Bill and Kevins Great Alaskan Adventure 2017: Denali

DENALI - PART II

The Wild Side

We have a perfectly good 27' motorhome with thermostat controlled heat and very soft beds. So Kevin said, “Let’s park the RV for the night, load up all of our clothes on our backs, all the food we have left, 7 pounds of water, and spend the night with bears in the back country?” OK

Kevin has a bucket list of items the he wants to accomplish. One of which consists of camping in the wilds of Denali and waking up with snow covered mountains outside the tent. Being the great friend and relative that I am, I said “Are you freaking crazy, I don't have a real pack, I don’t have a sleeping bag, and on and on was my complaint. We are not going camping”. In reality we had been planning this for months and hoping that the stars would align and this would work out. Boy did it ever.

Bear Box and Pack

We stopped at the backcountry ranger station to get a camping permit. Part of the process is watching a 30 minute safety video on crossing streams, setting up camp, and wildlife encounters. The bears are so prevalent that the rangers give you a bear box to put all of your food in and anything else that smells, such as toothpaste and hand sanitizer. These are round plastic containers that look like small kegs with lockable lids. We then had to select a location of the park to camp based on the nights of stay and number of slots available. In order to keep the park wild, and to protect it from overuse, they only allow so many people to camp within certain areas. We were able to get Section 13. It was like winning the camping lottery for us. This area is just below the Eilson Visitor Center and is the main part of the Park, for fantastic Denali views. Every tour bus stops here for about 30 minutes for people to eat and stare at the mountain. For a limited number of visitors, the clouds break and the mountain shows her beauty.

We checked in with the Camp Host, who graciously allowed us to leave the camper set up in our spot at Teklanika for one more day, at no charge, while we had an adventure. Kevin and I both talked about all those bears we saw over the last two days and the weather forecast was 39° for Thursday morning, and ………………(In reality, it is important to note that it is a rare event for a violent bear encounter in Denali thanks to a very successful wildlife management program and aggressive wildlife encounter training, which was lucky for us).

Heading off for the night from Eilson

The day started with a hike down a steep hill from Eilson (in Florida we would call that a mountain, it is about 600 vertical feet and about 1 mile long) to get to the riverbed below. At the base of the trail

Look at red titles for Visitor Center and Trail

is rock monument where hikers place a rock on it as you start for good luck (it also helps you find the trail out when you are leaving). From here, it was about a 4 mile hike to our camping area. The trip over was uneventful till we hit the river.

Braided Stream

We were walking across a mile wide braided stream toward our camping area on the banks of Glacier Crystal Creek. We picked this location since it would face Denali when we awoke, refreshed the next day (not). The braided stream is not a simple stream, it is created by the glacier as it melts in the Summer. Due to the sediment load, the streams meander across a wide river bed and drops out rocks in sizes from pebbles to boulders, depending on the flow of the day. It is not like walking across a gravel bed. It’s like walking across the floor and someone rolls marbles and bowling balls in front of you, and you have to constantly look at your feet to keep from tripping on balls, or in our case boulders, to rocks, to gravel (all mixed up).

All that to say because we were walking toward the river with roar of the water in our ears (you can’t hear), your eyes are staring at your feet (can’t see), and Kevin yelled “Stop!” and I yelled “What?” and looked up and there were 3 caribou (aka Reindeer) heading right toward us. All of our yelling must have scared them, since they stopped short of us, shifted direction, and ran off . At about 40 yards off, it did startle us, but I guess they look at their feet too, since it scared the scat out of them when we yelled.

Young Female Caribou

Hey Bear Bear!!!!!!!!!. We first tried to camp on that ridge. No way.

Remember the river? We had to cross it to get to our campsite. No way around it. About 20’ at its narrowest that we could find. We looked north and found thick mud. We looked south, more streams joined the main river making it even bigger.

Option 1: Wade through and get your feet and shoes wet. Not good, remember the forecast.

Option 2: Roll up your pants, take off shoes and socks, and wade through ice cold (glacier runoff) water to your knees, and wade across rocks barefoot, to cross. Only option we could take. One problem, my pants legs won’t roll high enough. No problem, take your pants off. No Pictures.

When camping in the park you use the 100 yard triangle rule for eating, food storage, and sleeping. Each must be separated and shouldn’t be in a line. Well, we were in a river valley with a roaring glacial outwash and our separation had to be linear. So we ate supper (PBJ/TM/Bark) ,moved 100 yards, stored food in Bear Barrel, another 100 oh, 200 to be safe and pitched camp.

We ended up camping beside Glacier Crystal Creek on top of some soft moss and grass. We were near a path by the creek, and slightly out of an animal path. We only saw an old scat pile and only a few mom and cub prints a ways up the creek. Setting up the tent and waiting for the sun to go down so we can get to sleep. The last thing we saw outside was sunset on the Denali.

It is so cold and the wind starts blowing. Finally a gust of wind rattled the tent flap and I about died. I knew it was a bear and the Rangers didn't never told us what to do in case of bear attack in tent. Kevin LOL’d till he APIHPs.

Morning with Denali

We got about 4 hours sleep with no more scares. Daylight is about 6:30 and we were up breaking camp and getting ready for a 3 ½ hour hike and stream crossing back to Eilson for bus pickup. We start out and begin walking down the creek back to the braided stream. Kevin takes the lead and we are both yelling “Hey Bear” and jingling our belt bells. It sounds funny to yell “Hey Bear” when you are safe in your house, or safe on a park bus, but after seeing all those bears, you know they can be anywhere and you don’t want to startle one. Kevin said in this strange voice “Bill! Bear!!”. I glance up from my feet and look straight ahead and about 30 yards away stands a boar grizzly looking straight at us. He is on all fours and trying to figure out what we are.

Remember our friends Tamir and Maya? They encountered a bear in their days in the back country. Maya told us that they came up on a bear only meters away and they started shouting and waving to shoo the bear away. I asked her if she took a picture. She stared at me like I was crazy and said in her Israeli accent, “When a bear is that close to you, you only want to survive”.

Back to our current situation, we look at each other like and say “Oh _____” (place your expletive here). Bear is looking, we are supposed to be yelling and make ourselves big. Our survival instinct told us to be quiet and don’t move. It is true battle going on inside of you. Training takes over and we wave our arms and start yelling softly “hehhhhhh bearrrrr”. This technique truly works. The bear turned, our voices got louder, and the bear slowwwwwwly walked away. He walked into the thicker saplings at the edge of the wash, and we lost site of him. With fear and trembling we waited about 10 minutes and slowly walked toward where we saw the bear exit in order to get out of the glacial valley. A few yards ahead and near the river, we came upon a pile of fresh grizzly scat filled with twenty thousand berry seeds of all types. We know this because the bus driver stated that a study was done to determine how many berries a day a bear could eat (wild cranberries, blue berries, and others). Some lucky scientist followed a bear all day and found that during berry season a bear poops 10 times a day and each pile has 20,000 seeds. Do the math, that’s a lot of berries. This gorging is to put on weight in preparation for a long winter of hibernation. We were walking in his path and if we had been 5 minutes ahead of schedule we might have met him head on. Thanks to the family for prayers of safety and guardian angels.

Berry Bear Scat

On the trip back we encountered three small groups of male caribou either eating berries on the hill or heading north for the mating season and wintering north of the Alaskan Range. Seven total, including one with red antlers, just out of velvet.

Finally back to the monument and trekked up the 600 foot switchback trail back to Eilson Visitor Center. Here we ate our last food and scheduled a bus to take us back to the campground. Two quick showers later, we store our gear and head north out of the park to Fairbanks to try our luck at catching the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis).