Mt. McKinley Photo

Mt. McKinley (20,230 ft.) is in the center of Denali National Park's 6 million acres and is usually surrounded by clouds during the month of July.  The rangers told us that it is usually only visible about 2 days in July.  Well, we lucked out and had two perfectly clear sunny days and this is what it looked like.

No Snakes & Only a Few Mosquitoes SO FAR

There are no snakes here in Alaska and only a few amphibians.  It is evidently too cold for them.  One ranger told us that there is a Wood Frog in Denali which freezes solid in the Winter and then thaws out in Spring.

Everyone warned us that the mosquitoes were TERRIBLE here but, so far, we have not encountered big swarms YET.  We have only had to break out our mosquito head nets twice and that was in the Yukon Territory.  We'll let you know if this situation gets worse as we drive back into Canada.  We hope not!! 

 

Heating Your Car at 40 Below

We are in Fairbanks now where it gets down to 40 or more below in the winter.  You can tell if a car belongs to a full time Alaskan or is a rental by looking at the radiator grill.  If there is a cord hanging out, they are almost certainly here in the winter where you have to plug in your car.  According to Bill, the cord connects to a heater in the oil sump to keep it warm.

Here in Fairbanks we saw electrical outlets on poles in parking lots and could not figure out what they were for.  Then, it dawned on us that they are to plug your car in when you are at work! 

This photo was taken at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks.  Each pole has 4 electrical outlets on it. 
Life is different up here!!

No Flashlights Needed Up Here

We have not used our flashlights YET on this trip.  It stays light all the time.  They say that there are about 2-3 hours of darkness in the summer, but it doesn't seem like that to us.  When we go to bed around 10:30 or 11:00, the sun is still shining.  It sets around midnight and is then what I would call dusk or twilight.  It never gets dark and you can't see any stars. 

I go through an elaborate procedure every night before we go to bed.  I made blackout curtains for Rita's windows which I hang.  Then, we realized that the opaque glass door panel lets in a lot of light so I now hang as piece of black felt over the door.  The final step is to hang something to block the light from the skylight in the center of Rita's roof.  Then, we are finally ready to go to sleep.  You are probably thinking that it would be easier to just use an eye mask like they hand out on airplanes, but I can't seem to sleep with one on. 

Here is the material I used for the Rita's curtains.  I lined them with special blackout material. 

Sally

Moose Roadkill Lottery

We went to the ranger talks every night at the campground.  One ranger talked about moose and their life cycle in the park throughout the year.  She told us that there is an official government program for residents of Alaska.  They can sign up for the Moose Roadkill Lottery.  When a moose is killed in the winter on a road, it quickly freezes since it can get up to 40 degrees below zero.  People who have signed up for the lottery are notified and can come get a portion of the moose, which is cut by using a chainsaw.  The ranger told us that people hang up the piece in their shed or garage where it will stay frozen solid until spring when they can cut it into manageable pieces.

As Bill said in an earlier blog, it's different up here!! 

Searching for a Moose Shed

I went on a ranger-led Discovery Hike at Denali National Park while Bill hiked with our friend Dennis.  Bill decided that his back was not up for another bumpy ride on a pretty basic school bus.  The Discovery Hikes are wonderful and are really the way to see Denali.  Otherwise, all you can do is ride the bus out to the end of the 90 mile road and then back again.  The bus driver stops for picture taking along the way and people get very excited about photographing a wild animal.   They never step foot into the wilderness except for the stops at the bathrooms and the visitor's center.  On the Discovery Hike, you and 10 other people are taken out to a certain point on the road and dropped off with your ranger.  Our hike started at mile 49. 

My Discovery Hike with Ranger Jake included couples from Kansas, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Australia.  I was the only Southerner.  When we started out, Jake told us that we would be looking for a Moose Shed.  I was not sure what that was but was willing to look.  We hiked across the tundra for about 2 miles up to a ridge -- about a 600 foot elevation gain.   Here I am on the tundra. 

