Low clouds obscured the sun once again as August 24, 2024 dawned in the central Alaska Range. Matt and I awoke in our cabin in Healy to the reality that our grandiose plans of climbing above the treeline would probably be cold, windy, wet, and miserable. That’s not to say that there was no fun to be found in Denali National Park – come on, of course there was – but maybe that fun would be at a slightly lower elevation than the summit of Mount Healy. I had most of the day available, only needing to be back into Fairbanks by late afternoon to pick up Elizabeth’s cousin Michael. Matt had the whole day off – or so he thought until he picked up a call from the air/tourism company he works for, asking him to come fill in a Saturday shift. I was a little disappointed. After all, who doesn’t like having the ability to reduce by one half their odds of being the one a bear chooses to attack in the Alaska wilderness? But duty calls. Matt decided to head into the town of Denali Park with me for breakfast the Black Bear Coffee House.
The drive into Denali Park was as moody and wild as I remembered it the day before. The same as the previous weekend when I’d driven down into the eastern Alaska Range, there was a big valley that seemed to be cut between lateral moraines of an ancient glacier, gradually fading into a mountain valley through which the Nenana River roared. Black Bear was just off of the Parks Highway a couple of miles from the entrance to the park, staged among the gift shops and helicopter tour companies among prosaic log-facade buildings. To my delight, they had breakfast burritos in addition to coffee. Coffee and burritos in the mountains on a 40-degree morning in August, what could possibly make it better?
Why yes, Week 0 of the 2024 college football season might make it better. Alaska time lets you do cool things like “watch football games being played in Dublin at 9:00 in the morning”.
Matt and I said our good-byes after breakfast and I planned my next move. The low cloud cover wasn’t lifting over Mount Healy. If anything, fog was settling further down the mountain.
But the fog did make for dramatic scenery.
Much of Denali National Park is inaccessible via your own personal vehicle. There’s a main park road that enters the park near where I was digesting my burrito, goes past the park HQ/visitor’s center I’d been to yesterday, and then extends out for another 89 miles. Most of the road has been closed for several years due to a landslide at Polychrome Pass at mile 43, and you can only drive a personal vehicle to the mile 15 mark yourself anyway. After that, it’s only tour buses allowed the rest of the way to the closure.
So I decided to mosey my way to the closure at mile 15 at the Savage River to see what was up. There is a hike there called the Savage Alpine Loop that climbs up and around the spine of a mountainous ridge from the Savage River to the east. It looked neat and unlike other hikes, it looked available. So I drove that way.
Once inside the park, the weather seemed to improve almost instantly. Maybe this was the move needed to get the day jump-started. Denali’s park road was full of tourists pulling off every few hundred feet. Whether it was because they wanted to enjoy the mountains or they thought they’d see moose or simply because the national park tourist is one of the dumbest people alive, I couldn’t tell you. Regardless, it was enough to make me feel a little bit guilty for puttering along at the speed limit with no stops.
Just as I was starting to wonder if the road closure was entirely a psyop and I’d drive all the way to the end of the national park, the road bent right around a corner into a broad river valley. At the river crossing there was a small parking lot and a little toll station. This must be the Savage River area, I thought with a breathtaking talent for the obvious.
It was only when I got down into the parking lot that I realized what a blithe idiot I’d been about the whole morning. The Savage River parking lot has like 20 spots at most and this was peak season for Denali tourism. And this was literally one of the only trailheads you can park a car at. And I’d waited until 10:00 to even get here. There was absolutely zero reason to expect an available parking spot. But hell, there was one right at the entrance to the parking lot, so sometimes blithe idiots win in this life.
A light drizzle was falling when I stepped out of the car and put the camera bag on my back. There had been just enough service to keep an eye on the score of that Florida State/Georgia Tech game, which became relevant almost immediately when I ran into an NPS ranger at the foot of the trail. He saw the OU logo on my rain jacket and let out a “Roll tide!” which is one of the funniest greetings you can give deep in the Alaskan wilderness. We chatted briefly about the upcoming OU/Bama game and how the Tide were going to teach the Sooners a lesson (oops!), and he asked me the score of the game. Now instead of just one, there were two people delighted to hear that the 10th-ranked Seminoles were deadlocked at the half with the heavily outmatched Yellow Jackets. Oklahoma, Alabama, it doesn’t matter – everyone can bond over their hate of Florida State.
The scenery was mostly tundra at the bottom of the hill, even though it butts up against the 2,500 foot elevation threshold that Denali claims is roughly the treeline. To the south, the Savage River gathered all of the waters of its wide, glacial-carved valley into a braided channel. To the north, the river squeezed into a narrower canyon to bully its way through the big mountains.
And with that, I was off, heading east and away from the river. The first half mile was straight contour-to-countour walking up the spine of the ridge at roughly a 20-30% grade. That got me 400 feet above the valley floor and a wider panorama – though the ceilings were limiting how much of that panorama was actually visible.
There were enough hikers to make me feel much better about getting assistance in any potential bear attacks, but nowhere near enough to feel like the trail was crowded. About halfway up this first stretch, I came upon a group of 6 or so ptarmigans. In the summer these cold-weather-dwelling birds see their plumage fade to a color that makes them look like awkward, flightless chickens. I tried to pass by them as unobtrusively as possible, but the ptarmigans insisted on trying to avoid me by walking directly up the trail away from me. The result was a 100-yard ptarmigan drive that rivaled anything Great Plains cattle saw in the 1800s.
