Hikes around Denali NP Visitor Center

September 3. We left the McKinley area and drove north towards Denali National Park, about a two hour drive away. On the way we passed the Byers Lake area and also the very moving Alaska War Memorial. It is a tribute to the sacrifice of the US Armed Forces in Alaska (especially during World War II) and also commemorates Alaska's Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. It is well worth a stop.

We got to Denali National Park, the foliage showing more and more signs of fall as we headed north. We spent over an hour in the visitor center viewing an excellent film and enjoying the great educational exhibits. This is where I learned about the value of mosquitoes. Then, the day being a pleasant one, we decided to do some short hikes around the visitor center. Denali National Park is mostly wilderness and trail-less, but there are some trails around the visitor center that are good ones. We hiked on three of these: the Taiga, Horseshoe Lake, and Spruce Trails, as well as a little bit on the bicycle path connecting a couple of the pathways. Here are some photos.

There is a fairly steep trail up Mount Healy that is supposed to have tremendous views, but there was not enough time. So many trails, so little time.

These are views along the Taiga Trail:

Taiga is a Russian or Finnish word meaning "little sticks," and is the world's largest biome. We would see plenty of taiga, and tundra, in the next few days.

I am not sure what this plant is, but it was putting on its finest dress on this summer day, which is really autumn this far north.

Here is another view of Mount Healy, in autumnal splendor, from the Horseshoe Lake trail.

View of the Horseshoe Lakes and the Nenana River:

At this point we were at least 400-500 vertical feet above the lakes, with a very steep slope down to the lakes through the woods. Yet beaver are coming all the way up the slope to cut trees. They must have cut out all the edible wood near the lakeshore, and must be desperate for food to take such a perilous journey this far from water.

It is great to be in a new National Park!

Here's a Tip for You

If you are traveling to a place like Alaska, and doing all kinds of side trips with guides (cruise in Kenai Fjords, float trip down the Kenai River, kayaking on Byers Lake, riding horse on a trail ride, and a number of other adventures I have yet to post about), make sure you tip your guides. From what I could see, most of the time, we were the only people giving a tip. On the cruise in the fjords, they had a tip jar, and that had people putting money into it. But on the other trips, where we gave a $20 bill to each guide, I didn't really see anyone else give a tip at the end. Well, on the trail ride, they also had a jar, and we put a twenty in there. The other three people put maybe a total of four bucks in the jar.

Seriously, these people work very hard, and they have a window of a few months to earn a living for the year, unless they pick up and travel somewhere else. If they give good service, they should get a decent tip. That's my view, anyway.

Denali Trail Ride

September 2. I wanted to go back to Byers Lake and do a five mile circuit hike around the lake. But we had been told to expect to run into bears (one of the nearby creeks was named Troublesome Creek for that very reason) because of all the salmon. Mary felt like we were pushing our luck. We'd already hiked into Russian River Falls during the salmon run and had not seen bears, despite a wounded grizzly in the area. She was very uneasy with the idea of just the two of us doing this hike, so I gave up the idea. We went for a guided trail ride instead, after I took a short hike of a couple of miles near the hotel.

We rode with D&S trail rides, on horses that liked to walk along, which was fine with me. There were five of us, plus the two wrangers who guided the two hour ride. My horse was named "Yukon", and he was the gassiest animal I think I have ever run into. Mary's horse was named "Montana". I have only been riding a few times in my life, and given that and the often rough and steep trails, a nice walk was the best pace for the group. However, one lady complained constantly that she wanted to canter, which got kind of tiresome. All in all, though, it was a fun activity, and here are a few photos.

D&S trail rides gives both trail rides and horse drawn carriage rides through the Alaskan bush. I actually took this photo on my hike.Here is their headquarters, pretty much in the middle of nowhere:Our head wranger on his horse:Our two wrangers did a great job. The young woman grew up in the Congo and had applied for this job with no experience. Steve, the "S" in the D&S and our head wrangler, said they gave her a chance and she did great. He said she could easily get a job as a wrangler anywhere now, although he was hoping she would stay on.
Here we are on the trail. Denali is back in the clouds:A couple of the horses on the trail:
Views as we rode:

Kayaking in Byers Lake

September 2. We signed up for a guided kayaking trip on Byers Lake, located about 15 miles north of the hotel in Denali State Park. It was a cool and foggy morning, and I wondered if we would see any scenery with all the fog. Our guide was named Nat, and like many people working here in that I ran into, he had come from the Lower 48 for a relatively short stay and never left. He was very knowledgeable.

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Byers Lake was a beautiful body of water, and it had loons. If you have never heard the cry of a loon, then you have missed one of the most beautiful and haunting sounds in nature. The loon pair was too far away for a decent picture, but they are a magnificent bird. We also saw a mature bald eagle, a pair of trumpeter swans, and many dying and dead coho salmon that had somehow completed their long journey against unimaginable odds. One thing that Nat told us was about these huge fishing fleets, very well connected politically, that were fishing for some kind of fish that ends up as frozen fish sticks. As a by-catch, they end up catching millions of salmon and just throw them back in the water, dead. It is having a major impact on salmon popluations, but sport fishermen, subsistence fishers, and grizzly bears do not have the same political clout as the fishing fleets do.

