Denali National Park

[HunterAK]

I'm going for a backcountry trip into Denali National Park (DNP) next week for 3 1/2 days with a group of 4 total. It's been really interesting in my research about how to set this trip up.

If anyone's interested....

The part of DNP for backpacking is broken up into 43 units. Access to the units is by the same tour bus you take in on the main road. Before your trip, you must get a backcountry permit at the DNP Headquarters (or Visitor's Center). This process takes about an hour and it mainly consists of planning your route and watching some safety video on bear safety and backpacking/camping etiquette. To minimize impact, each unit has a quota for campers. Most quotas are 4-6 for a very each area, which are pretty large. Kinda cool knowing you are the only ones in your area. Your tent cannot be visible from the road either. You can only get a permit up to 1 day in advance so the issue there is you never know which unit you're going to be placed in. We made a "Top 10" list.

Now, the unit you get is only where you will be setting up your camp. You can day hike to other units near yours or head back to the main road and catch the bus to travel to other parts of the Park for a day hike and then return to your camping unit to spend the night.

No guns are allowed. No fires are allowed. The weather can get nasty too. It can be very wet (marshy tundra) and it can rain a lot. Right now the mosquitoes are pretty harsh so we'll be looking for a nice ridge line to camp on away from the water and somewhere with a nice breeze. It will be colder at night, but a 15-0 degree bag, maybe with a liner, should keep you toasty.

Anyways, I can't wait. A little nerve racking considering it is all trail-less backpacking and there is wildlife EVERYWHERE. It is way different than camping on a highly trafficked trail. Even then, we see bears a lot. Now we've got caribou and wolves to throw in the mix too.

Wish me luck. I'l post pictures afterwards.

-Hunter

 

[Rusty Shackelford]

Sweet!

I lived in Denali for a summer, and yes, camping is very un-nerving to say the least. We were backcountry snowboarding and had a ton of gear, we hiked past the only bush for a hundred acres, and a caribou jumped up from behind it and charged us! Needless to say, nobody was ready to move quickly. We just froze - and yelled at the beast and he took off. I think we startled him from a dead sleep.

About twenty minutes after that, a giant grizzly stood up about 300 yards away (WAY too close for me!) and tried to sniff us out. He went on his way, and we went ours. Nobody slept too well that night!

Let me know if Lynx Creek Pizza is still open, they make the best pizza around. (The only pizza around!)

p.s. how's that advertising idea panning out?

 

[HunterAK]

I never followed up this post with pictures. The weather was AMAZING btw. Couldn't believe it. I got sunburned! McKinley was clear as day and we didn't see a drop of rain for 3 days. Epic. I don't know if I can go back for a while. It was too perfect. Cool trip, but the Park scene was a little too touristy for me. It was awesome to do at least once though...

Enjoy the pics.

 

[JustAddMtns]

Looks like an awesome time. I am trying to figure out from your post if that was the week/weekend during the 4th. If so, I was a bit south in Hope, but the weather was gorgeous all week.

What are yall sitting on in the third picture? Did you carry them with you?

 

[HunterAK]

Those are bear containers we're sitting on for a lunch break. They make you take the containers to prevent bears from associating tents/campers with food. We were heading to Sable Mountain for our second camping location. It was the 4th of July. After we got back, I read in the Anchorage Daily News that a US mountaineer collapsed and died after reaching the summit that very same day. His lifelong goal was to summit the highest peak of every state in the US and McKinley was the second to last one on the list for him. The last one was some small peak in North Dakota. I guess he wanted the last one to be an easy one. He was in his 50's and had three kids I think. They buried him on the mountain. Pretty crazy to think that while we were taking pictures in front of the mountain, someone was dying up there.

I put up a few more pictures below. There's a Caribou and a Dall Sheep in the bottom middle pictures. That caribou was just outside of our tent, maybe 60 yards. We also were woken up at about 5:30a.m. by a moose huffing and sniffing our tent. Once I saw the ears, I knew it wasn't a bear, but it spooked me for a minute.

Anyways the picture at the bottom all the way on the right was of a huge storm across the Park that we got to watch. It beat the movie theater! It never made it's way over to us. Pretty cool.

Anyways, didn't you go fishing up here? What was the verdict? Where did you go?

 

[JustAddMtns]

Yes I did do some fishing. For some reason I can't remember to bring the pictures in, to post them.

My brother-in-law tried to get me out, but you know how vacations go...we were trying to get a lot in.

He took me to Ship Creek, because it was so close, but I didn't fish much. I was a put off by the snagging and all the people.

We did end up in Seward and went fishing out in Resurrection Bay. I had a great time and got a chance to get catch halibut, lingcod, rock fish, and yellow eye. I even caught a sea cucumber which was really odd.

We hiked Rendezvous pass also and spent some time at the base of Mt. Spur hiking around.

To be honest, I really want to get back up there to spend some extended time in the bush. Your trip is exactly my cup of tea.

 

[benlittle]

Wow. I'm totally into the tundra style backpacking.

Very nice

 

[HunterAK]

Wow. I'm totally into the tundra style backpacking.

Very nice

Yeah, it's really different from the close quarters stuff that I'm used to and Denali is the perfect place for it. The first place we camped was almost like we were on the top row of a football stadium looking out onto the field. It was just so massive and for the most part, trailess, which is the biggest difference from other camping/hiking I've done. It's a whole other thing when you go on a trip and don't have to think about where you're going and where you've been because you just put your head down and follow the trail. Trailess is much more of an adventure.

Personally, my favorite thing about backpacking is getting a big fire going at night, so that was a disappointment, but other than that, it is a unique place to hike around. I'd like to do it again and hit up a few other spots that offer something different than what we did this time, not that I didn't enjoy it, but just to see what else the Park has to offer.

I am jealous of your Cirque pics too btw. atriot: