Denali – The Mountain and Home to Many Animals

Leslie, August 13, 2010
Denali RV Park

Denali National Park and Preserve is the high point for many visitors to Alaska.  Although Brooks Camp will always be my favorite place, from views of Mt McKinley to exceptional wildlife spotting Denali did not disappoint this time.

Visitor vehicle access to Denali National Park and Preserve is severely limited.  There is only one road into the park.  For most people, vehicle access is limited to traveling along the sole road on a reconditioned school bus.  A small number of RVs are permitted to camp in the park, but we did not take that option this year.  We camped outside the park and took two 8 hr rides into the park to the Eielson Visitors Center, 66 miles each way along the park road.  Our driver on both trips, Elston Parks, was excellent.  He had eagle-like eyes and spotted much of the wildlife we saw along the way.

We’ve commented many times that despite spending a lot of time in Alaska, the only time we had seen Mt McKinley was in 2008 on a flight-seeing trip from Talkeetna.  This year we were treated to some excellent views of Mt McKinley from our second bus trip into the park.






At 20,320 ft. Denali Mountain is the highest peak in North America.  Its height is even more impressive because when measured from its 2,000 ft base, its vertical distance is greater than Mt Everest.  These pictures were taken about 70 miles from Mt McKinley.

We’ve learned that the animal sightings in Denali depend largely on luck.  Luck in the specific animal being visible from the road and luck in the driver driving slowly enough to enable someone to spot the animal.  As I mentioned earlier, our driver this year was fantastic.

For the first time ever we were able to watch a mamma wolf and two pups. Sightings of wolves are quite rare so we considered this a real treat.

Running along the hillside:


Play fighting:


Wrestling:



Mama supervising the pups:


In past years guides have pointed to small white specs on far off mountains and claimed that we were seeing Dall sheep.  Typically the Dall sheep stay up high to enjoy the mountain tundra.  We came across 9 Dall  sheep on a hill close to the road.  What made this sighting especially good was the fact that we were actually looking down on the Dall sheep.



Both ewes and rams have horns.  These are ewes.


Beautiful resting spot.


Caribou (also known as reindeer) travel in groups and both male and females have antlers.
A large rack such as this one might weigh 50-60 lbs.  It’s actually amazing they can hold up their head.

 


We found Mama moose and her calf  grazing in the early evening.  A baby moose weighs about 25 lbs. at birth.  Five months later they weigh nearly 500 lbs.  A moose gains weigh faster than any other animal.  During prime eating season, a baby moose gains 10-15 lbs a day.  Since their winter diet is largely twigs, they have to grow enough during the first summer to sustain themselves over the long winter.




We saw numerous grizzly bears, mostly sows with two or three cubs, but none as close as we saw them at Katmai National Park in July.  The bears in Denali weigh 400-600 lbs.  In contract the bears at Katmai weigh 800-1200 lbs. due to the availability of salmon.Click here for my camping with the Katmai bears post.



Sleeping Bears:


Sow & Cubs climbing:


Lastly we had fun watching this BFC (Bottom of the Food Chain), the lowly ground squirrel.  Isn’t he cute?


We spent our day in Denali when we did not ride the school bus visiting with the dogs at the Ranger’s Dog Mushing kennel.



During the winter forest rangers patrol the back country of Denali on dogsled.  There are about 25 government employees (dogs) who live at the Denali kennels.  The ranger who gave this demonstration joked that these are the happiest employees in the government.  These dogs love to run!