This weekend, Trevor and I went to Denali National Park. We brought a tent, firewood, and some food in a cooler. After setting up our camp, we made hobo meals and threw them on the fire....for a hobo meal, it was fantastic. The temperature got down to around 40 or lower, but our sleeping bags kept us warm--it just wasn't very fun getting out of the sleeping bags in the morning.
Saturday morning, we went white water rafting on the Nenana river. The rapids were rough and it was a lot of fun. I wish I had some pictures, but I couldn't take my camera for obvious reasons. The water was FREEZING. Had we fallen out, even with our wetsuits, we would have been dead in around 30 minutes. The water was only 30 hours off the glacier.
Later that day, Trevor and I went into the park and hiked around. We decided to climb a huge rock and took some pictures once we got on top. The park is amazing and the mountains were fabulous. I must say, however, the mountains near us (Delta Junction) are pretty great too.
On Sunday, Trevor and I boarded a shuttle that went through the park to Eielson. It was very windy and dusty which made it hard to hike around off the shuttle. Denali only has one road through the park...and the park is over 6 million acres. So basically, you have to be very careful when deciding to backpack on your own. While riding to Eielson, we saw around 20 grizzly bears which is crazy considering the park only has about 300 grizzlies and over 6 million acres. I'm not good a math, but it's pretty amazing that we saw that many bears. We also saw lots of caribou, golden eagles, falcons, arctic ground squirrels, moose, etc.
Lastly, we arrived at Mt. McKinnley--also known as Denali. Denali is around 20,320 feet high at its south peak. It is unbelievably huge...both tall and big around. I can't believe that people are actually hiking Denali because the wind and cold have to be unbearable. Denali is only visible approximately 1 out of every 7 days. Unfortunately, there were a few clouds covering the top, but we got a pretty good view.
All in all, Denali was an amazing experience. In order to get the full effect, we needed to stay a bit longer, and maybe camp as far into the park as possible. I'd also like to flight see and land on a glacier. At least we know what to do next time; the drive is pretty short for us.
Sadly, fall is beginning here in the interior of Alaska. Many of the birch trees are already changing colors. Temperatures will start dropping in the next couple weeks. This means that the warmer temperatures will be a distant memory and the cold will taking its place. We've tried to take advantage of the warm weather by doing something every weekend, but the summers are just too short to do everything we want to do. We will, however, hopefully be going skiing in Anchorage pretty soon.