It is difficult to hike across tundra.  It is very spongy and full of holes.  We also went through willow forests and were on the lookout for moose.  We yelled as we walked through the willows to let any moose know we were coming.  Bull moose can be very dangerous and don't like to have their personal space invaded.  The ranger said that they can charge you.  Since they are huge (up to 8 feet tall at their shoulders), you have to be careful.  We did see one once we got up to the ridge, but he was far enough away that we did not have to worry. 

Anyway, we finally did find a Moose Shed.  Here is what it looks like:

It turns out that a Moose Shed is the place where a moose loses its antlers -- not a building (shed) for a moose!  A moose grows new antlers each year and loses them each winter after the annual mating season in the fall, called the Rut.  We found 2 Moose Sheds on the hike.  Here is a picture of me holding one.  They are huge and very heavy so I didn't hold it for long. 

We also saw a mother bear and her cub off in the distance.  The cub appeared to be frolicking while she foraged for food.  They were WAY away, so we didn't have to worry.

It was a great hike, on a beautiful day and in a beautiful national park.

Our Tenting Friends

We have met some interesting people and made some nice friends on our trip.  Here are our new friends Larry and Margie from Ohio.  They are in their early 70's and are a little more rugged than we are.   They camped in a tent during their 2 month trip around Alaska while we must admit that we are spoiled by Rita's luxury.  We met them on the ferry going to Sikta and were on the ferry again with them to Juneau.  Then, we crossed paths with them in Valdez and Homer.  This picture was taken at the Valdez harbor where we shared a delicious salmon burger dinner.  They are ahead of us in their travels so we have been texting back and forth about places to stay and things to see.  They are back home now, and Margie says that she is enjoying being back in her home and especially having her bed, bathroom and kitchen again -- in that order.  After awhile, you get tired of living out of a toiletry kit and taking showers in moderately adequate bath houses. We sometimes shower in Rita, but we have to be very careful about the water and take "military" showers.  We are not tired of traveling yet, but I'm sure we will be by the end of this trip!  We have been on the road for almost 3 months and are now on the downhill journey -- with about 2 1/2 months to go. 

A Smaller Trailer than Rita

These are our new friends, Dennis and Judy, from Norris Tennessee.  We met them in Denali National  Park at Teknalika Campground and shared dinner and then a campfire with them.  They are traveling around Alaska in a 13 ft. Scamp trailer.  Rita is 17 feet long and has about 80 sq. ft. while they have about 50.  Rita seems pretty luxurious!!  

Ranger-Guided Discovery Hike into Polychrome Mts.

Sally and I stayed in Denali National Park for ten days. Denali is different from other national parks from the standpoint that there are very few trails, and the Park Service encourages people to hike off trail. The Park is so vast that it has been decided that the natural beauty of the park can be preserved better if trails are not created, and people are encouraged to wander in different areas. Studies have shown that for the tundra in Denali, less then 20 steps in the same spot will allow the vegetation and soil to recover, maintaining the naturalness of the area. When hiking with a ranger, we were encouraged to spread out and not step in the same spots.

Being a little uncomfortable about hiking off into the wilderness on our own, and also being unfamiliar with the nature of the area, we signed up for a ranger-guided hike in the Polychrome area of Denali. This is an area of scree covered mountains which have an artistic array of colors from the various colors in the rocks.  Scree, by the way, is loose rock.  To get there we had to ride the bus for 68 miles one way and meet our ranger. The experience gave us a lot of confidence in finding nice hikes on our own, but also made us appreciate the commentary of a very knowledgeable ranger on our surrounds and how to appreciate and deal with those surroundings. 

This is our hiking group and the area that we were hiking in.  Sally was the oldest woman there and guess who was the oldest man??

