The world renowned Denali National Park is the centrepiece for outdoors Alaska.  It contains the continent’s highest mountain, braided rivers, uncountable glaciers and magnificent remote country touched only by its bears, moose, caribou, wolves, Dall sheep and many other northern animals. It is by any standard an American treasure.  In planning this trip over the years our visit to Denali was one of the most anticipated sites.  And we finally made it!

We camped that first night near the entrance of the park, high on a ridge overlooking stunning glacier-carved mountains, attacked by our first hail storm of the trip but excited by our chance to visit this famous park.

Denali is not an easy park to visit.  There is only one road in and it is closed to public traffic.  The only way to travel this 85 mile gravel road is to buy a shuttle bus ticket which takes you as far as you pay to go.  It is quite restrictive and inflexible but with huge numbers of visitors trying to squeeze into a single access point over a very short summer the options are very limited.  We know that many national parks in the US, particularly places like Yellowstone and Yosemite, run the risk of being loved to death and creating a very unpleasant experience for visitors.  Denali solves it with expensive shuttle buses with limited options or stops, that’s just the way it is.

We caught a shuttle bus to ‘meet the dogs’ and watch a presentation of the husky dog sled teams that live and work in the park.  After setting up camp we took another shuttle to Savage River and did two magnificent walks – the first up and back along the banks of this beautiful mountain stream, flanked by high valley walls cut by glaciers all those eons ago.

The second walk, back to back on the first, was up a steep 1300 foot (400 metre) climb, switchback after switchback, high up onto a tundra-covered ridge, way above the tree line, looking down on the river and immense valley that was spread out below us.  It was a truly awesome experience, notwithstanding the huffing and puffing to get to the ridge, and we loved the notion of this revered land all around us.

The wind was howling so hard it almost swept us off the ledge but the skies were blue. And then without notice or expectation, emerging from the distant clouds was Mount Denali, just known as Denali, the highest mountain of North America, standing tall above all us, 20,320 feet (6550 metres) high.  Denali only reveals itself on rare occasions and many people visit the park without ever seeing it but from our high mountain top view we had first class seats to this mountain wonder.  And Denali holds a special place in our family’s heart because our nephew has climbed to the summit and on another expedition my brother was forced back by terrible weather when he was tantalisingly close to the top.  Epic stuff.

After the long walk back to camp, and a few sore muscles, we headed into the little community near the park for a celebration beer and dinner, a rare treat for us.  A couple of beers around our campfire later that night finished off a fabulous day.

The next day we broke the piggy bank and bought two shuttle bus tickets to take us all the way back to Wonder Lake at the end of the only road in the park.  This was a ten hour excursion in an old-style bus with 40 other keen Denali explorers.  Some parts of the day were extremely painful – we are not good at group travel – but that was more than compensated for by the stunning scenery we saw all day and the wildlife that we spotted – sometimes blocking our path on the narrow dirt track.

But the star of the park for our money, and the highlight of the day for us, was the absolutely astounding views of Denali – often just referred to by locals as ‘the mountain’.  We enjoyed clear and sparkling views virtually the whole day on what everyone said was a rare and wonderful blue sky event.

Denali glistened from all directions, huge glaciers pouring down its sides, the slightly lower North Summit acting as a prelude to the higher South Summit just behind.  The East and West Buttress – the latter of which is how Brad and Ken climbed it – acting as guardians over a range of snow-capped peaks that stretched in both directions.  We loved the mountain and privately revelled in the family connection.

After camping in one of the in-park campgrounds (with reservations we made 4 months ago!) we were back on a bus the next day, this time to join a small group for a ranger-led off-trail walk.  After almost three hours in the bus – and one beautiful blond grizzly with her brown cub – we were dropped off and headed up a trickling wash into some steep and moon-like mountains.  This was a unique way to see Denali from a completely different perspective without the crowds.

The ranger gave us a lot of information about the geology, history, plants and animals, all good stuff, and we scrambled up this steep scree slope – a bit tricky – for lunch views over this immense valley spread out below with the Alaska Ranges and three different glaciers as a backdrop.  We enjoyed the novelty and the off-trail aspect of this day plus got to see some of the magnificent highlights of the park from a different angle.  Great stuff.

The next day we drove up to Fairbanks, the state’s third largest city with about 32,000 people, the northerly most ‘city’ on the continent.  Fairbanks is unexciting and somewhat unappealing through visitors’ eyes but it is highly functional and we were able to complete a long list of action items such as giving Tramp a service, haircuts, restocking the pantry, fixing another crack in the windscreen and other such stuff.  In that regard Fairbanks aced it.

Our next mission was to head north and travel the Dalton Highway all the way to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean.    But even good plans can hit speed bumps and we caught a huge one at the end of our first day in Fairbanks.  Thank goodness we’re flexible and patient because that’s what we’re going to need!