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As our group paddled north, the fog was lifting and I noticed everyone pointing to the left. I turned my kayak, and there was one of the most stunning sights I have ever seen: Denali - The High One - the highest mountain in North America, stark white against a blue sky. Here are a few photos of a great morning on this beautiful lake.

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Morning fog on the lake:

Colorful kayaks along the lake shore:

40 or 50 miles away, Denali is still an incredible sight:

Zooming in on "The High One:"

Forested lake shore with pockets of fog:

Another view of North America's tallest peak:

These trumpeter swans are North America's largest bird, and they mate for life.

Iditarod Dogs

September 1. We took a tour from the lodge near Denali State Park to see a Iditarod racer training with his dogs. As people who once owned a Siberian husky, we much enjoyed seeing the dogs and hearing his talk.

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins every March and travels across Alaska for more than 1,100 miles. The musher we talked to, Bill Hall, has done the race for years, alternating with his wife. Now that she no longer does the race, he is free to do it each year. It is a huge commitment of time and money. He trains the dogs twice every day, and participating in the race itself takes thousands of dollars. I guess it gets into your blood.

The lady who gave us the ride to the tour was a friend of Bill’s and an interesting person. Back in the early 1960’s when she was a very little girl, her family moved from the States to Alaska to homestead. It was just wilderness then, and even now is pretty remote. They got 160 acres in return, and had to build a home and start a farm. Hard life, but she stayed and her mom still lives on the original site.

It was really interesting learning about how Bill prepares for and conducts the race, and how he takes care of the dogs during this arduous event. Clearly he does not sleep much during the two weeks or so of the race. Here are some photos from seeing the beautiful sled dogs.

The Alaskan huskies wait eagerly to start pulling.

It was a warm day, and the dogs panted to cool themselves.

Bill Hall is fit and trim at age 65 or so, and ready to get back out on the Iditarod Trail this coming March.

How do you train huskies without snow? They seemed to adapt well to pulling this four-wheeler.

He gave the dogs a water break partway through their run, and they seemed to enjoy it.

When we arrived at his home, the dogs who had been left behind went nuts but eventually calmed down.

Some the Iditarod race numbers from Bill and his wife. Men and women compete equally, and there is only one winner. Susan Butcher, the first woman to win this race, died from leukemia in 2006.

Leaving the Kenai

September 1. Today, we were leaving the Kenai Peninsula and heading north towards the Denali State Park area. I loved the Kenai – it is nicknamed “Anchorage’s Playground” and with good reason. I would love to come back and spend more time here, drive to some of the towns there was just not time to get to, like Soldatna, Hope, and Homer. Although the Kenai is readily accessible to Anchorage, it is still plenty rugged. There is great-sounding canoe camping in the Kenai National Moose Range, the largest ice field in the United States (Harding Ice field), and these great hiking trails that just leave roads as you drive along. Every time we passed one, I wondered where it went to. One of them, the Resurrection Trail, just got a great write up in my Backpacker Magazine as a tremendous and wild six day point to point hike. It sounds incredible. Oh, to have more time!

We were driving back along Turnagain Sound towards Anchorage, with the Chugash Mountains rising from the sea to our right. All along this beautiful road were hiking trails leading off into the mountains of Chugash State Park and Chugash National Forest. I had the same emotions – wouldn’t it be great to have a few weeks just to explore these trails? The weather was very nice today, unlike our rainy Saturday trip along the Sound heading towards Kenai. So we got to enjoy the incredible scenery, and we also got to see several belugas in the distance at this point, aptly named Beluga Point. We could see these small white whales clearly through our binoculars as they came up for air, but could not get good photos, although the white dot near the center of this one is a beluga. Trust me, it really is there, at least we could see it clearly on our friends' high definition TV when we viewed our photos on it last night!
We drove north through Anchorage, which seemed like New York City after four days on the Kenai, through Wasilla - no Sarah Palin sightings - and eventually reached our destination: The McKinley Princess Lodge. It is 40 miles from the highest mountain in North America, Denali ("The High One"). Other names are Mount McKinley and "The Mountain." Only one in four tourists see this 20,320 foot (and growing) mountain, because it makes its own weather and spends much of its time enshrouded in clouds. But shortly after we got to the hotel, the clouds began to break up, and we were treated to pretty good views of the north peak from the large deck. Several hundred people literally spent an hour waiting in vain for the south peak to become visible too. But what an amazing sight! Just magnificent.

I took a ton of photos, because I was convinced this was the last we would see of "The High One." How wrong I was about that!

Women’s Work?

Not too long ago, certainly well within my lifetime, there was a common sentiment that women were not capable of certain jobs – many jobs, actually. So even as a man, I always enjoy seeing women doing “men’s work” – and doing it well. I saw two such examples early in my Alaska trip.
The first was the Kenai Fjords National Park cruise. The captain of the ship that took us out was a young woman. She not only handled the boat all day at the helm during this eight hour day, but as captain, she had responsibility for the safety of the ship, the crew, and every one of the hundred or more passengers. She took the craft close into massive rocks to see wildlife, up to the edge of glaciers, and out into the powerful Gulf of Alaska. And she did a very competent and impressive job all day, including getting back on time despite chasing whales late in the day and docking the ship at the end of the day. If you have ever even tried docking a boat, much less a ship, in a tight place with currents and wind, you know that this is not for the faint of heart.

