Riverside wakeup, foray into Denali

Enjoying a slow breakfast by the river, I watch very large (and very far along in spawning) salmon lazily coasting through the water just inches from the bank I'm standing on. The biologic transformation these things undergo amazes me...

Driving just a couple miles down the road, I find a rest stop complete with camping spots and cell service. Perhaps I should have pressed on just a little further last night for the reward of some access to civilization. You just never know whats around the bend, which is part of the fun for me. Countless times on this trip I've stumbled upon breathtaking views, with the sunlight landing just perfectly or I've accidentally surprised bear/moose/bison and all sorts of wildlife caught in their daily ramblings. Sometimes its just a perfect camping spot, or pull off to enjoy lunch. Occasionally its a side road to a great little town or unplanned hike. I guess it's just one of the benefits of very little planning- it allows for so many unplanned adventures.

The entrance to Denali national park isn't too far from camp. As I close in on it, I'm actually getting a little uneasy, imagining the throngs of tourists waiting for me. I assume it will be like my experience at Old Faithful while backpacking the CDT. Coming out of a decently secluded journey through nature and being thrust into a crowd of overweight and unaware tour bus sightseers. I've basically already decided that I'm going to pop into the park and poke around long enough to be disappointed and move along, leaving it to the cruise ship/tour bus types. Thankfully, my assumptions only proved to be half right.

Yes, there are plenty of people in the park and yes, you can only go into the park in any significant way on the park buses, but as soon as I struck up a conversation with the back country permit ranger, I realized that the real park is seen on foot. Thankfully. We pour over maps and a few pictures as he shares a few hike he's done and some he's heard of others do. There aren't really trails in the park, but the ever running bus system allows for awesome hop off, hike and hop back on type trips. He and I create a rough loop plan, allowing me two nights in the back country, hiking south from a spot along the bus route and just exploring to my hearts content before turning north and hitting the dirt road again to flag down a bus to return me to the gates. Suddenly I'm wishing I had budgeted more time for the park and not just a cursory glance.

The Ranger I'm working with seems excited to actually be talking to someone trying to get out there. The whole time we are talking he's being interrupted by visitors with surprisingly silly questions. He fields them with patience, but I can easily hear his change in tone when he's helping them. There seems to be two distinct sides to this park. I'm impressed with not only how knowledgeable and helpful this ranger proved to be for me, but even the mandatory bear/backcountry safety videos were good.

To properly enter the park, one must ride one of their buses. The road is well maintained, but dirt/gravel and rather narrow in places. I've been assigned one of the "camper' buses, and sort out where I can park the van as well as where to hop on a bus. The camper bus is a no frills, corrugated metal school bus. Well kept, but obviously designed with gear and dirty hikers in mind. I'm reminded of my somewhat second class seats on the train returning from my hike over the Chilkoot pass. Truly, it met any need or expectation I had. And, having folks that were at least camping (in paid, designated campgrounds) or actually hitting the backcountry at least insured my fellow riders were at least a little "outdoorsy". Lord, I do sound like an outdoor elitist, huh?

The ride into the park is slow going but largely picturesque. A sizable portion of the miles don't have much of a view, and I grab a quick nap. I wake as the bus stops to pick up a couple backcountry hikers flagging us down and actually riding deeper into the park. The couple are fit and beautiful. A bit younger than me perhaps, in short shorts and short sleeves, baring tanned skin on capable musculature. He is carrying a spotting scope and she is carrying a mug of the tea they are both sharing. Smiling, flirting and casually affectionate, I find myself jealous of what they appear to have and the fact that they get to share it here.

Thanks to their keen eye, and spotting scope, we spot a few mountain goats and a moose as we head deeper in. As we close in on where I planned on hopping off we "spot" two grizzly. They would have been hard to miss, as they are standing in the middle of the road. We end up tailing them as the amble down the center of the road, perfect for all the buses coming along to allow their passengers photos. This slows our progress to a crawl, as the buses pile up and kindly play a game of leapfrog to ensure each bunch of visitors get their photos. Eventually, the big momma and her cub veer off of the switchbacking road and cut directly downhill. Directly to my planned drop off.

The driver looks back to me over his right shoulder and says, "ya know I can't drop you off here anymore. I've gotta get you at least a half mile or more from the last sighting, and they're only heading along with us."

Well crap.

He and I talk it out a bit as I review the topo map I bought from the ranger. Plan B- hop off this bus, and onto one headed back the direction I came, to hit an alternate wash/creekbed that looks navigable to me. It should take me around the backside of the mountain I intended to climb from the front, far enough away from the bears, assuming they keep their same heading. The driver deftly preforms a series of hand signals to an oncoming bus to sort out a seat for me. The bear are nowhere to be seen, but were last spotted quite close, so he advises me to hop onto the other bus quickly. I do.

This is evidently not a "camper" bus, as it is much more plush. The seats and their riders have a bit more cushion. They all seem a bit amazed I'd chose that spot to go outside. This bus backtracks me about a mile, where I hop off once again. The eyes looking at me out the windows are wide eyed. "Didn't he see the bears?" I heard one gal ask as I passed her seat getting off. This park does a good job instilling fear into its visitors evidently.

