Denali is much more touristy than the more raw and rustic Wrangell-St. Elias. Many cruise passengers purchase add-on trips to Denali, and Princess Cruises has a large operation in the area. Cruise passengers typically come up from Seward on the Alaska Railroad. Because the park gets so many visitors, private vehicles are restricted after the first 25 km (15 mi) of the 145-km (90-mi) park road. This means that, unless you have enough days off work to bicycle the park road (at our typical pace, that would be the better part of a week), the only way you can see Denali National Park is by bus. The National Park Services offers shuttle buses through the park, but a ranger told me on the phone that the buses are often full, so that you have to wait for more than one. I thought a narrated tour pointing out the wildlife would be preferable. Our tour package offered a bus tour all the way into the Kantishna wilderness at the end of the road, and of course that was the one we took.
To be perfectly honest, we found the whole bus experience suboptimal. You have one guide/driver for 40 or so people; thus, you are entirely dependent on someone else's timetable, being herded this way and that. Furthermore, the buses that go all the way to Kantishna all leave between 6:00 and 7:00, forcing you to rise ridiculously early. While the Park Service lets its bus passengers get out of the bus anywhere they please (at the risk of waiting an hour or more for the next bus), private tour operators are only allowed to let passengers get off their buses in a few designated areas. The bus can stop to let passengers look at wildlife, but you have to look and take pictures from inside the bus. You can open the windows to avoid the reflection issue, but you're still inside a bus, limited to seeing things through the frame of a bus window. We were fortunate to have a very nice couple from Lancaster, CA, Virginia and Jay, across the aisle from us, and we had a very cordial and cooperative arrangement where they let us into their seats to take pictures from their side of the bus, and we reciprocated. I could, however, easily envision a situation where the viewing would have been more competitive. I'm sure part of what made this park so much less enjoyable than Wrangell-St. Elias was the fact that it rained on us. I learned in the Pacific Northwest last year that the difference between a good day of sightseeing and a not-as-good day of sightseeing often boils down to how much it rains. But I also think the sheer number of visitors to Denali (over 80,000 per year, according to Gitta, our driver), and the consequent necessity for extensive people-control, make this park inherently less desirable to visit.
Denali is part of the Alaska Range. Different tour guides and rangers gave me different answers as to the question of whether or not Denali is a volcano. If it is, it's certainly not an active one. Roadside Geology of Alaska is unclear on this point but speculates that Denali my have such great height because it is seated at a bend in a fault line.
We stayed at the Denali Crow's Nest Cabins, in the middle of McKinley Village, a resort area full of lodges.
I asked a very enthusiastic park ranger about this. He excitedly explained that most of what is now the central part of Denali National Park was once underwater. It was in fact volcanic at that time. When the volcanoes erupted underwater, the lava cooled very quickly in the frigid water, forming the pillow basalt we see today.
Enough geology. You want to see the animals, don't you?
Since Gitta had to drive the bus along that precarious road as well as try to find animals for us to see, she needed to enlist our help in spotting. I proved to be a very good spotter, finding a wolf and the first caribou. Although I think the woman in the seat behind me ultimately exceeded my record, at one point I had spotted two out of the five animals that we had seen, or 40%. I overheard some people talking about what a great spotter I was.
We stopped at Eielson Visitor Center, recently rebuilt as a green, geothermally-heated building.
The sign explained that two caribou bulls in a territorial fight had gotten their horns stuck together. Like Anais with her claws stuck into the back of one of our dining room chairs, these moose did not realize that they needed to reverse their trajectories in order to release themselves. The moose died in the park, locked together in a classic example of testosterone-fuelled idiocy.
As we approached the end of the road in Kantishna, it began to rain, and the scenery became duller and the atmosphere foggier. I began to get bored and, due to my lack of sleep, drowsy. However, we had not yet seen a moose, and Gitta had said that this was one of the better spots for moose sightings. Not only did I want to see a moose myself, at this point, I felt a responsibility to my fellow passengers to make sure they didn't go home without seeing a moose. So, I desperately tried to stay awake, cracking my window to keep it de-fogged, combing the misty landscape for the elusive moose. Eventually, despite my best efforts, I succumbed to my drowsiness and dozed off.
Our tour included lunch at the Kantishna Roadhouse, where we were seated with a couple from Perth who had traveled all over the world and then some. Irene told us that, due to her seniority at her job, she had 13 weeks of holiday time each year. This is in addition to the four weeks of holiday time that all Australians get. I said that I wanted to be Australian.
The lunch was fine, and even included a nice vegetable soup to warm us up, but the roadhouse was otherwise exceedingly touristy. We were scheduled for a two-hour stop, and the after-lunch activities included things like gold panning.
I had booked us on a scenic flight back to the other end of the park road, but we assumed that the flight would be canceled due to the inhospitable weather. I wanted to take the nature hike around the roadhouse, but decided to check with the tour desk just in case flying were possible. Although we were frustrated by not having seen the elusive moose, by this point, we had really had more than enough of the bus and would have been quite happy to fly back. The sales representative from Kantishna Air Taxi told us that we would, in fact, have a 90% chance of being able to fly. They would put us on the plane and take us up, and if conditions turned out to be too poor, they would bring us back in time to get on the bus. But in any case, we would get up in the air at least a little!
The sales representative drove us out to the airstrip in the van, enabling us to say, once again, that we had truly been to the end of the road. There was actually room for me to sit on a bench with a seat belt this time. The driver told me that he works out there in Kantishna every summer, saves up his pennies, and spends the winter surfing every year. Last year he spent the summer in Baja, the year before that in Kaua'i. He hopes to spend next summer in New Zealand. By this point, I was starting to feel like the Zuckershack wasn't really worth all the trouble of a job and a commute as versus spending the winter as a beach bum in some beautiful tropical paradise.
In a scene that had become familiar, we had two planes that each would seat a pilot and five passengers, and five groups of two people each. One group was willing to split up and got the co-pilot's seats.
Connie, our pilot, loaded us into the plane and took off.
As we headed into the pass, Connie announced that he and the other pilot had changed their minds about the safety of conditions, and that they would be bringing us back to Kantishna after all. Eric did not hear the announcement clearly, but noticed the plane turning around. We couldn't, of course, hear each other over the engines, so he gave me an interrogative look accompanied by a motion of turning a steering wheel. I nodded, with a disappointed expression, and started to look back out the window. But a moment later, we simultaneously turned back to each other, each holding our hands up to our temples with our fingers splayed to resemble moose antlers. At least, now we might get to see a moose! It was a very married-for-19-years-and-363-days moment that left us giggling and smiling at each other.
We landed back in Kantishna, and were promised a full refund of our airfare. We had said goodbye to Virginia and Jay before, but now greeted them again. Virginia said that she didn't know how she was going to make the trip back without us. We'd be spending more than another five hours on the bus, but at least we had pleasant seatmates.
I was too tired to do any more serious moose-spotting, but not tired enough to fall asleep. At last, however, someone else did spot a moose.
It was after 20:00 by the time we finally returned to McKinley Village and said a final goodbye to Virginia and Jay. We picked up some Thai takeout and returned to our precarious cabin. Our schedule for the next day was nowhere near so early, so we could finally get a good night of sleep.
On to Denali State Park.