We had hiked in scree before, but never in difficult trailless scree.  We should have known early on that this would be a different kind of hike when we came across this caribou that was in the dried up riverbed that we wanted to go along.  The Ranger said that we should not stress out the animal.  If it uses its energy to flee from us, and then has to flee from a wolf, it may not have the energy to escape.  Consequently we hiked well up above the animal on the side of the scree slope.

Look at the worst side, and that is where we were hiking.  We were traversing the sides of these slopes.  At one point one of the young men hiking with us started slipping down, and could not move further.  He started to hyperventilate.  The man was not prepared, as he only had on running shoes and not boots so could not get a boot edge into the slope which was dry and hard.  He also did not have hiking (trekking) poles.  The ranger had to come back, give him his poles, and talk him through each step that he took.  It was a little scary as it was a long way down.   We were hiking up to the ridge in the upper left of the picture.

This is the ridge we were going up to, and some of the scree we hiked in.  I did not take pictures of us hiking in it because it was a little too serious.

Now ridge hiking is a lot of fun as the views are wonderful, and the walking is easy.  We could not wait to get up there.

As we got near our ridge this is what we saw:  a Dall Sheep who was eating flowers on the ridge.  He came over to investigate what all of the racket was about.  We thought he would quietly move on and keep grazing, but he did not.

He kept a watch on us, so what did we do?  Well, instead of getting to the top of the ridge, we stayed about 50 yards below him on the side of the scree slope and went around him.  He followed us for a ways to make sure that we stayed down there.  We finally headed down the mountain side.

Bill and Sally with our Ranger Ross

A Dall Sheep up close from the bus.

Not only are the mountains beautiful, the vegetation and lichens paint the landscape wonderfully.

Arctic squirrel with mustache in Denali

We saw this cute Arctic Squirrel who was stuffing his face with some seed pods.  It reminded us of our neighbor Harold when he delivered a Valentine's Day Singing Telegram to me from Bill.  Harold made a fake mustache out of dryer lint and Bill said this squirrel looked like Harold!!  Not sure what the plant is, but the seed pods look sort of like dandelion fluff.  These squirrels are all over Denali and make a high pitched squeaking noise to warn each other of danger.    We were on a hike up in  the mountains above Savage Creek. 

We hiked from the road up to the ridge line.

 

Here is Sally at the top.  As you can tell, it was cold up there. 

Seeing animals in Denali

If you want to see the animals in Denali National Park, you have to take a bus on the Park Highway.  The 92 mile road is closed to cars after mile 15.  We took the bus out to mile 48 to start a hike with a ranger (more asbout that in a later blog posting).  Along the way, we saw a mother bear and two cubs, a cow moose and some Dall Sheep.  Later, we drove out to mile 15 and spotted a pair of antlers of a caribou sticking out of the brush.  It looked like he was hiding from all the tourists. 

  See if you can spot the antlers!

Here is the female moose we saw from the bus. 

This herd of 6-8 Dall Sheep was right in the road so our bus driver had to wait for them to wander away. 

Long-distance cyclists camp with us at Denali

Since the campground here at Denali was full, we offered to share our campsite with two long-distance bicyclists.  The first one was a young man named Eddie from Maryland who is biking from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay up at the Arctic Ocean.  He said he wanted to touch the water.  Several years before, he had biked from the Atlantic to the Pacific (Delaware to Washington).  We gave him a beer and a place to pitch his tiny bivouac bag and then wished him well the next morning.  He was headed to Fairbanks from here (about 120 miles) and then on to Prudhoe Bay which is 80 miles on a paved road and then almost 400 on the gravel Dalton Highway.  Once he gets there, a friend is going to pick him up and drive him back to Anchorage.  He is going to text us when he makes it to the Arctic Ocean. When we hear from him, we'll post it here on the blog.

 Here is Eddie with his little tent/sleeping bag called a bivouac bag.  He said the hardest part was getting in the thing!  It rained the night he was at our site but I think he stayed dry. 

