Wednesday, July 19, 2023: A peak without a mountain!
Info:
Denali, which was called Mount McKinley for a while but legally got its name back from President Obama in 2015, is the highest mountain in North America at 6,190 meters. From the base to the summit, it’s 5,500 meters in altitude, making it the highest mountain on earth. Deenaalee means “the great one” in the Koyukon language. Sagarmatha / Chomolungma, for some obscure reason still called Mount Everest, may be the mountain with the most vertical meters on earth at 8,848 m, but in terms of distance from base to summit, it lags behind Denali by 900 m in the north and even 1,900 m in the south.
Denali National Park covers an area of 24,000 km2, about twice the size of Upper Austria. There is one road that is currently 43 miles (about 70 km) long because the rest of the route is cut off by a “landslide”. However, this is not a normal landslide, but due to climate change, the permafrost is thawing, causing landslides, collapses, etc. Almost 50% of the park has permafrost soils. Denali is located on the southern boundary of Alaska’s permafrost soils and is therefore extremely responsive to rising temperatures. The thawing process releases a great deal of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Alaska has already warmed by 1.7°C, twice as much as other countries. The closer you get to the poles, the greater the warming.
The mountains of the national park are part of the Alaska Range, which stretches in an almost 1000 km arc from the southeast of the state through central Alaska to the Aleutian Islands. The extremely dense Pacific Plate pushes against the North American Plate, which is what created – and continues to create – the mountain range, and what also causes Denali’s height.
Due to the great differences in the landscape, one can find different vegetation zones in the national park: boreal forests with black spruce in the lower-lying areas, followed by the forestless tundra. Although the landscape is very green, it receives little rain because it is north of the Alaska Range, which prevents clouds from moving further north from the ocean. In terms of rainfall, it is a desert. However, mosses can store so much water that they use it to supply the other plants, and this is how the lush grasslands with the many flowers are created. Further up there is only the bare rock with glaciers.
Between 400,000 and 600,000 people visit the park each year. Park buses or tour buses can take you to different areas, but most of the national park is inaccessible to tourists.
However, the country is densely populated. It is home to 450 species of flowers, over 300 grizzlies, over 2,000 caribou and 1,800 moose, twelve wolf packs of five to seven animals each, countless ptarmigans, Arctic Ground Squirrels, over a thousand Dall sheep, coyotes, beavers, pikas, foxes, snow hares, marmots, … not to mention the birds that spend the summer here and the winter in South America, the Caribbean, Africa, etc. Because borders only exist on maps and in the mind.
The Denali area was inhabited by people 13,000 years ago and has many archaeological sites.
My opinion:
One of the peaks of my trip. Even if the great one wasn’t to be seen.
Diary:
After visiting the “Into the Wild” bus, we headed south on the Parks Highway to Denali National Park. There are some campsites in the park, but they are booked up well in advance. So I put up at Rainbow Village Campground for three nights.
And got a rainbow shock of my life. At a pretty nightmarish campground that I paid $75 a night for, I was also allowed to buy a $5 coin for each shower, and an hour of internet also cost $5.
A little bit the people here seem to me like the flowers. They have only 30 days for flowering. In these 30 days, they offer all their strength to grow larger than their conspecifics elsewhere, in order to have more chances to reproduce. People work during the season, that is, when the tourists come. About three months. In these 90 days they offer all their strength to squeeze as much as possible out of the tourists. To earn enough money to heat their little cabins in the winter and occasionally take the direct flight to Hawaii to see the sun. A certain collective greed is in the air. That was extremely unappealing to me. And if I had to decide which of the many campgrounds on my trip was the most awful, Rainbow Village is the favorite right now. Actually, I could name the award ceremony right after it. And the Dirty Rainbow goes to … Rainbow Village Alaska!
What national parks in Canada and the U.S. have in common are sites where one like me, paying five dollars for an hour, despairs. Everything is way too complicated, and to get the information you need, you have to read an incredible amount (And who likes to read?) and click here and there, ending up back where you were before clicking here and there.
Since I had failed so grandly at the Denali website and didn’t want to take Annie Way to the park, I decided to take a walk after I arrived. Rainbow Village is located just one mile from the park entrance.
