloud formation near the peak. On the way to Denali National Park (DNP), Mt. McKinley had indeed been shrouded by clouds - so we did not know whether we would actually be able to see the entire mountain ultimately. 

The Tundra Wilderness Tour that we took, fortunately, was on a nice, fairly clear, sunny day. Very early in the tour we started to get a glimpse of Mt. McKinley, to the pleasant surprise of the tour guide (who had been doing this tour for a long time). His opinion was that seeing the peak was more common in the morning tour, but we were in the afternoon tour when the chances of seeing the peak were significantly lower. Regardless, we were lucky. Owing to the clear view of the peak from a distance, the guide said he had the discretion to take us beyond the Toklat River to Stony Hill Overlook (the last point in our tour), which represented the first location on the tour where we had a near-complete view of Mt. McKinley. 

Here are some pictures.  Mt. McKinley really looked like a painting. It's almost entire-white color made it appear like an artist's creation in the distant landscape, adding to its majesty. You can click on the pictures, as usual, to get a better view of the beauty.  

Photo taken with a Sony digital camera

Photo taken with a relatively run-of-the-mill Minolta "analog" camera

WILDLIFE AT DENALI NATIONAL PARK 

One of DNP's key attractions is its wildlife. However, one needs to remember that it is fairly difficult to see much wildlife from a tour bus and with the constraint of having to cover ~110-120 miles in narrow, mountainous, somewhat heavily traveled (from a wildlife reserve standpoint), sometimes-unpaved roads in about 6-8 hours. In spite of that, we were lucky enough to see a few of Alaska's famed animals during this tour.  

Caribou Caribou tended to pop up here and there during our tour. We caught a glimpse of the first one in somewhat heavy scrub in the first stretch of our ride into the park.
After that we saw an occasional caribou dotting the landscape here and there. There were three caribou grazing on the Toklat river bed, two of which are shown below.

.  

Grizzly (Brown) Bears Not surprisingly, these tend to be highly desired sightings for all normal human beings going to Alaska. It was pretty difficult to get good pictures with the average cameras we had since the bears were pretty far away - but here is one shot anyway. All of our bear sightings were very near Stony Hill Overlook. We first saw one bear with a cub on the hillside to the north. The cub captivated many of us as it was basking and rolling slightly in the sun. The second sighting was ahead of us on the South side of the Denali Park road, as we faced Mt. McKinley. In the picture at the top right of this page, you see a winding road heading towards Wonder Lake/Kantishna and to the left of the road you see Mt. McKinley in the background and a large valley in the foreground. In this valley, there was an adult bear with three cubs foraging for food.  They were too far away to get pictures, but were visible through binoculars.

Dall Sheep These are sheep that live in the precipitous cliffs and steepest hillsides on the mountains - which provide them maximum protection against predators. They are remarkably nimble and sure-footed, as they should be, and we were lucky to see a few of them along the way.
See center left and center right	We were very lucky to find one very close to our road

We were not lucky enough to see moose at Denali, but we saw one later in Anchorage.

BIRDLIFE

Birdlife was sparse, and generally difficult to identify owing the the great distances and small sizes of the birds. Near the entrance to Denali National Park, and in the lodge we stayed, there was a profusion of Mew Gulls. These gulls are readily identifiable from similar-looking gulls by their smaller size, yellowish legs and unmarked yellow bills (without black or red spots on the bill). Swallows (unidentified) were common near rivers. There was a suspected, but unconfirmed sighting of Willow Ptarmigans (Alaska's state birds) - running across the road ahead of our tour bus. There were also unidentified raptors and sparrow-like birds in Denali and unidentified shorebirds at the banks of the Nenana river.

NENANA RIVER

The rivers are usually muddy (as seen below) and this is due to the fact that glaciers (before melting) tend to drag soil along as they move.