I hike up alongside a dry creekbed, using what appear to be game trails roughly half the time. After a couple miles, I veer off up a wash to start gaining elevation towards a saddle just behind Stony Peak, of some such named rise. One of the rules with the back country permits is you can't camp within view of the road. This helps create the feeling of being more "out there" even if you are on a bus. My plan is to feel out how difficult the ascend is, with a likely flat spot in this saddle just south of the peak that will offer me either a camp or a spine to walk deeper into the adjoining mountains. So, I'll either have a peak to hide behind or I'll have gained most of the elevation into this cluster of mountains already. The climb proves rather taxing as it become ever steeper and rather loose towards the top. All I've got to go on is the topo map and visual reading of the lay of land as I go. It's an informed path, but an improvised one and a bit more difficult than I initially thought. Topping out above the valley was made all the sweeter, having earned it.

My camp ends up being a alpine basin of sorts- a low spot between three adjoining ridge lines. There are a couple of Caribou waiting for me when I climb up to this little three way saddle, making it all the more picturesque and helping me decide to stop here. Despite all my time up here where the sun doesn't set, its still tough for me to stop while there is still daylight to make progress. But, the surroundings are wonderful in my little basin and even the tundra under my feet is soft and inviting. After dropping my pack, I take a short hike over to a cliff edge offering a view back the way I came, allowing me to admire my progress from that first creekbed. Well, I've found my spot to cook dinner now too.

The guidelines that are taught in Denali when it comes to camping in grizzly country is the "Golden Triangle". It is basically an expansion on the general rule of don't cook where you sleep and store your food outside of your camp too. On the AT, there are enough trees to make bear-bagging (hanging your food from a high branch) realistic. Not here. Treeline is quite low here and my whole hike will be above it. So, the Denali way is camp at the top of the triangle, with a point downwind 100 yards to cook and another 100 yards downwind (and separated 100 yards from the cook spot). While this may seem on first blush as a safety thing, with the hiker's well being in mind, I actually think it is more motivated by protecting the bear. I say this because of the lengths this method goes to ensure a bear, even if it smells your cooking space and/or finds your stored food, will never associate it with the tent at camp. This keeps the bear from easy habituation with humans... largely because a habituated bear is in theory a dangerous bear and would need to be relocated or put down. Anyway, My overlook will serve nicely for cooking and storing my food away from camp. Setting camp quickly, I strip out of my sweat damp hiking clothes to get dressed for dinner at the overlook.

But, for some reason, I'm in no rush to get dressed again.

I'm no exhibitionist, or nudist, but for some reason I find myself inspired to take a truly "ultralight" walk around my new home. There's no way I can capture that feeling. It was a perfect culmination of a million little variables, and wonderfully freeing. Once again, smiling like a fool, surveying my current situation and surroundings. I'm thankful, but so much more than just that. Awed. Humbled. Lucky. But also puzzled. As I contemplate taking a nudescape photo with my big camera's timer to capture a landmark image to help me resurrect this feeling, I'm reminded I'm out here alone. The aloneness has often been a positive thing for me, but on this particular day it is almost crushingly negative. Why am I not sharing this moment, this smile, this photo, this adventure with someone alongside? This experience up here "in the wild" is something I'll never forget, but it only exists in my mind, and in some small sense here in my writing. I do like to imagine those reading along on the adventure have some appreciation for it too, but I can't help but feel my self-sufficiency working against my overall satisfaction. Or maybe that self reliance is faltering. I shake off the thoughts of laying naked in this soft spongy tundra with "my person" and put on my clothes like armor against my own brain.

I snag my cooking stuff and Kevlar "bear proof" food bag and hike out to my cliffside kitchen. This hike kindof popped out of nowhere on me, so I had to raid some of my back up meals from the van when hastily packing. With another, much different smile, I pull out an old pre-packaged dehydrated Mountain House meal package. These have never been a favorite or a staple of my hikes. Partially too expensive and partially because they were a chemical cesspool when I first started my long walks. But, this particular package was a old gift from an even older friend I made on the AT. He'd doctored the packaging to an inside joke of ours from our thru-hike. It immediately brought me back there to our fun in 2006 and again a decade later when we climbed the epic final mountain one more time together. In the ten minutes I have to let the package reconstitute after pouring boiling water into it, I relish the cascade of a million other shared memories with countless other damn fine friends from that era that bubble to the surface. Thanks E-Rock!

After my meal down memory lane, I stroll back to my camp, thinking of my path up here and the one that lays ahead. There is no trail. Its so very different than my time on the AT and CDT. I have no clear end goal, other than get back to the road eventually, and surely no defined way of getting there. I've simply eyeballed a route via topo lines. Often the area is a bit different in reality than imagined despite the map's best efforts. More than once I had to adjust my route up here due to terrain being simply impassable. and more than once, this led me to take a more direct route up... which is never the easy way. Its fostered a bit of respect from me for the trail builders out there. Countless times I've wondered, or lamented, or possibly yelled- "why the hell did they put the trail HERE!?". Now I've got a little better understanding I guess. Over-landing is quite a different animal to hiking a well kept trail.

Once back at my tent, I decide to pull out my book and put this ever present light to use, even if It's not for making miles. Thankfully, it serves to direct my mind into its world and not back into my own emerging loneliness. At least for the night.