7 July 2012 Just another day in the Park; Bears and Dinosaurs!

Early this morning I was picked up at the cabin by Sarah from PolarTREC. We were heading out for a day of hiking and planning in Denali National Park. It was mostly cloudy this morning, but it didn’t look serious and the winds were calm which made it a pretty nice day overall. Sarah wanted to check out some of the places that we will take the class to next week and show me what the areas look like.

We jumped on the park shuttle bus and headed out with only a few empty seats. It wasn’t long before a bear was spotted off the side of the road and people were calling for the bus driver to stop. Out in the distance we saw a mother grizzly bear and two cubs. They were walking along a ridge and feeding on the plants. We saw a total of three bears during the day, but none of them were that close to the bus.

We rode the bus out to the Polychrome Mountain stop and got off there. We hiked up the ridge until we reached the top where we had a wonderful view of the surrounding scene. Everywhere there were mountains with rivers running down. You can really see how the water has shaped the land as well as how the past glaciers have left their marks. It was a beautiful hike with many wildflowers along the way. We hiked for more than an hour before making our way back to the road to catch the next bus.

After a few minutes another green bus came along and we climbed aboard. We took it a short way back down the road until we reached a point near Igloo Mountain. The day was still pretty nice so we started hiking up the Igloo Canyon and following Tattler Creek. The creek gets its name from a shore bird that was found to be nesting in the area. The canyon is very pretty with lots of wildflowers and water flowing down. We hiked for more than an hour up the creek before we came to a place in the canyon that didn’t look like anything special at first. Then Sarah showed me two footprint impressions that had been left millions of years ago by predatory dinosaurs. The footprints were hard to find at first but once you see them they look very obvious. We took some photos and talked about how the rock that the prints are in must have been folded and twisted around over the year.

When we finished looking at the prints we had a quick bit to eat with some water. Before we could get everything packed up again the wind picked up and the clouds started looking dark and thick. In just a few minutes we were getting a good rainfall, which turned in to hail at one point. There was lightning followed by loud thunder as we made our way back down the creek.

It rained all the way back to the road and we were very wet, even with the rain gear that we had. As soon as we came out on the road the rain stopped and the sun began to work its way out again. So we rang out our socks, hung our jackets over our packs and walked down the road for a while to dry out. It worked well and by the time the next bus came by we were much less wet and ready to sit for a while. It turned out to be a wonderful day! Getting out and seeing all the different flowers and rocks and animals was very exciting. The rain and lightning just added to the adventure!