Denali
Park 11 | June 2019
Part + Park 1 (of 4) on our epic adventure to Alaska.
The path to our three-week trip to Alaska began over a bowl of bright green soup shared with friends in Denver.
Well, it actually started a bit before that point, back on our 2018 trip to visit Mesa Verde National Park with good friends (two other couples). We stayed at our friends’ aunt and uncle’s home near Durango, and each guest bedroom was decorated with stunning bear photos, all taken by the uncle. One room was dedicated to the polar bears near Hudson’s Bay, Canada, and the other was filled with images of Alaskan brown bears eating salmon in the middle of an unbelievably gorgeous river. Upon inquiry, we learned that the brown bears pictures had been taken in Katmai National Park. Naturally, this immediately planted a stubborn seed within us to visit both of these places at some point in our lives. (J may or may not have added “see a bear eating salmon in a river” to his life to-do list.)
Fast forward a few months, and we were beginning to plan for J’s 30th birthday the following summer. We considered a host of options for potential trips or experiences, but kept coming back to J’s burning desire to see a bear. “What if we tried for Alaska?” I wondered aloud during one of our discussions. Something about the idea stuck with both of us and before you know it, the seed that was planted on our trip to Mesa Verde was blossoming into a full-blown plan that involved four national parks, a ridiculous amount of logistics, renting out a room in our tiny apartment via Airbnb to make and save extra travel funds, and plotting to pitch the whole thing to our friends to see if we could convince them to come along with us. This bring us to the soup — a savory vegan broccoli cheddar — that we served while making the initial pitch for all of us to go to Alaska together.
Shockingly, our audacious proposal over green soup actually worked. The six of us eventually ironed out a plan to visit the first two parks together (Denali and Katmai), after which the four of them planned to return home while J and I would stay and visit two more parks (Kenai Fjords and Glacier Bay). And so the following June we all convened in Anchorage, stuffed all our backpacks and tents and Goodwill-acquired coolers into the rental van, and drove north to Denali National Park.
I am so glad we started this trip in Denali. The sheer size and scope of this place is impossible to put into words and feels quintessentially Alaskan. Vast landscapes, hillsides dotted with summer wildflowers, sparkling braided rivers, wildlife in every direction, and a wide open sky with a sun that almost never set at that time of year. Access to Denali is only possible along the long Park Road that snakes through the center of the park toward Wonder Lake. We mostly camped at Teklanika River Campground, which was one of the furthest campgrounds that we were able to drive to; after a certain point, no vehicles are allowed other than the bus shuttles run by the park.
We also squeezed in a night of backpacking which, wildly, was my first ever backpacking experience — quite an introduction since there are no trails to follow in the park and there are a healthy amount of grizzly bears, moose, and wolves in the vicinity. It ended up being a little terrifying (e.g. Did we see a bear from afar while eating dinner? Yep. Did I find bear prints in the sand that were larger than my foot? Sure did. Did a grizzly show up at the outskirts of our campground the morning we woke up? Why yes, that also happened), but it was also peaceful, exhilarating, mesmerizing. We pitched our tents in a wide valley next to a gorgeous river, ate our freeze-dried meals a 100 yards away from that, and brushed our teeth and stored all scented materials in bear canisters another 100 yards away from that, forming a large triangle that mitigated our chances of being approached by a curious/hungry bear (or any other animal). Despite feeling a bit nervy on the hike out since the grizzly who had shown up on the edge of our campsite had left the area on the exact trail we needed to follow to get back to Park Road and a shuttle, we made it out no worse for wear (and I’ve been backpacking every summer since).
Another experience that stuck with us was the day we devoted to riding the park shuttle from our campground all the way to the end of the road at Wonder Lake. We saw countless moose, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and a grizzly bear walked right by us on the road. A mother fox sat serenely on a hilltop, the early morning light burnishing her bright red coat, four fox kits romping with each other next to her. And then once we made it far enough into the park, we were lucky to have a clear enough day to be gifted with views of Denali herself, a jaw-dropping mountain that dominates the landscape at more than 20,000 feet of elevation. It’s a mountain that truly makes you stop and stare, awed by its presence.
Denali left us grateful and absolutely brimming over with beauty. We’d go back in a heartbeat and feel incredibly fortunate to have explored a few tiny corners of this vast, wild, wonderful place.
Pictured below:
Incredible views and animal sightings along Park Road on the way to Wonder Lake.
Breathtakingly clear vantage of Denali herself, the highest peak in North America at 20,310 ft.
Forest bathing near Teklanika River Campground.
One night of backpacking to sleep next to, if memory serves me, the Teklanika River.
