Extended Absence

I will be out in the park from the 2nd of August through probably August 7th on a hiking trip. I was hoping to make it up to Muldrow Glacier, but the park rangers at the Backcountry Permit Office are discouraging it due to difficulty of the Mckinley River crossing (they haven't even been out there this season and it has been a hot and dry summer!). So I am thinking a Toklat River exploration, Polychrome Mountain summit, and (if time permits) exploring a backside summit of Double Mountain.

I should have multiple updates with oodles of fresh pictures starting on the 8th.

To all of you suffering through high temperatures, stay cool!

L'chaim!

Paydirt!

Today after dinner I ventured up Highway 3 on foot in search of some rock that is suitable for climbing. I had heard from a couple of people that Dragonfly Creek, which is north of my location by 3 or 4 miles, has suitable climbing rock.


Upon walking up there I found a dry creek bed, but after walking downstream a bit I a spring popped up that fed the creek. And another 20 meters further the water all flowed down a 15 or 16m waterfall. The rock to the left of the waterfall was pretty solid, had two good sets of anchors set in it, and offered around 16m of varied climbing.


With any luck, tomorrow I can find a climber or two to head out to there and do some top-roping. I got to break in this new rope!











On the way back the clouds were getting really ominous. The Alaska Range really does some cool stuff to the weather though. We had gnarly looking black clouds coming at us the last two or three days, but the steep, jagged peaks of the Alaska Range break up the clouds to the point that they have caused nothing but light traces of rain occasionally. We have received some of the wind that Anchorage has been getting pounded with, but none of the rain luckily.

Hopefully tomorrow I will post some good pics climbing out there and maybe even some sunset pictures from Mount Healy...

Polychrome Mountains day hike

Hey everybody! Sorry it has been a while since I last posted an update. My last couple of days off have been occupied by happenings not in the spirit of the blog (bank robberies mostly) and prevented me from getting out into the park (getaways take time). This past Tuesday I did make it into Fairbanks though. I got to hangout with my cousin Kevin and his wife Jessica. We had a good time catching up on all that has occurred in the past few years.
Today I made it out to the Polychrome Mountains. The Polychrome Mountains are about 45 miles into the park and require taking a Park shuttle bus, which is good and bad. Buses are good because the Park Service controlling access to the park has *supposedly* been very good for wildlife, but buses are bad because of the length of time it takes to get to a location. I got on the bus at 9:30am and didn't get to milepost 45 until 12:00pm. The nice thing about riding the bus is that you have someone driving who is knowledgeable of the park. This leaves you free to check out wildlife, which we saw a lot of today. On the ride out we saw a black bear, two grizzly cubs, a grizzly sow, a caribou, several ptarmigan, a northern harrier, and many snowshoe hare. The grizzly cubs were wrestling the whole time up on the side of a hill. It was pretty funny. Their mom didn't seem to care.

After getting off the bus at the Polychrome Overlook, I hiked about 3 hours on a gravel bed and ridge line heading up to some of the glaciers in the Polychrome Mountains. Unfortunately, the wind was howling today. At about 4500-5000 feet, I was near the level of the clouds and was nearly getting knocked off of my feet by the wind. Down in the canyon there were caribou. Taking this picture was fun, because the closer you get to the cliff the windier it gets. See the picture to the right.

I decided to find a comfortable spot (comfortable being an indentation in the tundra that blocked the wind a bit) to hang out at while eating lunch. Right after doing this I was greeted by three caribou that were walking along the ridgeline. They descended along one side of the ridgeline while I descended the other side. It was on this other side that I found a Dall Ram horn. I took some photos of it in Macro mode of my camera that can be seen on the right.
I also found an erratic (a large boulder displaced by a glacier) deposited by the glacier that carved the mountains and gravel river bed that I was hiking along. The boulder looked clean, at least enough to be climbable without too much junk being kicked onto a belayer. I may have to come out later and check this out.

One of the really neat things about this hike was the silt carried down by snow and ice melt. The silt is very smooth and silky, and it also has some very interesting designs in it as the amount of water coming out of the mountains decreases. I had a hard time getting detailed shots of these designs, but at the end of the hike I found some very cool tracks (maybe Lynx?) in the silt.

It was a good day for a hike. Some light rain, some heavy winds, and beautiful scenery pretty much all day. Denali even made a showing, though clouds obscured it’s summit most of the day.

