US-Alaska: Denali & Gates of the Arctic

Having exhausted most of the "Lower 48", Alaska became the default destination for the summer of 2003. This was my last trip before my wedding and hence a Bachelor Party of sorts and my friends did join me for the fun. We all landed in Fairbanks within a few hours of each other and after spending a sleepless night in a land without summer sunsets, we were off to our first destination.

On our first full day in Alaska, we took the early morning train from Fairbanks to Denali National Park. The biggest attractions of the park are Mt. Denali (a.k.a. Mt. Mckinley, which at the height of 20,320 ft is the highest peak in the continent) and the wildlife. Although the authorities might lead you to believe otherwise, Denali National Park is no Serengeti and you don't bump into a grizzly at every blind turn. There are about 300 grizzlies spread out in 6 million acres. Add to that, Denali, the mountain, hides itself in clouds for 5 days a week and usually shows itself only in late evenings on the remaining two days. Hence if you are just doing a day trip, like the majority of the visitors to the park, you probably will come back seeing nothing but a few fat squirrels at the visitor centres. Hence it is not surprising to know that less than 5% of the visitors actually see the mountain and even lesser number see any wildlife at all. Having said that, if you give yourself a week at the park, you probably will end up seeing enough of everything. Your chances improves dramatically if you camp instead of lodge in the park. In the Unites States, this is as best a chance of seeing wildlife as you can get.

View from the Stony Hill Overlook

Denali has only one park road 90 miles long and park buses and shuttles are the only way one can travel beyond mile 20. There are normal park buses, camper buses and lodge buses and understanding the differences between them took most of the afternoon. After spending a surprisingly cold night, coldest on our trip, at the Savage River campground, we made it to the Wonder Lake campground around noon on the following day. Wonder lake campground is easily one of the most scenic campground in the world. The campsites are located on the slope of a hill and every single campsite has an uninterrupted million dollar view of Mt. Denali. Denali is one of the coldest mountain the world and also has the second highest vertical rise from its base, second only to Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas. Hence the view of Denali is something that needs to be seen to be believed. But Wonder Lake comes with a price. The campground has millions of blood sucking mosquitoes, so much that most of the campers here cut short their stay and leave the park early to more friendly neighbourhood.

We spent the entire following day hiking near the Polychrome visitor centre. We hiked up the tallest peak behind the centre and enjoyed a spectacular 360 degree view of the colourful Polychrome Basin. That night we were fortunate enough to have extremely clear skies and we could see the Alaskan range its full glory. The next day, we were even more lucky to see a picture perfect reflection of the range on the placid waters of the Wonder Lake. After spending the next couple of hours getting lost in the wilderness we made it to the Eilson visitor centre in time to catch our first sight of Alaskan wild life. A grizzly sow was hanging out next to the visitor centre with her three spring cubs. Grizzlies are similar to brown bears only smaller in size.

Wonder Lake

Next day we left Wonder Lake for the final time to make our way back to the park entrance. Bearing with the mosquitoes is only a small price to pay for the location of this campsite. We were fortunate enough to get a closer look at more wildlife including the elusive arctic wolf on our final bus journey in Denali. This time we even had a grizzly cross the road right in front of us with its cub! We then took the train back to Fairbanks. The train journey, by the by, was nice, but wasn't very particularly breathtaking as we had imagined. On the hindsight we would have been better off hiring a car, which could have provided us a valuable transportation outside the banned limits and could have cut down on our travel time. Moreover the rent would have worked out to about the same as the ticket cost for the train.

Gates of the Arctic National Park is a 100% wilderness park with absolutely no trails, roads or facilities within its boundaries. Even the ranger stations are located in the nearby settlements outside the park limits. The only way to get to the park is to get to Bettles, the largest of these surrounding settlements, and pay a bush pilot to drop you in a pre-determined location in the park. Well, in winter you do have the option of a dog sled. Most summer visitors to the park either hike, climb, fish or float down one of the wild rivers of the region. Given our experience (or the lack of it) in hiking without a guide, we all had unanimously decided to take a float trip. Even allowing for the fact that none of us could swim or have any rafting skills, float was infinitely safer option compared to back country hiking for a simple reason that a river knows exactly where to go.

Floating down the John River

The day after we returned from Denali, we flew into Bettles for the first float trip of our lives. Bettles, situated just inside the arctic circle, is a small town of 63 people where the only road to the town becomes a marsh in summer. We made our entire travel arrangements through the Bettles Lodge, the biggest lodge in town, situated conveniently 20 yards from the only runway. Given our inexperience we were suggested to float down the John river, the mildest river in the region.

We were dropped early on the next day at the Hunt Fork lake for the start of our wilderness trip. We had our first fling with the oars later that evening when we tried to float down the Hunt Fork river and join the John river. Our inexperience showed when our motion tended to be more rotational than linear, when we spent more time pulling the raft out of shallow waters than rowing it and when after spending close to two hours we were still convinced that we were on the wrong river. But the funniest incident happened when an arctic gull (or that is what it looked like) started following us close to our raft. Within minutes we were reduced to hitting each other with the oars trying to shoo the bird!

Arrigetch Peaks

For the next couple of days we rowed quite a bit, about 8 hours each, knowing fully well that at that rate we would be finishing at least a day early. After the events of the first day, we all thought that we needed this buffer in case something goes wrong. The biggest event happened on day 3. One hour intentional detour was made to meet a remarkable couple living in as close to middle of nowhere as you can get. Bill, the bush pilot from Pennsylvania and Lil, an Athabascan Indian, have been living in the middle of this wilderness for the last forty years. They have their private cabin, garden, greenhouse, watchdog, generator, satellite TV and aeroplane! It was quite remarkable to meet and talk to someone living where they were living and to drink real coffee in the middle of a wilderness trip.

After a day and a half on the raft we finally reached Old Bettles, a ghost town and our destination. The lodge guys were keeping an eye on us during our last day and hence were able to pick us up on that day even though we were a day early. The float trip was certainly one of the more exotic things I have done in my life. For the first time I had spent a week in complete wilderness. The extra day that we gained was spent on flight seeing two of the most visited parts of the park, the "Gates of the Arctic" and the Arrigetch Peaks. Gates of the Arctic are two mountains, Frigid Crags and Mt. Boreal which look like a gateway when viewed from far and Arrigetch peaks are a set of very steep, high rock formations, a climber's paradise. They are the second steepest geological formations, second only to Torres del Paines in Patagonia, Chile.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

On our final two days in Alaska, we decided to drive along one of the paved scenic highways of the state, which aren't many, by the way - thanks to lack of highways and not the lack of scenery. Richardson Highway to Wrangel-St. Elias National Park happened to win the vote. It was just intended to be a scenic road trip as there was no way we could have knocked the largest national park in the US in a day - in fact it is larger than the top 20 parks of the lower 48 put together! Richardson highway is easily one of the most scenic routes in the country. It cuts right through the majestic Alaska Range and offers stunning views of the park's peaks. Strangely enough, we found the road to be much more scenic than either the Denali or Wrangell-St Elias' park roads.

Let me conclune by plagiarising a quote from the NPS brochure, "Alaska is just incredible. You have to see it to believe it and even then you wont be so sure." It was indeed hard for me to believe what I saw and experienced as I was making my way back to civilisation and as darkness set on us for the first time in fifteen nights.