Denali

Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America, and the highest vertical elevation in the World.  It’s set in Denali Wilderness which is within the Denali National Park.  We set out to day for a tour that includes the Denali Wilderness and Tundra.  The pictures speak for themselves.  But a few words of explanation about the tour.

No private vehicles are allowed within the Wilderness Park.  (There are a few exceptions, but on the whole the public are not allowed to roam free).  Transport is restricted to one road, and on registered buses only.  These are like old school buses: they are as uncomfortable as they look!!  There are only a few locations where we could get out of the bus, so a lot of my photos had to be taken through the window.  If I was lucky we could open it, but most of the sliding windows were old and extremely difficult to lower and raise.  Ours took 3 people to operate it!!!  

It was a very long 7 hour day, but well worth it.  We saw many caribou, hares, wild sheep, birds, and 7 grizzly bears, but these were the photos only captured in passing in the bus.

Some parts of the road were pretty “hairy”.  It’s only a dirt track with no kerbing or safety rails, and on the passes it was single lane only!  The buses run every 10 minutes, so the chances of meeting another bus on the pass were high - and we did a number of times.

These grizzlies were a mum and 2 3yo cubs.  They were quite a distance from the road, and so intent with gorging on soapberries they totally ignored us.