After the first half mile, the trail bends back toward the south and enters a series of sharp switchbacks. It was here that other hikers really started showing signs that they were slowing down. Nothing gets a distance runner’s adrenaline going quite like that. The momentum took me straight to the first overlook of the hike at a little rock outcropping. Let’s check in on our hero Nolan, who has decided to prove his manliness by shedding his rain jacket despite the 38-degree temperatures and falling mist.
Does he look cold? Signs point to yes, in particular the redness showing up on his neck and arms. The wet hair is also a good indication that maybe it’s a bit damp and chilly. But heck, if you’ve ever lived through an Oklahoma summer, you could understand why there would be nothing more luxurious than feeling a little bit cold.
The views up here were already impressive, too. Fall color was just starting to spread into the lowland Denali tundra.
Of course, beyond the shelter of the first lip, there was also a lot more exposure to the wind. It wasn’t quite a howling breeze but it was at least a growling breeze. Still, when I clambered past the rest of the outcropping, the way the trail followed the next spine of the mountain up the tundra about took my breath away. This is the rare picture that I feel like captures the beauty of it.
Wild and rugged, through and through.
The spine was a little less steep, too, meaning I could really get after it a little bit. Some of the hikers along the trail had little to say as they were bypassed. Some had words of greeting and little else because they were out of breath. And then there were those tourists up from the lower 48 who had plenty to say and were having just as good a time as me. I hiked alongside an older couple from Minnesota briefly, pointing out ptarmigans in their roosting spot to them. The group ahead of me in the family above was a nice group from Germany. The one thing everyone had in common was that they were getting dusted by a former cross country runner who was back in his element. Yes, I missed Elizabeth, but it was fun to be the fastest one on the trail again.
The higher up I got, the more the visibility started to close in near the cloud base. Drizzle was occasionally interspersed with larger droplets, until I was startled by the sight of something larger falling in front of me. Bird poop? No, wait. Was it?
It was.
https://twitter.com/nolan_meister/status/1827577406141628802?s=46&t=DKYs70Qq712uEvxknlWG_g
Snow! This marked my second time seeing snowfall in August, which doesn’t seem like something many people can say.
It’s about a mile and a half to the high point of the trail. According to AllTrails, the high point is above 4,100 feet, a solid 1,700 feet above the parking lot far below. Now, I remember it being a decent climb, but 1,700 feet in a mile and a half feels much more extreme than I recall. This just goes to show that memory is faulty and I should put a higher priority on writing these blog posts faster! Anyways, once I got up there, only a few other hikers were hanging around and taking in the view. The low, ominous clouds (some of which were below me at this point, though the mist never quite hit my spot) were still hanging around along the ridgeline to the north, but views to the south seemed to have opened up some. It wasn’t until this viewpoint that I was able to appreciate truly just how much fall had arrived in the Denali tundra here entering the last week of August. Let’s show some pictures:
Despite the limited ceilings, there was a real grandeur to the scenery. It would have been nice to have a viewpoint of Denali itself from here though.
That wet hair says it all. It wasn’t a fully dry walk up the mountain!
After a few minutes up there, it started to feel like maybe it was time to go. The continuation of the trail wasn’t all that interesting, other people had assured me, plus there was a road walk to get back to your car. And then there was the fact that somewhere in the world, Michael Harding’s airplane was probably en route from Seattle to Fairbanks, and it wouldn’t do to leave him sitting around forever when he landed. Plus – and I’ll admit this wasn’t the smallest factor in my decision-making – what if Florida State was actually going to choke it against Georgia Tech? That would be top-tier television for a week 0 Saturday. Of course, right as I started to get ready to make the trek back down to the car, then the sun came out.
Pretty good stuff! If only Matt was here to enjoy it with me.
I did meet one adorable local near the crest of the trail.
It was a relatively easy scamper back down the spine of the trail toward the big rock outcropping, then a near-jog through the early switchbacks to get back to the car. The one thing I really wanted to find was a good example of the tundra changing color for the fall, and boy did I find a spot for that.
I was officially hooked on the tundra version of fall color.
It was getting to about lunchtime and another rain shower was moving overhead by the time I got back down to the car. The ranger from before was eager to take a look at the animal photos on my camera to confirm that they were ptarmgians and an Arctic ground squirrel. The can of bear spray was able to go back into its spot in the backseat pocket of the rental car, still mercifully unopened. And just around the corner, when fleeting cell phone service returned, an incoherent jumble of messages in the fantasy football group chat. It took a second to piece together, but apparently Georgia Tech had beaten Florida State on a last-second field goal?
Maybe the lower 48 couldn’t feel it, but fall had come home to roost.
As if the universe just wanted to smile down on me in particular, the sun broke through the clouds right as I was driving by Mount Healy on the way back out of the park, giving a stunning view up toward the snow line.
And this wasn’t even my last visit to Denali. Elizabeth, Alex, my parents, and myself would all be driving down here for a day trip in a week. Based on this first experience, I couldn’t wait. But for now, it was time to leave the park, grab some calories from Denali Wild Crepe, and drive back to Fairbanks to pick up Michael. What an amazing month I was having!
