| The following day we went
out again, over exactly the same route. This much doctored photograph
is of Mt Mckinley (or Denali as it is known locally). It looks like a white
cloud. It is about 60 miles away. |  |
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This is the Sanctuary River although most glacial rivers look much the same. |
| The clouds are a little
higher so we can see the tops which are usually shrouded. |  |
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The Denali park road was built in the 1930s but the river crossings were
fords. The bridges were not built until the 1970s. |
| In the 1900s this would
have been a glacier but now it has retreated leaving a meandering shallow
river. Most glaciers have retreated over the last 100 years. |  |
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We went on a discovery hike led by a ranger. There were two, one classed as
moderate and the other strenuous. The latter had an altitude gain of over
1000ft. So our moderate would have been classed as strenuous too. |
| At the end of the road
and just outside the park is Kantishna roadhouse, an eight hour bus journey
on the same gravel road for those who really want to get away from it all. |  |
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Our walk was only 3-4 miles but took 3-4 hours. There are no tracks and
walking on the spongy tundra covered in brush can be very tiring. There were
a number of flowers along the way which the ranger identified for us. She
was very informative. |
| Most of the flowers were
new to us. This is capitate lousewort. |  |
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Forget-me-nots, the state flower of Alaska. |
| Some were very small.
This patch of campanula has probably taken 50 years to reach this size. It
has a very sweet smell. |  |
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There is little soil here so these need to be extremely hardy plants and
specially adapted to the harsh environment. |
| We did see a bit more
wildlife like this solitary caribou looking for something to eat. |  |
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Another Dall sheep by the roadway. Perhaps it was the same one. |
| Up on the hillside were a
few more. This is one of the few places in the world where this particular
type of sheep live. They were almost hunted to extinction to feed the gold
miners in the 1880s. |  |
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We finally got to see a caribou at a reasonable distance. But they are very
skittish and easily alarmed and this one ran away very quickly after we
stopped. |
| This brown bear was
spotted up on a hillside with two cubs. They are almost blonde up here and
smaller than the coastal bears which feed on salmon. She still looked pretty
big to me. |  |
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At last we found a solitary moose at the side of the road when we were
nearly home. Then it wandered into the bushes and we lost it again. |
| Rock colorations at
Polychrome Pass. |  |
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The colours were really quite spectacular but difficult to get an angle on
as the bus twisted and turned on the road. |
| The sun did come out
eventually and sometimes the angles were right |  |
The Alaskans would like Mt Mckinley to be called Mt Denali (the Big One in
Athapascan), but approval has to be given by a government committee and they
can't do it while there is pending legislation. Each year the senators in Ohio
(President Mckinley's home state) add a clause to some bill stating that Mt
McKinley must remain with that name so preventing the change. American
politics!! |