So I walked along the Boardwalk from store to store until I ended up on the road, Parks Highway. It’s named after George Parks, by the way. I initially thought it was called Parks Highway because it leads to the National Park. But it is not so. George Parks Highway. Federal road in Burgenland. In the flatter part of Burgenland. However, at times with interesting bumps and sudden subsidences when the permafrost has collapsed again.
An asphalt sidewalk and bike path ran between the road and the Nenana River for a bit, then over a pedestrian bridge where you only had to hop to the side occasionally to avoid being run over by someone on a bike … we’ve been there before … Winnipeg!
However, the Nenana River is even browner than the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg, although that would already pass for very brown. With a reddish glow.
The color of the Nenana River comes from the silt. Because what is squeezing through the gorge at Denali National Park was still stuck in the eternal ice of the Nenana Glacier twelve hours earlier. Then it flowed south a bit to change its mind and turn north, passing through the Alaska Range and then heading west into the Bering Sea.
I looked down to the river and watched people getting into inflatable boats with dry suits and throwing themselves into the first rapids. My goodness, the rafting nightmare par excellence. Much too dangerous for my liking.
So I marched through the forest towards the Bus Depot in the National Park without bear spray and without bear bell. That’s where the buses leave. I had booked a tour for the day after next, but a guided tour, because I wanted to learn as much as possible about the park.
After exploring where the parking lots are and where the tours leave from, I stopped by the Visitor Center, where I promptly left my cell phone. A gracious soul brought it to the counter …
Should not happen. But it was a really nice walk. 15 km.
Back at the boardwalk of the tourist rip-off stores, behind which the RV nightmare Rainbow Village is located, I headed without further ado to an info center and asked about a rafting tour for the next day. A few minutes later I had my ticket in my hand. 6 p.m., because before that the weather app showed rain. Who wants to get wet when you’re in a boat? I had booked something extra easy, only category 3 rapids. Because I was scared enough anyway, ever since Paul had to save my life on a rafting trip 35 years ago.
Since then, my stomach tightens when I think of whitewater rafting. Since my entire journey had begun with the card now taped to Annie Way’s wall, the saying fit here, too: “If it scares you, it might be worth a try.” Or abbreviated, “Fear that thing, do that thing!” And because I hadn’t been afraid of anything for a while now, except bears of course, it was time to get me out of my own comfort zone.
The next day I saved $5 by not showering. If you go whitewater rafting, you don’t need to shower beforehand.
Since I had enjoyed the walk to the National Park Visitor Center so much, I marched off again. This time the sight of the boats on the Nenana River left me even less cold than the day before. The water was 2°C. Because it came directly from the glacier.
One dangerous thing per day is a good average, so this time I went with bear bell and bear spray. And I had even looked at how to get that safety thing off the bear spray with one grip. The little bell rang happily away, I didn’t have to sing, and the bear spray was neatly stowed in my backpack – knowing that it would be useless there in an emergency.
At 6pm, I was the only one who showed up at New Wave wearing a winter jacket (the one from Norway) and a hood (also the one from Norway). But then I was also the one who did not freeze. Not even in the hands, because they were warm from paddling.
I thought for a long time whether I should put the two photos, where I can be seen completely disfigured in the dry suit with helmet and life jacket, on the website. But then I realized one thing: This is Alaska. And that’s how people are in Alaska. Here, it doesn’t matter what you look like as long as your outfit matches what you need right now. I have seen women walking here in elegant dress with rubber boots. Anyone who lives in a climate so extreme that you don’t even have plumbing outside of cities because it’s technically impossible to do is probably more focused on the essentials than me, a spoiled European who whines about her perfume because she only uses a discreet deodorant here. Because of the bears, that is. They run after every perfume.
Long story short: Here are the photos!
From the moment I sat in the boat and had the paddle in my hand, the panic was over and I felt really comfortable. The guide, who skillfully steered us through the rapids, didn’t even want to give me a paddle at the beginning because he didn’t trust me in this respect (according to the motto: It’s enough if you don’t fall in!), but in the end he was fair enough to apologize for his prejudice. My parents had a boat when I was a kid – so I grew up with that kind of thing.
