Continued from the previous page.
I left the saddle on Thorofare Ridge at 11:48 AM. I descended in 26
minutes, including talking to several folks and taking some more
pictures. I used one trekking pole and had no problems coming back down.
About half way down I met the ranger-led hiking group of eleven people.
The two couples from Tek that got on the same bus at Tek this morning
that I did decided to wait from 10:30 to 12 to go on that hike.
I saw the group reach the saddle at 1:48 PM, when I was hiking down on
the Tundra Loop Trail below the visitor center. If they left on time, it
took them almost two hours to get up there!! It took me only 35 minutes,
including taking lots of photos.
Those "sticks" are the folks in the ranger-led
group.
I don’t know how long they spent on top or how long it took them to come
down. I was very glad I decided to go on my own. I hope I didn't miss
too much interesting information presented by the ranger.
TUNDRA LOOP TRAIL
When I got back down to the visitor center I took some more pictures of
Denali as more and more clouds developed . . .
. . . then
hiked around the paved and smooth gravel loops and spur trails below the
visitor center.
I decided not to go all the way down to the river to wander around. You
could probably walk over a mile if you took all the trails, and even
more if you went down to the river.
Here's a partial view
of the loop trail looking down from the ridge:
Here are some views from "ground" level:
Looking up to the visitor center and Thorofare
Ridge
Looking south to Gorge Creek; the Thorofare River (background)
comes down from the Alaska Range.
Looking SW to the Thorofare riverbed and Denali
Trail to the riverbed
Another cute little furry ground squirrel
Colorful tundra plants, a reminder that autumn
comes very early and is fleeting
Bees gotta get ready for winter, too. This flower
is called Labrador Tea.
In addition to the more strenuous ranger-led alpine hike at noon, there is a much easier walk
led by a ranger every day at 1 PM along the Tundra Loop Trail. It's
called the
Eielson Stroll.
The leisurely walk, which lasts about 45 minutes to cover half a mile of
trail, is free and not limited to a certain number of people. All you
have to do is get to the visitor center in time and gather with the other visitors who want
to go on the hike.
I got one good last look at Denali, the peak now mostly covered by clouds, and told the
bus dispatcher I was ready to go back to Tek.
CATCHING A BUS BACK TO TEK
Denali park personnel encourage people to get on and off the shuttle
buses essentially anywhere along the 92-mile route in order to see more
of the park.
If a passenger wants to get back on a bus going either outbound or
inbound that is not at a regular stop like the Toklat Rest Area, Eielson
Visitor Center, or Wonder Lake, all (s)he has to do is stand along the
road and wait for a green shuttle bus with an empty seat to stop and let
him/her board. At regular bus stops, procedures vary.
The bottom line is that passengers need to be proactive to catch a ride.
There is at least one person on duty at Eielson who keeps track of all
the incoming and outgoing shuttle and tour buses -- and there are
a lot of them. Eielson is the most popular destination along the entire park
road and is the location with the most people getting on and off buses
for varying times.
The young dispatcher on duty today works out of a small office at courtyard level
between the main entrance to the visitor center and the ramp up to the
parking area. He communicates by radio or in person with each bus driver to ascertain if there
are extra seats going either direction, particularly eastbound (back
toward the park entrance).
He added me to his list of eastbound names and said two buses would be
leaving in the next ten minutes. He’d already given the five-minute warning
signal to board for passengers who arrived on the first bus.
Most of them returned so he recommended that five of us who were waiting
take the next bus because it was half-empty.
Indeed it was.
Wayne
Wayne’s bus had 29 empty seats (out of 52) after we all
got on. We picked up a few more people on the way back toward the
entrance but I had a third-row right-hand seat all to myself the whole
way back to Tek (same seat as outbound on the earlier bus, but at the
window).
That’s the side with more views to the south on the return trip but
there's no guarantee on which side the Big Five park animals will be
grazing.
We saw lots of bears (with and without cubs), caribou (singles and in
pairs), and Dall sheep on the return. The folks on this Eielson bus had
also seen lot of critters on the way out, just as the passengers on my
outbound Eielson bus. Two men seemed to be in
competition to see who could spot the bears first – and they were good!
None of the grizzlies were as close as the ones Jim was privileged to
see on his bike, however (more about that on the next page). I did spot a caribou on my side
pretty close to the bus:
Several of the grizzly bears and caribou were in river bars, out in the open and
easier to spot than when they’re in the willows or high on a hillside:
We saw four Dall sheep fairly close to the road on a rocky outcrop on the
south side of Polychrome Pass:
That’s the closest I’ve been to either the sheep or caribou so far.
Continued on the
next page: more scenes along the park
road, walking through the Teklanika riverbed to our campsite, and Jim's
bike ride to Sable Pass (cute bear pictures!)
Happy trails,
Sue
"Runtrails & Company" - Sue Norwood, Jim O'Neil,
and Cody the ultra Lab
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© 2012 Sue Norwood and Jim O'Neil
