Denali National Park

Denali is the tallest mountain in North America at 20,310'. Depending on your source, it is said that somewhere around 80-90% of people that visit Denali National Park never see Denali. Count us among the masses.

The weather wasn't terrible for our visit, but the cloud cover was persistent, and it obscured the mountain (with one small exception, which I'll get to in a bit).

If you've ever wondered what happens in the minutes before our sign pictures, here you go: Julie standing at the ready while children climb whatever they can

Denali was one of the few parks to which we actually took the RV. We booked a campground within the park for two nights. This made it much more convenient to visit the park.

Denali was also unique in another way: Julie's cousin Jason (technically, second cousin) volunteered there! He worked at a restaurant outside of the park but volunteered a few times a week within the park to walk one of the sled dogs (his was Disco).

Denali is the only national park with a working sled dog team, and if you visit in the winter, you'd see why; it's the only way to get into the park at that time.

We were able to accompany Jason on a few walks with Disco. We love dogs, and we love walking, so this was a treat. As you may expect, Disco was extremely well behaved. She was one of the older dogs, so she was all business. Huskies love to work, and they don't to work as much during the summer, so these walks are extremely important for keeping them active. There are numerous volunteers assigned to each dog, which allows for multiple walks per day for each one.

Kids aren't supposed to walk the dogs; shhhh...

Other than walking Disco, our options were fairly limited at the park. There is a single road going into the park, and as of our visit, more than half of it was inaccessible due to a rockslide. Aside from two special days each year during which you need to win a lottery to drive it in a private vehicle, the road is only traveled by park shuttle buses.

There is a shuttle that is hop on/off at various stops along the road, and there is one that is more of a tour bus where you stay on the entire time and there is a guide talking about the park. We opted for the former so that we could get out and explore on foot.

Moose!

We took the bus all the way to the end of the accessible road, about two miles shy of the rock slide. We were dropped off at a bridge and told to be back by the time the last shuttle departed that evening unless we wanted to walk back, which we did not.

We decided to head down to the river and walk the riverbed. Rivers in Alaska are braided rivers, which constantly change course, leaving massive gravel bars in their wake. This makes it fairly easy to walk along them.

The kids pretty quickly found a spot to park themselves to play with rocks, which were abundant. I wanted to see the rock slide, so I decided to keep walking.

I wasn't entirely sure where I was going, so I decided to head back up to the road after a half mile or so. As I climbed my way through tundra, rocks were sliding out from under my feet. I can see why building a road on this terrain is a challenge. I also saw a few mini slides before I got to the main one.

This is what the functional part of the road looked like; it's about 12 feet wide

It was very obvious when I got to the slide. A 100 yard section of the road was simply gone.

As it turns out, this area of the road has been a problem since the road was constructed in 1960. It used to slide an inch or two per year, accelerating to an inch or two per month in 2017, an inch or two per week in 2018, an inch or two per day in 2019, to an inch per hour in 2021. At one point, there was a constant stream of dump trucks dropping loads of gravel throughout the day so that buses could still travel the road. Sounds safe!

The park finally gave up in late 2022 when the road started moving feet per day. The quickly evacuated the lodge at the end of the road, closed the road, and let it slide. Now the road is gone. And given the terrain, coupled with the difficulty of accessing this portion and the very short construction season, it likely won't be reopened anytime soon.

Rock slide

After viewing the slide, I decided to hike the road back instead of heading back down to the river. I met another fulltime couple at the slide. I walked back with them and had a lovely conversation about our collective adventures on the way.

We were told by a ranger that the tundra around the river was ripe with wild blueberries this time of year. We brought a few containers in hope that she was right. Indeed, she was. It took some hunting (the bears had clearly beaten us to a few spots), but we finally found a few patches that were thick with berries.

We ended up with a few quarts of wild blueberries, which is quite a feat when you consider that wild blueberries are both smaller than "regular" blueberries and also much closer to the ground. Picking them is hard work, and I now see why they are so expensive to buy!

Wild blueberry hunting

We packed up the next morning to leave, and Julie was determined to see the mountain. It was just as cloudy as it had been our entire time there, and it was chilly, so I declined to accompany her to the overlook. Jordan and I stayed back at the RV while Julie and the boys tried one more time. They took a short walk to the edge of the campground, and their persistence was rewarded... kind of. In between the clouds, they could barely make out the snow-covered top of the mountain. But we'll count it.

I was glad Julie got to see the mountain, even if it was only a glimpse. You may recall that the rest of us had seen the mountain the previous week from the air on our way to Kobuk Valley National Park. So while we didn't see the entire mountain from within the park, which technically puts us in that 80-90%, we did see it. Take that, Alaska weather!