Quick day hike to Montana Creek

I don't know if it was a shift in the wind direction or the couple of days of rain we had, but the smoke has cleared. After an incredibly slow day at work and a quick dinner, myself and two friends headed for a trail head I had seen on the way up to one of the other hotels, the Montana Creek Trail.

This trail was a quick one that traverses along one of the hills at the base of Mt. Sugar Loaf. Overall, it was a fun quick little hike, we held a quick pace and completed the trail in about an hour going in. I then snapped some of these photos before we sped back in around 45 minutes. This trail was really clean (might be good for running) and was quite devoid of wildlife, though some indications of their presence existed. There was a little cabin that I didn't take any pictures of (there was a lot of trash around it. Hooray for lazy humans!)

This weekend there is a department BBQ scheduled, which I am not all that excited for. I am definitely going to miss it if the weather is this great and the sky is this clear, though I may make a midnight hike of Sugar Loaf to try to catch some good clear shots of Denali in the early morning. This Tuesday I am going to take a shuttle to Fairbanks for supplies, books, and, most importantly, to see my cousin Kevin (who I haven't seen in many years) and his wife Jessica (who I haven't met yet). I will take some pictures, which I failed to do in Anchorage in June, but won't fail to do when I go visit Jason and Brenna in Bend this fall :)

Smoke on the water and... well, in the sky, and my nose and lungs

I was hoping for an evening run and hiking Double Mountain tomorrow, but the former is definitely getting canceled and possibly the latter due to heavy smoke in the area. Apparently the wildfire that is the source of this smoke has really been growing with the week's hot weather. This afternoon the smoke has gotten really bad, so no evening run and hiking tomorrow might be a bad idea if visibility is too bad.

Hopefully I'll have some good pics from Savage River tomorrow and with any luck I will also have some good pictures from Double Mountain a peak to the south that I'm hoping to climb. We'll see how it goes!

Savage River and Mt. Margaret

Yesterday I spent the day hiking the Savage River from Denali Park road (at milepost 15) to about two miles downstream. At the road the river was very braided and on the gravel bars there were many baby ptarmigan and seagulls. They were packed real tight, large families on the bars, and many babies and adults on the trails near the river bank. I figured this would lead to many predators in the area, but according to the bus driver and the park ranger at the Savage River station they have all gone to higher ground to get out of the heat.

This has been the big story of the past week or so. The temperature has been really high for this area. It has been in the low 80s lately. A guy I met on the east side of the Savage River trail who had lived in Alaska for over 20 years (and has spent a lot of time in Denali National Park) says this is the hottest he has ever seen it.

After hiking down the Savage River for a couple of miles I turned back to go climb Mt. Margaret before heading out for the day. Unfortunately part way up Mt. Marget my camera's battery died. For this reason, there aren't many pics up high, but this gives me a reason to climb it again. I did see three Dall sheep up near the top and on the ridge line. Besides the sheep, ptarmigan, and baby gulls, I saw some hoary marmots, many types of birds (lots of camp robbers), and a cool little pika that would have been cool to get a picture of.

The scenery along the river was nice. Lots of interesting rock formations. Hopefully some can be climbed with a top rope set. We'll see!

I got back in time for dinner and had a pretty good night all in all!

Smokey would be pissed!

Well, I decided last night after a particular hazy run to not go into the park today. The weather is great, clear in the upper 70s, but the smoke from wildfires has kept the whole area in a pretty hazy state. Yesterday seemed to be better, but I went for a run around 7pm and the smoke had gotten worse (probably shouldn't have been running).

So instead I went for a short hike on a trail I had not been on and checked out the sled dogs that the Park Service keep. It was fun, but the temperature seemed too hot for the dogs even, as many of them were napping hard or panting like crazy. They are beautiful dogs. I may become a walker for them and take a dog for a walk at least 3 times a week. For how lean and sleek these dogs are they weigh upwards of 80 or 90 pounds. Needless to say this is due to the exceptional amount of muscle mass they maintain from towing sleds around the park and the fact that they like to eat the pea gravel around the site :)

On the way home I saw a few very curious wild hares. They came pretty close, which was fine until I noticed that the last one was armed with eyes that shot lasers. So I got the heck out of there. I stopped at a little coffee shop and did some writing that had been on my mind and drank 3 cups of delicious coffee. With any luck I'll be able to get onto the last whitewater rafting trip of the day. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Hopefully next week the smoke from nearby wildfires (the rumor mill puts the number of wildfires at around 50!) will have cleared and the Park will provide some beautiful pics!