The second was during the float trip down the Kenai River. Our young guide, Beth, had to steer the raft down this swift and cold river with four passengers on it. If we had signed on for the all day trip, she also would have had to take the raft through rough whitewater in a canyon. Again, she was responsible for the safety of all of us, with no one to back her up.

I think that when people talk about the "good old days", they may forget that there were negative things about the old days as well. And certainly the concepts of “men’s work” and “women’s work” were among these. I would guess in many societies around the world, this concept is still alive and well, but it is fading here. I, for one, am glad about this.

Hike to Russian River Falls

August 31. In the afternoon, we did a 4.5 mile hike out and back to the Russian River Falls. 50% of us hoped to see a bear, and 50% didn't. At the start of the hike was a sign that said on August 23rd, a grizzly had been wounded in the area, and had been spotted a couple of days later. While I hoped not to run into that particular bear, I felt pity for the suffering beast. I don't hunt, and don't fully understand the desire to. But I do feel that hunters have a responsibility to make sure they are clear about their target and to only take a shot if they are certain they will kill the animal and not leave it wounded. But in any event, a wounded bear is a very dangerous animal and we were very alert on this hike. Everything we read about the hike to the falls, including guidebooks and the signs at the trailhead, made clear that grizzlies are very often seen on this trail.

The trail itself was usually wide, level, and straight.

While we often hiked through what looked like prime wildlife country, we saw nothing bigger than a red squirrel along the way.

Devil's club is a good plant to avoid. It is covered with sharp spines and is supposed to be amazingly painful.

Autumn is just beginning on the Kenai. A few days later, much further north, we would run into peak colors.

This mushroom was as large as a dinner plate. I don't know if it is an edible one or not, but if it is, it would be quite a feast! If not, it would be your last supper.

The guide from the float trip, Beth, had told us about a short and steep game trail that led to vistas of one of the Russian lakes, so we hoofed it up there for a partial view.

The Russian River dropped steeply through a series of cascades. How the salmon make it through here is incredible.

From a view point, we could look down about 60 feet to the start of the falls. Exhausted salmon must somehow climb that 60 feet in relatively short order, jumping fall after fall. They gather at the base of the falls to rest in the swift current. The red ones are coho salmon, and the greyish ones are silver salmon - at least that is what I think. The cohos will spawn in lakes, but I think that the silvers will spawn in streams.

This would be the best place to see bear, with the abundance of fish, but we didn't see any. We watched the fish attempt to jump the falls over and over. They would smash into rocks and fall back.

They are near the end of their amazing return to trip to the place of their birth. Somehow, against all odds, they have made it this far during their five or six year life. Whether they get to spawn or not, every one of these fish is now dead by the time I write this a month later. Their rotting carcasses will fertilize the water for their offspring to get a good start in life.

When you think of all the hazards these fish have survived in their short lives, it is mind-boggling. Just to grow to a size big enough to migrate to the ocean defies the odds. Then there is life in the ocean for several years, avoiding seals, killer whales, and commercial fisheries. Finally there is the long trip up river to their exact place of birth, again running a gauntlet of commercial and sport fisherman, subsistence fishers in their summer fishing camps, and grizzlies. The tiny percentage that make it back mate and then die. Their bodies are decaying and battered even before their final death.

As we turned to hike out, a steady rain that lasted all the rest of the day began, and the camera was put in a plastic bag. We didn't see bear, but seeing the salmon jump made the hike very worthwhile.

Floating the Kenai River

August 31. So in the morning, we took a fun and slightly chilly float trip down the Kenai River, covering about 15 miles of it in a raft. There were five of us: Beth (our guide and oarswoman), Mary and me, and a man with his 10 year old daughter. Every year for the girl's birthday, he or her mom will take her anywhere she wants to go in the USA, and this year she chose Alaska. Pretty cool memories, I would say.

Although it was cloudy and cool, the rain held off for the morning. We were not going to be as fortunate for the afternoon's hike into the Russian River Falls. We saw wonderful scenery while we floated down river. Beth told us a lot about the natural history and human history as she expertly guided the raft down the river. We saw some wildlife - three bald eagles, a group of mergansers, and many salmon swimming just under the surface as they swam upstream. Here are some pictures from the morning on the beautiful Kenai River.

Our guide, Beth, did a great job taking us down the Kenai:

The scenery along the river was wonderful:

We saw three bald eagles, including this immature one and this adult:

We also saw a group of mergansers fishing in this distance, and this red headed merganser on a rock.

The Kenai is glacier fed, and has a beautiful blue-green color:

This hand-operated ferry takes anglers across the Kenai to the Russian River for the salmon runs. In peak season, they take 1,000 anglers a day across for something like eight dollars a pop!

This rock had pretty patterns of lichens on it.