Mount Denali

Mount Denali

P7044285 (Savage River Hiking Loop: July 2004) During the time that my sister, Stella, was visiting in early July 2004, Kate and I took her to Denali National Park for the day. It was still cloudy, so we drove as far in as they would let us to the Savage River hiking loop trail. They have a nice little parking area where you can begin the hiking.

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P7044286 There are some cool metamorphic schist rocks along the trail.

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P7044287 We first hiked up an upper trail that takes you to the top of some of the surrounding mountains. I got a nice photo looking down the Savage River from this part of the trails.

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P7044302 Later we took the lower hiking trail that loops from one side of the river to the other side. Along this part of the trail we saw some arctic ground squirrels.

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P7044305 Kate and Stella stopped at one point and I snapped a photo of them.

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P7044311 Kate also got in front of an outcrop of schist, so I could take her picture. After returning to the parking area, we headed out of the park to head back to Fairbanks.

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P7134335 (Mt. Denali from an Airplane: July 2004) In mid-July 2004, while heading south to Anchorage to catch a flight to Dutch Harbor, Alaska to do my second round of field work on Mt. Cleveland, I got some great photos of Mt. Denali and the Eldridge Glacier that flows to the south of the mountain.

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P7134337 I later zoomed in on Mt. Denali (a.k.a. Mt. McKinley at 20,320 feet elevation).

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P7134338 The other big sight was the glaciers. This one was a terminal moraine from the Eldridge Glacier.

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P7134341 I also got a shot of Mt. Foraker at 17,400 feet elevation.

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P7134342 Here is a closer view with both Mt. Foraker (left) and Mt. Denali (right) in it.

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P7134343 The Kahiltna Glacier.

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P7134344 The Eldridge Glacier.

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P7134350 The Kahiltna Glacier with the Yentna Glacier in the background. Some other past photos I've taken of Mt. Denali can be found on the following pages: Earth Sciences, 2003 Mt. Cleveland Field Work, and Sunrises and Sunsets.

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P9185175 (Denali National Park Road Lottery Trip: September 2004) Back in July, Kate and I submitted our chance to try and win a spot for the annual Road Lottery trip that the National Park Service does every year. By luck, and on our first try, we managed to win a spot. The date I chose was September 18, 2004 - the day after my birthday. When you win the road lottery it allows you to drive the entire distance of the Park Road within Denali National Park. Normally you can drive as far in as Savage River with your own car. The rest of the distance you would have to take a park bus. The lottery is run at the end of the season usually before the weather gets bad. Kate and I were glad to take along three friends from school who had never been this far into the park - Ken Papp, Kristen Dean, and Marc Gould. We all left Fairbanks at 5:30 AM on the 18th. It took a couple hours to get there with a temperature along the way eventually reaching 14 F a little bit before getting to the park. A couple days earlier it had snowed about 8 inches in some areas of the park with less accumulations in the rest of the park. It turned out to make the scenery very pretty. The day had started out to be cold and clear, but eventually warmed up to the mid to upper 30's in the park and became overcast in high cirrostratus clouds.

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P9185178 We eventually reached the Savage River checkpoint to receive information from the park rangers.

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P9185178TeklanikaRiverPan The first overlook we all came to was the Teklanika River overlook. I took a panoramic photo of the braided stream and the mountains nearby.

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P9185214 After a while we came to the bridge over the East Fork at 3,061 feet elevation. The sun was shining off of the braided stream, so none of us could pass up taking a photo of it.

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P9185231 Not too long after this we reached a point on the road where the rangers told us that some mountain goats and rams were in the vicinity. The rams were cool while they were just sitting there eating, and thinking to themselves -

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P9185252 A little further down the road we saw some more goats chillin' at the top of a ridge.

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P9185271 After this, we started seeing small glimpses of Mt. Denali. Our first really great view of the mountain was at around mile 62 at Stony Hill Overlook.

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P9185271DenaliPan From Eielson Visitor Center I took a panoramic photo of the Alaska Range that ends on the right side of the photo at Mt. Denali. It may look shorter than the other mountains in the photo, but Eielson Visitor Center is actually 33 miles away from this location.

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P9185279 Marc took a photo of Kate and I at Stony Hill Overlook. The park road is visible heading toward to mountain, but it is to the north and parallels the Alaska Range (which Mt. Denali is a part of).

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P9185282 Next stop was to Eielson Visitor Center at around mile 66. Inside the visitor center there was a cool comparison of the world's highest mountains on each continent.

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P9185311 We left to continue west along the road to Wonder Lake. We stopped soon when we spotted some moose in the distance (about a mile or two away). In this photo you can see one bull moose with his antlers (right center side) and two cows (females) to the left of him. I would have liked to have zoomed in closer, but this was already totally zoomed in optically and digitally! It was amazing that we were able to spot them with our naked eye.

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P9185317 Further down the road we started seeing more lakes that had some beaver dams in them. At one stop we saw two beavers close to the road, so we stopped to film and photograph at least one of them.

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P9185324 Just before Wonder Lake (at mile 85) we stopped at the Reflection Pond where we hoped to see the reflection of Mt. Denali. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing ever so lightly to caused a less detailed reflection of the mountain. It was still cool to see anyway.

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P9185332 The descriptive sign located at the reflection pond.

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P9185355 We eventually reached the furthest point on the road, some 91 miles in, at Kantishna. From here we all started the return trip back to the main Parks Highway. At some point we came across the same mountain goats from earlier in the day. This time they prevented vehicles from traveling because they were just sitting on the road, then walked down the road. Kate, Kristen, and Marc got out and walked to where they were to take some photos. Kate took some that showed them on the road. When they finally got off the road, we were on our way. After stopping off for some dinner we all finally got back to Fairbanks by 10:30 PM (17 hours later). It was a great day to see some beautiful scenery and North America's tallest mountain.

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