Here is Eddie starting out to Fairbanks.  Note that he has a spare tire on the back on his bags.  He will probably need it on the 396 mile gravel road to Prudhoe Bay. 


The next night, we shared our campsite with a Korean cyclist named Park.  We had met him at Cooper River South campground in the Kenai Peninsula earlier in the month and he was now spending a few days at Denali.  He is biking all over Alaska.  He is 59 years old and has biked all over the world.  We're not sure how he find enough energy to do all that biking. 

Visiting Sled Dogs at Denali

Denali National Park is the only national park to have working sled dogs.  They use them in the winter to get to outlying areas of this vast two million acre park.  Since this is a legally designated Wilderness, there are no mechanized forms of transport allowed -- no snowmobiles, no cars, no airplane landings and no motors.  They told us that when the park has a choice between flying a load into a remote location or using the dog teams, they will use the park sled dogs when feasible.   These "athletes" as they called the sled dogs when we visited the Iditarod Headquarters in Wasilla, are kept in kennels near the main park visitor's center.  They have tours several times a day where you can meet the dogs and see a sled dog demonstration.  Here are our pictures from there:

Mt. St. Helen's photos -- May 2012

We visited Mt. St. Helen's in southwestern Washington in May.  This is what the mountain looks like now. The entire top third of the mountain came off.  It used to be a perfect volcano cone.  The main portion of the top slid down at over 150 miles per hour, and slid up to seven miles away. Hot gasses, pulverized rock and lava were blown beyond the mountain top.

Here we are at the Visitor's Center, which was built after the eruption. David Johnston, the vulcanologist who was killed was monitoring the steaming and smoking volcano at this site which is 6 miles from the volcano. He was one of the principal scientists on the monitoring team and was manning an observation post here. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting the message "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before being swept away by the lateral blast created by the collapse of the mountain's north flank. The Visitor's Center is named in his honor.

This is a tree trunk on display in the Visitor's Center.  The power and force of the blast killed everything in its path.  This tree remained rooted but its top was broken off and hurled down the mountain.  The bark still remained on the side away from the blast, but was completely stripped on the blast side.

The force of the blast buried this tree in the ground miles away.  Looking at the hillsides in the blast area in the 7 mile range from the mountain, trees were neatly blown over so that they all lay with their tops pointing away from the blast.  Nature can be unbelievable powerful.  The town of Valdez, Alaska which we visited in June was completely wiped out by the 1964 earthquake.  It leaves us in awe.

FYI: Here is an abbreviated Wikipedia description of the eruption:

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen was a major volcanic eruption. An earthquake on Sunday, May 18, 1980, caused the entire weakened north face to slide away, suddenly exposing the partly molten, gas- and steam-rich rock in the volcano to lower pressure. The rock responded by exploding a hot mix of lava and pulverized older rock toward Spirit Lake so fast that it overtook the cascading north face. An eruption column rose 80,000 feet (24,400 m) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states. At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large volcanic mudslides that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly fifty miles (eighty kilometers) to the southwest. Fifty-seven people and thousands of animals were killed. Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland. Mount St. Helen's was left with a crater on its north side.

Sally & Bill

Sally's Perilous Hike With Her Photographer

Sally drove up to Hatcher Pass on the Hatcher Pass Road with her photographer.  This is one of the most beautiful points in Alaska, containing snow capped mountains on all sides with sweeping mountain tundra fields and many cirque lakes couched in mountain amphitheaters.  It is one of those areas where you are not looking at it, but are in it.  You are almost overwhelmed by the beauty.  The Independence Gold Mine which is a National Historic Site is within 5 miles of the pass.  There is still a small operating gold mine in the area, and there was a wedding being held there the day that we took the hike.  They had one of those white wedding tents set up way up in the mountains. 

To get to the pass we had to drive about two miles uphill over a dirt road which was heavily rutted as snow melt ran over it and, because of the steep grade, people spun their tires.  We wanted to take Rita over the pass road but after beating her up on the 60 mile McCarthy road last month, we decided we would give her a rest.

