06/19/2019 - Denali National Park

Denali National Park and Preserve was established in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park. It was designated a park and preserve and renamed Denali in 1980. The mountain was officially renamed Denali in 2015. It is approximately 6 million acres, a fraction of which is seen by visitors. More than a thousand attempt to climb Denali each year; slightly more than half attempting to summit Denali succeed. 

You can click on the pictures to enlarge them. 

Upon entering the park, we went to the bus depot (mile 0.75) to see if we could leave the motorhome parked there and use our jeep instead of a shuttle bus. There are three parking lots, one of which is for RVs. We fit in fine after unhooking the jeep. We went inside the bus depot to see what kind of information they had. They sell the park passes, but nobody checked so far to see if we had one. They sell the tickets for the tours and the free shuttle buses stop there. There were the park brochures, a gift shop and food. We found out the sled dog demonstration has a small parking area, so the free shuttle is advised. We missed the shuttle at the bus depot, so drove the jeep to the visitor center (mile 1.5) and caught one there.  

The dog kennels are, I believe, at mile 3.0. There is a small parking lot there, also for a trailhead. Some dogs are in a pen, some are leashed by their houses and roped off, and some are leashed but in the open for the public to pet. She said they take turns so the dogs don’t get too stressed.

We moved to the demonstration area for the ranger talk. The ranger gave us information about the kennel, the dogs jobs with the park, the dogs themselves. As she was talking, one of the dogs started barking, through most of her talk. She said he’s just excited for the demonstration. They pulled five dogs out of the kennel to hook on to the sleigh-cart. The dogs were so excited. They couldn’t wait to take off. They only go around a short little loop and they were full of energy.  She talked for a bit while the dogs were getting treats and water.

At the end of the ranger talk/demonstration, some of the dogs were unleashed and allowed to run back to their doghouse where a ranger was waiting for them to leash them.  I think it was the two younger ones that were kept on a leash and ran back with a kennel worker. There was time before and after the demonstration for petting and pictures, and to see their building with pictures and kennel supplies.

From there we went to the book store/gift shop and then to the visitor center. The visitor center is a large building with a theater and a lot of displays on two floors. (You can use steps or an elevator.) There also have information and maps and the back country camping permits.

The furthest you can drive in your private vehicle is to mile 15, the Savage River bus stop; unless you have camping reservations at Teklanika, mile 29. The different tour buses can go to the end, mile 92. This is a full day bus ride if you go to the end. We drove to the Savage River stop and did the Savage River loop trail, 2 miles round trip. This is rated at moderate. They also have the Savage Alpine trail, which is rated at strenuous, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to do.

Pretty flowers blooming

As we’re finishing our hike, and we crossed the bridge to go back to our jeep, there were two caribou to the south in the dry riverbed. One standing, one lying down. Nothing nearby to eat, not sure why they picked that spot.

After this, getting to our jeep and ready to go, the jeep wouldn’t start; battery dead. We waited a little bit for the people parked beside us to come back and he jumped the battery and thankfully we made it back. While we were waiting, we saw a ranger going across the bridge and telling people to get away from the caribou, they were too close.

Denali was not to be seen today, but it is a beautiful drive.

For more pictures, please click here.