9 April 2012 Denali National Park

Today we took some time off and made a trip to Denali National Park and Preserve. It’s a beautiful place this time of year, which is really the only time of year that I have been here in the last several visits. However I will get a chance to see the park in the summer time this July. I will be attending a class sponsored by the Alaska Geographic that will cover topics on climate change in this area. That should be a wonderful learning experience! I do plan on posting journals about what is taught in the class, so stay in tune!

The park was established in 1917 and has gone through a lot of changes since then. Today it covers more than 6 million acres of land, which makes it larger than the state of Massachusetts. The original name of the park was Mt. McKinley National Park after the mountain, but in 1980 the name was changed to back to the name the native Athabaskan people called it, Denali meaning “the high one”. Mt. McKinley is the highest mountain in North America, standing at over 20,000 ft tall with a core made of granite and slate. Mt. McKinley is just part of the Alaskan Range of mountains that extend more than 600 miles.

The park doesn’t officially open for a few weeks still, but the road, and there is only one road in the park, is open for the first 15 miles and anyone can drive in when they like. There weren’t a lot of people today but we ran into a few here and there hiking and snowshoeing. We began at the Murie Science and Learning Center. This is where we talked with a ranger for any current events or happenings in the park, and also to get info on the trails and the snow conditions. From there we decided to take a short drive up the road to see if Mt. Denali would be visible today. The whole mountain was clear! The problem was that it is still far away from where we were standing, and the rest of the road was closed! So we took a picture and headed back to a trail we could hike. On the way we saw our first two caribou of the season! They had just crossed the road and were disappearing into the forest quickly. So I grabbed my small camera and just caught one of them before they were gone! I was going to chase them down in the forest but there was too much snow to run in, and I never would have caught them anyway!

We arrived at our trail and took off hiking in the snow. It was a sunny and calm day and the hiking was even too warm going up some of the ridges. I wished that I had brought my shorts! We found some interesting signs along the trail. There was quite a bit of caribou and moose scat in places, and we did see some moose tracks in the snow, but no animals. We also came upon several trees that had been stripped of their bark, we think by a moose. The one branch that had been chewed on was so high that we figured it must be a really big moose! We aren’t sure. Do you have any ideas? There were some beautiful sights and some very nice hiking. What a great day it was!