There are mountain ridges on both sides of the pass, and Sally decided to try to hike up on the south side with her photographer.  Her first challenge was a steep snow field that she had to cross.  Sally was making good foot holds in the snow on the way across as she did not want to go tumbling down.  And, of course, her photographer did not want to go tumbling down and lose the camera. 

Once across the snow field, Sally continued through a series of switchbacks up to the top of the ridge.  From there she was able to hike along a long mountain ridge which dropped off on both sides providing spectacular views of the mountains on all sides.

The sun came out at times providing more brilliant highlights of the colors.  The ridge covered about a mile and undulated up and down over several significant high points.  On the North side of the ridge the snow had not yet melted which added to the ruggedness of the area.

Near the end of the ridge, it split in a Y so Sally was able to hike to point where a new valley was in view.  The surroundings were like eye candy and gave you a feeling of exultation. Really wonderful!  We were so high that we saw several "flight seeing" tourist planes below us.

Along the hike we spotted a Hoary Marmot at the very top of the ridge scurrying around for food.  When he realized he had company, he froze so his picture could be taken, then scurried back into one of  his holes.

On the way across we also saw a ptarmigan which blended in with her surroundings perfectly.  She did not move as we walked by which we thought was odd, as if she was protecting something.  On the way back, there were two small chicks about 40% of her size.  They scurried for cover, but she stood her ground, protecting her brood.

Toward the end of the ridge traverse, the camera tripod was set up on the trekking poles, and Sally got a picture of herself with her photographer. 

This hike looks very wild, and no one else went where we did while we were there, but there were many people down below, and two young snowboarders did come up for a run down the first big snow bowl.  We watched and it seemed like a lot of work for a couple of short runs, but then we did the work and did not get the runs.

Also, the snow fields that we crossed at first had people sliding down them on their backs.  They were having a great time.

We are in Talkeetna now, a small aging-hippy-type village near Denali.  You see a lot of tourists but also some Real Alaskans following the subsistence lifestyle which is very popular up here.  We are off to the national park tomorrow.

by Bill, the photographer 

P.S. to our children:  Don't worry, kids.  We're not doing anything dangerous!  We are VERY cautious.

Rita and the Big Rigs

We are camping right on the waterfront here in Seward, Alaska.  Can you pick out Little Rita sandwiched between all the Big Rigs??

Our stay in Seward, Alaska

In addition to watching the Mt. Marathon Race, we have hiked and sea kayaked here in Seward.  Yesterday we hiked part way up the trail to Mt. Alice.  This is a hike which only the locals seem to know about.  A woman we stood next to us at the race told us about it.  She told us the road it was on but when we drove down there, there was no trail marker.  We finally asked a local fisherman down at the boat launch ramp, and he ended up leading us back to the trailhead which turned out to be a muddy place leading steeply up into the woods on the side of the road.  Once we got up the ravine on the side of the road, we were in the rain forest and on a pretty decently maintained trail.  Here is a photo of all the moss on the trees.  As you can see, the trees were just "dripping" with moss.   Luckily, it was not raining, too.
 

We hiked UP this steep trail until we came to the snow.  Since we were the only ones there and it was deep in the woods, we had our bear spray.  To make plenty of noise, we talked, sang, and clicked our hiking poles together.  Luckily, we did not encounter any bears or see any signs of them.  We lost the trail once we got to the snowline.  The snow got pretty deep, so we decided to stop there.  We ate our lunch and hiked back down.  Here is a photo of Bill at the snow line.  We never did make it up to Mt. Alice. 

