The end of the road, for now
Today we took the bus as far into Denali as we could. In 2021, NPS had to close the road at mile 45 at Pretty Rocks due to a landslide. That’s about halfway down the road. They are working on repairing the road, but that’s a multi year project that won’t open for at least another year. So for now, the farthest you can go into the park without flying is East Fork. At East Fork, you can take a set of stairs down to the stream. It is an active flowing stream on a flat river bed. According to the park ranger, the water meanders and shifts depending on the sediment that is being brought by the glacier melt. We walked about 3.5 miles out and back. We didn’t see much wildlife besides arctic squirrels, but the views were still interesting.
The back country in Denali is different from other parks. They don’t have defined paths. In fact, they want you to make your own path because it causes less damage than a defined path.
While waiting for the bus after our hike, we asked a ranger a few questions. First, we asked Rick and Phillipa’s question about how the sheep know the time when they can cross the road. No, the NPS does not supply sheep with watches. (The rangers seem to get that question a lot…). They are creating a gap so the wildlife have time to cross the road. It’s called a Sheep Gap because the sheep are particularly sensitive to the traffic, which caused a lot of stress for the sheep. The Sheep Gap gives periodic breaks where the animals can cross with less stress. This system has only been in place for a couple of years now, but scientists have been watching the migration for a few decades. They chose the locations of the sheep gaps based on where they have observed sheep crossing in the past.
We also asked the ranger about the traffic once the road reopens. The Ranger explained that there are two kinds of buses in the backcountry: tour buses and transit buses. Most park visitors come from the cruise ships, and those visitors take the narrated tour buses. The rangers do not expect that traffic to increase once the road reopens. Fewer visitors take the transit buses, mostly independent travelers like us. So they do expect more visitors once the road reopens, though it does not sound like Denali will be crowded.
This may be Amy’s first visit to Denali, but Greg visited with his friend Adam nearly 34 years ago (!). It seems that Adam still has the photos from that visit - thanks for sharing!
