Whatcha gonna do when the one place you've traveled thousands of miles to see is suddenly closed? That's the dilemma faced by thousands of visitors who have come to Denali National Park. Fortunately as employees in this immense park, we can take the long view, though our plans were disrupted as well. Susan and I (along with Diane and Jan) had planned to take the green shuttle bus west into the depths of Denali to hike around Mountain Vista, Sanctuary Creek, and Savage River (again). At this time, the Riley Fire is 25% contained, estimated size just under 400 acres, and almost 200 fire fighters still on the scene. Here's the latest from Alaska Wildland fire.
So we stayed closer to "home" and hiked the Nenana River Trail and Oxbow Trail. Behind us are the layers of rock that have been cut away by the Nenana River. Amazing! This picture reveals a small peek into why geology is such a complex science.
The Nenana River Trail is a new trail that was supposed to open this week, it is ADA accessible for about a mile through spruce and aspen forest. NPS did a great job building this trail with bridges over soft, low spots and boardwalks over the squishy areas.
The squishy areas are bogs where a trail would be impossible to maintain and the duff underneath would create further problems. It's that duff in the Riley Fire that is making it so hard for fire fighters to actually finish the job of extinguishing the blaze. The material may still burning under the duff, but the hot spot can't be seen. But above that duff are some beautiful wildflowers, spotted along our walk.
Bluebells
I've never seen burls on an aspen tree before.
Unusual but not unheard of, the Nenana River is a north flowing river. Nenana means "a good place to camp between rivers," because that's the confluence of the Nenana and Tanana Rivers. The townsite of Nenana (just over an hour north of us) hosts the
Ice Classic every winter, where folks guess when the ice break up on the Tanana River will occur. There are several oxbows on the Nenana River, which...in several thousand years...will come together and change the course of the river.
The Park Service has installed a new sign at the parking area for these new trails, so of course we took the obligatory picture. This is the 3rd in the series of entrance signs. One along the Parks Highway has Dall Sheep; the sign at the entrance to the Park itself has caribou; this one has grizzly bear.
We've been told that park operations will resume on Tuesday, July 9th, but that will continue to impact visitors to Denali. Power has been restored to Glitter Gulch (where many of the shops and restaurants are located), but a lot of food and ice cream (oh no!!) will have to be thrown away because the power was out for almost 3 days. We at Denali Park Village absorbed many of the employees from park side since we didn't lose electricity. Yesterday most of those employees returned to park side to begin "standing up" normal operations for Tuesday's reopening. However, they could be evacuated again if the Riley Fire jumps the fire line that's established on the southern flank. Hopefully not, but we have had some pretty gusty/high winds. We're again planning our Sanctuary Creek and Savage River hikes for this week. Stay tuned!
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