Denali - weather permitted! (sort of)

On our last morning in the Denali area, we awoke to a gorgeously clear blue sky. I woke up Steve, after I had my French press coffee ;) and we headed out to drive back down south. As we had driven north from Anchorage, there were supposed to be beautiful views of Denali…wait for it…”weather permitting”. We decided it was worth driving 2 hours for a possible clear shot of the mountain, so we raced against the incoming clouds.

I made Steve stop briefly for that neat canyon shot of the Nenana River (that runs just outside of Denali park).

Skies are still clear(!) on the way -

And then we see IT for the first time:

Denali is the all white “lump” in the middle. Not very impressive at that magnification, is it?

As I zoomed in, you could see both the south and north summits (left and right, respectively) -

(you’ll need to zoom in also)

This was the clearest/best shot I got. At the above magnification, you can get a sense of how it looms over all the other peaks.

Denali is on the right end of that line of peaks above.

Clouds were encroaching…

…but I still got a neat shot.

By the time we got to the “official” viewpoint, the clouds had really come in, but the colors were gorgeous.

This zoomed in shot shows the glaciers below the (now obscured) peak:

Just as a recap, the first 5 pictures of Denali in this post were taken by me hanging out the RV window as we sped down the highway (got that mental picture?). I’m really glad i did, because when we could stop to get a “clearer” shot, the clouds were thwarting us.

Oh well, the nearby hills were beautiful anyway, and the skies were blue over us.

We decided that our “little” 4 hour trip (down and back) was worth it to see “the high one” (that’s what Denali means in the Athabascan language).

OH! I almost forgot to tell you about another sighting we had on our hike as we left Denali park the day before. We went hiking around Horseshoe Lake near the entrance of the park. As we neared the lake -

…we met a hiker coming up the trail who said there had been a moose working its way along the lake edge. So we got down to the lake…

…and walked all around it, without finding a moose. Sigh. So we started back up the trail to get back to the RV…

…and found this cow grazing on small trees just about 25-30 yds off the trail. We stopped and quietly watched her move slowly off. She walked on up the hill, and crossed the trail that we needed to use to get back. We didn’t want to get any closer, but she stopped just off the trail and was calmly grazing. I took a few close shots -

…and we moved on up the trail, hoping we didn’t disturb or provoke her.

One last quick item — we visited a Husky breeding and training center, and learned fascinating things about training Huskies and running in the Iditarod Dog Sled Race (1,000 miles from Anchorage to Nome). Since everybody loves puppies, I’ll close with these 12 day old cuties: