Continued from the previous page.

THE REST OF THE DESCENT

As I descended the Alpine Trail from Thorofare Ridge the sun gradually came out more brightly and the clouds began to lift or move out over Denali and the surrounding peaks.

Halfway down Thorofare I could see Denali's Muldrow Glacier (above arrow in next photo) but clouds still obscured the north and south peaks:

Several high summits in the range to the left (east) of Denali became visible again:

L-R:  Mt. Eielson in foreground (5,802'), Wedge Peak (10,239'),
Mt. Silverthorne (13,220'), Mt. Brooks (11,940'), and Denali's east buttress (14,630').

More blue sky to the south now

Panning left some more . . .

The clouds continued lifting over Denali's north and south peaks as I slowly descended:

I was two-thirds of the way down to the visitor center before Denali reappeared in full.

There you are, you Big, Beautiful Mountain!

I'm fascinated with Denali. I took many more photos of it today than this. It's similar to the feeling I have about Pike's Peak when we're in Colorado Springs. That mountain is such a prominent feature in the landscape, and I've hiked and run on it enough, that it simply mesmerizes me.

One low cloud to the west of the Muldrow Glacier was visible from my vantage point before I got down to the road but it didn’t obscure the north and south peaks:

I took more pictures on the way down Thorofare Ridge than up. I talked with several other people taking photos of Deanli as it rather suddenly reappeared.

A photographer waits patiently for the clouds to lift over Denali.

I'm guessing Denali and grizzly bears are the two most popular things in this park for people to photograph. Or maybe that's just me.

More photos from the descent are below.

CLUELESS

Although I was literally and figuratively "focused" on watching Denali reappear beneath the clouds as I came down the trail, when I was over halfway down I did notice a white pick-up truck parked on the curve of the road about one-eighth mile east of the visitor center:

 

I couldn’t see the logo on the side of the truck nor all of the road between the truck and the entrance to the visitor center. I thought maybe there was some construction being done out of my range of vision or perhaps a broken-down vehicle.

The driver stopped every west-bound bus for a couple of minutes, then they proceeded. Some stopped at the visitor center and others did not. I was watching for green shuttle buses because I needed a ride back to the park entrance on one of them.

I didn’t realize at the time that it is out of the ordinary for some green and tan buses to not stop but later learned the ranger in the white pickup told them to continue on if their destination was farther west, and not stop at Eielson as usual.

I was also too high and/or preoccupied with Denali to notice that there were no more people on the loop or river trails below the visitor center – or even on the roof-top observation deck:

 

 

What I did notice at 2:30 PM when I got down to the road was a sign at the trailhead saying the trail was closed due to a bear in the vicinity. I didn't read the fine print:

Cool, I thought, and looked around the way I'd come. I figured the bear was up that way.

No grizzly in sight. My left brain knew that was good. My right brain wanted to see a bear. I had bear spray but it was in my pack because I was above tree line the whole time where I could see a bear and there were other people around.

I never dreamed I might actually need bear spray near this busy visitor center!

Still mostly clueless as to the ramifications of this situation, I went through the parking lot and over to the rooftop deck to take more pictures of Denali:

 

 

 

Muldrow Glacier again

Again, I was so "focused" on taking pictures that I didn’t notice that there were lots of people just sitting in several buses that were parked there, that no one else was on the observation deck or walking through the parking lot, and that no one was on the trails below the building.

There were no ropes or signs to stay off the deck from the direction I approached and no one stopped me or yelled at me to leave that location.

What I didn't realize was that the entire Eielson area was in the second stage of a grizzly "lockdown."

NEW CONCEPT TO ME:  "BEAR LOCKDOWN"

I started down the steps from the rooftop observation area to the nice paved courtyard near the visitor center entrance. About two dozen people were milling around the courtyard. The bottom of the steps was roped off so people wouldn't go up where I had just been.

As I was walking down the steps I asked what was going on. One of the visitors said they were on bear “lockdown” and had to stay inside the visitor center or on the concrete patio close to it.

A grizzly bear had been spotted below the visitor center and the staff was concerned about peoples’ safety. The bear was several hundred feet away and out of our sight in a gully below the road where the ranger was parked in his white truck.

Here's the trail map at Eielson again. I marked in red the path the bear took while I was at the visitor center:

Number 1 indicates the first location of the ranger in the truck as I was descending the Alpine Trail. He stayed there for a couple hours or more until the bear suddenly ran through the parking lot above the visitor center and down the gully just west of the building.

I don't know if it was that ranger or a second one who moved a truck to location #2 to observe the bear's movements over there.

Here's another way to illustrate the bear's movements. I happened to take several photos from up on the Alpine Trail that show the gullies on either side of the visitor center:

Approximate bear trajectory and two locations where rangers' trucks were stationed

As I was coming down the trail the ranger at the truck at location # 1 appeared to be stopping all the buses to tell the drivers what was going on and to give them instructions.

While he was doing that the passengers were probably busy taking photos of the bear!

 
View from the visitor center courtyard:  westbound shuttle bus, a gray park truck, and
the white truck with the park ranger above the gully where the bear was browsing

Meanwhile, there were probably at least twenty people still up on the mountain that began their hikes after I did. I don’t know if anyone went up to warn them after I came down -- it's a big area up there. I turned around a few times to take photos behind me and didn't see anyone else coming down.

I also don’t know what the rangers would have done if the bear had suddenly crossed the road and gone up in that direction. Hikers were all strung out over more than a mile on the trail and farther than that up on the plateau.

Everyone except the ranger-led group was probably unaware of the bear situation down below because cell phones don't work much beyond the entrance area of the park. The ranger had a radio.

NOW WHAT?  HURRY UP & WAIT . . .

The bus dispatcher appeared very busy with a group of people outside his door so I went inside to use the bathroom.

No one was allowed on the loop trails or riverbed below the visitor center, either.
They would have been even less safe this afternoon than the ridge I was on.

By the time I went back outside a higher level of lockdown was in place (third stage, someone called it) because the bear was getting closer to the visitor center. Everyone now had to stay within about 50 feet of the door or inside.

Two female rangers tried to keep everyone within bounds verbally. The young male ranger hadn’t gotten back from his guided hike yet (he had to cut it short when radioed to come back and help) and the place didn’t appear to have enough staff to deal with all the visitors.

Most people behaved well, although some were determined to get photos if the bear appeared.

Not me. Not five days after a grizzly bear 10-12 miles from here mauled a guy probably because he was too close taking photos.

 

I was finally able to get on the list for a return bus. Since I was about twenty-five people down the standby list I didn’t get on the next bus to leave (~ 2:45 PM).

STAGES 3½ AND 4

New rules appeared to be implemented after about fifteen of those people were allowed to leave.

No more passengers were allowed off the arriving Eielson buses (which were the only ones allowed to park there – Wonder Lake and camper buses had to bypass the visitor center for two to three hours) and standbys like me, who’d gotten off other buses to hike, weren’t allowed to get on any of the returning buses.

So I hung around outside in the pleasant, warm sunshine for another hour, taking more photos, watching the clouds come and go over Denali, and talking to folks.

Most visitors hoped they'd see the bear; the rangers just wanted it to go away!

The bear remained in the gully but was making his way up toward the road very slowly.

About 3:45 PM the ranger at the truck blew his horn, the signal for the next, more drastic stage of the lockdown. The bear was coming over the ridge toward the visitor center, apparently rather fast.

The two female rangers guarding the courtyard were screaming at people to get inside quickly without running -- or taking pictures, as some did.

I did not. Jim would be proud of me -- he worries that I'll get mauled someday because I'll take pictures instead of whipping out my bear spray if I encounter a bear. I was behind some other people and unfortunately didn’t even see this grizzly.

 
Antlers from two bull moose who locked horns, couldn't disengage,
and slowly died right there (DRT) at Moose Creek several years ago

By the time we were herded into the visitor station the ranger who was leading the hike up the mountain was back with his group and able to help with crowd control.

As we milled around inside the visitor center for about 45 minutes we learned that the bear went running through the parking lot after an Arctic ground squirrel -- which he caught and quickly devoured in front of the folks in the buses.

That must have been entertaining! 

Then he sauntered down a gully on the other side of the visitor center like he owns the place or something . . .

The road side of the visitor center is earth-sheltered so we missed all that commotion and didn’t see the bear. From inside we could only see that the ranger had moved his truck to the gully just west of the building so he could continue monitoring the bear's location.

 
A wall of windows faces west toward Denali.

About 4:30 PM one green shuttle bus was allowed to pull close to the steps near the dispatcher’s office. About fifteen people had gotten off the bus when it first arrived, before the bear scare and lockdown fully developed.

The remainder had to wait on the bus for two-plus hours and weren’t allowed off when it was finally allowed to leave. I was so thankful I wasn't stuck on a bus during this whole episode.

AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION W/ BOARDING  

The boarding procedure was very strict.

Only ten people at a time could board the bus, starting with the fifteen who had originally been on it. They had to closely follow the dispatcher about 150 feet across the courtyard to the bus. A ranger followed behind (bear spray and gun in hand, presumably).

It looked like grade school all over again, except for the gun and bear spray!

Beautiful view of the Alaska Range from the visitor center during lockdown

Then the dispatcher and ranger came back for the second and third groups of ten. I was in the third group, one of the stand-bys. My bus was full on the return trip to the park entrance.

We left the parking lot at 4:45 PM. I’d been there since 2:30 PM waiting for a ride. The last time I hiked up to the ridge I had only about a 10-minute standby wait.

BEARS RULE AT DENALI 

Some of this seemed very over-the-top. I don't know if this is SOP or if the rangers were just being super-cautious after the recent grizzly mauling that resulted in the death of the first person at Denali in 95 years.

They let this bear do what it wanted to do and humans had to be the ones to adapt. That’s pretty much what Denali is all about and I agree with it. It was a graphic learning experience.

Fun with PhotoShop

Some people don't think the grizzly who (might have) killed that hiker last Friday should have been shot. He was most likely simply defending his cache, as bears do naturally.

I don’t have that strong of a feeling about the grizzly being killed, since it had tasted human flesh and might be aggressive hunting for more. My main concern is whether it is actually the bear that killed the guy or a larger one that came by later and took over the killer's human meal.

The real killer grizz could still be out there, and it was close enough to Eielson to be this one.

Illustrated weather calendar at the visitor center showing visibility of Denali at 9 AM each day
this month.  I marked the three days I've been here -- two that were 100% clear, and today. What luck!

I’m very glad I got to hike most of what I wanted. It's no big deal that I wasn't able to also hike the loop below the visitor center or down to the river. I would have been very disappointed if I had paid for that bus ride and not been able to go up Thorofare Ridge as planned.

That was the major point of my bus ride, not seeing Denali again. I didn’t think I’d even see the mountain today. 

I know some of the people who went out to Eielson didn’t get to hike like they’d planned. That’s why there was a stand-by jam – more people stayed on the buses because they either couldn’t hike anywhere or they couldn't even get off to go into the visitor center, and the ones who hiked earlier like me piled up because the buses weren’t allowed to leave when they were scheduled to go.

  
Bright leaf colors along the lower part of the trail, and a bit of melting ice

This bear incident clearly illustrates the purpose of Denali National Park & Preserve – to protect and preserve the ecosystem from humans as much as to protect the humans from wildlife.

Denali (then called Mt. McKinley) was the first national park in the system. Charles Sheldon and friends lobbied Congress and the President very hard to establish it, initially for the protection of the Dall sheep.

It was also very important to protect the other animals, including wolves, from hunters. And with grizzly bear populations declining in most other places in North America, it's equally important to protect Denali's bears, too.

The sign at the trailhead -- which I didn’t fully read until I downloaded the photos I took -- says “Trail closed. Bear in the area. We share this landscape with bears. Human activities will resume when the bear moves on.”

That pretty much sums up the park philosophy. At Denali, bears (and other wildlife) rule. People adapt.

Despite some inconvenience, I'm glad I got to learn about that concept first-hand today.

Continued on the next page:  photos from the bus ride back to the entrance  (saw a different grizzly right next to the bus this time)

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