The next day we did a 5 mile sea kayaking trip out to Caines Head State Park.  We went with a very young guide and a family from Charleston, SC.  The company would not let us rent the kayaks by ourselves.  They insisted that we have a guide since we were not experts in cold water rescue.  Somehow we didn't feel very confident once we saw our guide -- a nice enough young college student who had only been in Alaska since May.  Anyway, it turned out to be a very nice sea kayaking adventure, in spite of a light rain.  Bill says:  as we were beaching the tandem kayak that we were in, I managed to turn it sideways which was not the preferred orientation.  A wave arrived simultaneously and washed over Sally's end of the kayak and into her non waterproof kayaking skirt.  She got soaked.  Bill was to blame.  It was cold.  Cotton kills. A forgotten part of her wardrobe was cotton. Sally was not a happy camper.  I was made aware she was not happy.  In the end, all turned out well.

 At the end of the trip, when we were on the boat for our water taxi ride back to the dock, we saw two humpback whales.  The captain got the boat close enough that we could actually smell their "breath" when they sprayed out of their Blow Hole.  It smelled sort of like fishy sewer gas!! 

We will try to post a whale photo later.  It does not seem to be downloading now on this weak WiFi network. 

Sally 

 

Incredible Mount Marathon Three Mile Race

We are in Seward, Alaska now, and attended their annual 4th of July Mt. Marathon Race.  This race was first held in 1915 when two men in a bar decided to see who could get up and down the mountain the fastest . . . . . . for the bar tab.  It has been held 84 times and is now the main event on the Fourth of July each year here in this small town of 3,200.  I had seen it on World News several years ago, and when we realized we were going to be in the Seward area, we decided to try to see it.  All of the campgrounds in town were jammed so we stayed at Cooper River and drove in for the big day.  Fireworks were at 12:01 a.m. on July 4th so we did not get to see them.  It was not even dark then -- more like dusk at home -- but that is the best they can do in perpetual daylight here in summertime Alaska.
 
The race goes up the mountain for 1.75 miles for an elevation gain of over 2900 feet.  There is significant leeway on how you get up to the top and back down.  Top people take over 34 minutes to get up, and just over 10 to get back down.

In the two pictures above a stream of people going up the mountain is visible, and I have enlarged the stream in the second picture.   Looking at the snow to the right of the people, they use that as their highway to get down.  Going more than 3 times faster going down, you can imagine how they shoot through the snow, sliding all of the way. They also do a lot of sliding on the scree slopes.  We also saw tumbles and rolls.  It is a very treacherous race.   The day of the race there was a light rain off and on so the sharp shale was also slippery.  There were a lot of cuts and bruises, but it did not show on the faces of the contestants. 

Above is the women's first place finisher, Holly Brooks.  Holly was on the 2010 Olympic Ski Team for cross country skiing.

When she came off of the mountain, she was running hard and with assurance, accompanied by a big grin on her face. There was no one close to her. I caught her picture and blew up her legs when I noticed damage. Notice the outside of her left leg in the pic. I have also included a picture of another woman who happened to be a friend of a woman standing next to us. Her right leg was bleeding. I guess these are the normal hazards of coming down the mountain fast. These pictures are a testament to how much these contestants love competition and how much they are willing to push themselves. Very impressive.

I have a video of a man who finished 8th. He looked like he came down the mountain fairly unscathed. As he was going down the last slope, he vaulted over a boulder, got bad footing when he landed and fell, landing on his chest which ruined a good ending. Normal for this race are bumps and bruises, but a tragedy is still unfolding in this race. It is Saturday afternoon now, and the race was held on Wednesday.  A 66 year old man has been missing and was last seen at the check point at the top of the mountain. He was trailing the field, and they believe he got disoriented and went the wrong way, or possibly fell into some area where it has been very difficult to find him. It has been raining at least half of the time and the temperatures have been in the low forties. There is a 35 person search team supported by dogs and helicopters. This is a horrible turn of events to something that started out as being very exciting and amazing. Since this mountain juts above the town, it has put a damper on everything. 

Sunday update:  We also just heard that another man had tumbled down the cliff at the bottom and is in the hospital with a broken leg and serious head injuries.  This has been overshadowed by the missing man for whom they have just called off the search.

Bill