For a while the water was so calm that we put the paddles aside and the guide took our pictures. Things were a little more exciting in the canyons. A few times I got a wave right in the face. At one point I accidentally had my mouth open. Glacial water full of silt. This is the tiny abrasion that the glacier takes off the rocks and makes the water look so brownish. Felt strange in the mouth, like little pinpricks. Hurray for the hood under the helmet – my ears had also made intensive acquaintance with the ice-cold water, and through the wind I would have otherwise certainly chilled again.
The canyons were incredibly beautiful. Moose were grazing on the shore. It was a bit like watching a cheesy nature movie pass us by, if it weren’t for the guide’s instructions, shouted into the river noise, about who had to row and when.
Three and a half hours after leaving, we were back in our own clothes. And I had to restrain myself from booking the wilder tour for the very next day.
The next day I lined up on time at the bus depot for the guided tour into the national park. This time I was there with Annie Way, because we wouldn’t be back until late in the evening, and even though it would still be light out, I didn’t feel like walking through the woods at night.
What the driver told us! I’m not usually a fan of organized bus tours, but in this case it was the most efficient way to see and experience a lot in a short amount of time.
Unfortunately, Denali did not show up, because it was cloudy. Every year many climbers try to reach the summit. Unlike the Sagarmatha / Chomolungma, you are not allowed to leave anything on the mountain, but must take everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – back with you. But I still guess that the luggage gets lighter with time, because part of what you drink, you sweat out …
Regarding the numbers, the official statistics and the statements of our tour leader diverge. On the internet you can find a 60% success rate for those trying to climb Denali. The tour leader talked about 40-50%, last year even only 30% due to the weather. Fortunately, there were “only” two fatalities.
There I sat for hours next to a Texan, who sometimes forgot to look at what we just had in front of us, because of all the self-promotion. Denali is not as spectacular as Banff, where you can’t get out of being amazed. And yet … This quieter landscape went to my heart more than Banff.
Three major rivers run through the national park. Like most Alaskan rivers, they form ribbons, meaning they have a massive gravel bed through which several river courses meander. Even when the snow melts, it never becomes a single river, but when more water comes, more ribbons are formed. Only in gorges, which occasionally exist in the mountains, does it become a single stream – like the Nenana River in the Gorge, where I did the rafting trip. But normally the river valleys were formed when the ice age glaciers thawed, forming huge lakes on the glaciers. The end of the glaciers withstood the pressure of the water for a long time, but at some point these ice dams broke, and masses of water of several cubic kilometers rushed through the valleys – changing the landscape forever. That is why the river valleys are so wide and have fractures at the edges, because everything in between was carried away by the glacial water.
I stood on the edge of the Teklanika River bed and looked at the ribbons that cut through the gravel. End of July. About the same conditions Christopher McCandless aka Alex Supertramp found when he tried to leave his bus. He did not know that not far away the river divided into several ribbons – like where I was looking at it. He should have just kept going. True, through the boreal forest, but it was not particularly dense there – that would have been easy to do. And he did not know that the wild stream at the place where he stood was also different every day. When the sun shines, the river carries a lot of water and is wild a few hours later. When it is cloudy and cool, less ice melts, making rivers calmer and lower. – Such a senseless death. That made me sad.
The flowers in the national park were in full bloom, and some places looked like they were in the middle of a botanical garden.
For the first time I saw a Ptarmigan family up close, they look a bit like small partridges and are the national birds of Alaska. Both parents take care of the brood.
We also saw Caribous, Dall Sheep and a shuge moose bull.
When I left the national park in the evening, I was sad. Again a farewell – that’s what traveling is like.
In the morning I packed everything up, because Anchorage was on the agenda. I had no problem at all to leave the campsite to the Dirty Rainbow behind me, also the Tourist Rip-pff village did not give rise to any melancholy feelings. But when I saw the sign on Parks Highway for the park entrance, Annie Way suddenly braked, signaled, and turned.
I guess I’m powerless against Annie Way. We spent another two hours at a river in Denali National Park, then watched a cow moose feed for a long time, and then it was okay for me to leave. The fact that the mountain didn’t show itself again didn’t matter at all. I was just happy about this incredible landscape.
