July 25: Denali: Leaving The High One
Bob: As we were out of food (and also out of butane fuel to cook it with), we had to leave and had just one last chance to see The High One before we left. So we were both ecstatic, really, when the day dawned bright, sunny, and clear. When we climbed out of our tent, we were kind of slapped in the face by the sight of this HUGE white massif of a mountain looming up across the valley from us! How astonishingly and majestically beautiful! I really pondered for a while whether we ought to just forget about breakfast and walk to every possible vantage point to take pictures of Denali while the weather was clear, but I was awfully hungry and the weather looked like it would at least hold until we had to take the camper shuttle bus back to civilization, so we reluctantly settled down to have the absolute last of our food. Our fuel cylinder ran out while I was cooking our last meal, but I switched to a cylinder left in the recycling bin by previous campers that was not quite empty, and in that manner managed to complete cooking our breakfast! (Thank you anonymous campers!) In general, the ethos whilst camping in the backcountry like that is to help other campers with food and fuel whenever possible. The food was in a locked, barred, steel-doored walk-in closet and the fuel was stored in a yellow metal container that had plenty of ventilation gaps but could not be easily breached by a grizzly bear. |
Monika: Today was a WOW day. It rained again during the night, but stopped around one. When we woke up around 4:45 and I got out of the tent looking east there was the most beautiful morning sky, red sky with white clouds. WOW. Sometimes it pays to wake up early. We did go back to sleep and woke up around 6 to pack and lo and behold there was a really HIGH mountain right behind our tent. WOW Breakfast was more complicated with always looking up at the mountain to make sure it did not disappear. But our last cereal tasted mighty fine with the blueberries we had picked yesterday. We had made friends with 3 guys who had come up together to see the mountain. One of them was a professional photographer. He took some pictures of us with the mountain, while we took some of the three of them. They even made sure I got a good cup of coffee before we had to leave for the 8 o'clock camping shuttle bus. |
Bob: One of the three guys we had breakfast with in the shelter was clearly the photographer of the group--he had at least two and I think three cameras strapped to various parts of his anatomy. He was very nice about taking pictures of us, which is always difficult to manage, and also decided to come with us out on the camper shuttle bus as we all hoped to be able to get a couple shots of The High One reflected in mirror pond or Wonder Lake, if that could be arranged. It turned out we had a really nice, cooperative bus driver, and he recommended we get off at Wonder Lake and stay there for about an hour while he completed his assigned journey out to Kantishna and then would come back and pick us up on his way back out to the park entrance. That sounded absolutely GREAT to the three of us, and we hopped off the bus and spent the next half hour wandering around the North end of Wonder Lake, trying to get the best possible shots of Mt. McKinley. |
Monika: Paul, the photographer came with, since the bus went first out to Kantishna our driver dropped us three up at the upper end of Wonder Lake. That gave us one hour before he would be on his return journey and pick us up again. And here was another WOW: the mountain reflecting in Wonder Lake. The iconic picture of Denali, now we saw it with our own eyes. We took lots and lots of pictures at all distances and also panoramics. And to make this day complete, two female moose were grazing across the lake, far enough that we did not disturb them, close enough to get good pictures with my 26x lens. |
Bob: It was almost magical viewing that huge, haunting mountain--it is much more awe-inspiring than we can possibly convey by the pictures of it--and we were consequently rather sad to have to return to the street to get picked up by the camping shuttle bus. But we still got some nice shots from the bus as we slowly worked our way back to Eielson Visitor's Center, and by the time we got there the clouds were already starting to roll in again. So the mountain had basically given us one good look, which we felt we richly deserved after camping out for 5 days, and it was time to go. |
Monika: Too soon the bus came back, unfortunately with some Germans who loved to complain, sigh. We did stop at the Reflection Pond which today had something to reflect. We took as many pictures as we could, even through the window of the bus, but by the time we got to Eielson the clouds had come in and the mountain was somewhat obscured. So it was easier to say Good Bye. |
Bob: We did see some more wildlife on the way back, and once again we crossed the braided rivers, rounded the shoulder of Polychrome Mountain, and finally reached the paved section of the road that leads to the park entrance. |
Monika: The trip out took again 5 hours and we saw the last grizzly bear ambling away, the last herd of caribou crossing in front of the bus, and crossed the last braided river. |
Bob: But breakfast had been meager, so by the time we reached our car at the end of the 5 hour ride, we were both really, really hungry. Ordinarily I hate to backtrack while driving, but in this case we knew the Subway sandwich shop was only about 5 miles back North and the next town to the South was at least an hour away, so I doubled back to the place I had privately dubbed "Tacky Town" and we had a quick lunch of sub sandwiches. Hunger appeased, we headed South, passing first through the Alaska state park that lies just to the South of the Denali National Park, where we had more views of the mountain from that side. Since there are campgrounds in that state park (I think!), it might be worthwhile to come back and try camping there for a while. But in this case we still had a VERY long way to go to get back home (5,000-6,000 miles), and we just didn't feel like we had enough "spare" time in our rough schedule to spend more time in the Denali area. Pity. We continued to head South until we hit a small town North of Anchorage with some decent looking hotels and put in there for the night. It was nice to be able to shower off roughly a week's worth of accumulated grime and sweat, and to try to get our wet gear really dried out again. |
Monika: When we reached our car we were happy to see it and even happier that it started without any trouble. But we were hungry. So we decided to drive back a mile to a Subway we knew was there rather than forge on into the unknown. Bob drove us to the outskirts of Anchorage along the south side of the Alaska Range and we got a last peak at The Big One. 40 miles outside of Anchorage we finally drove into a little town with food and motels. We stopped at a log cabin building called Alaska View it had a clean room with a shower and Wifi. What more do we need, now that we had come back into civilization. |
