Denali

My first trip after the knee injury was a pretty righteous welcome back. My brother Stephen came up to see the AK for himself and we spent four days in Denali National Park, hiking west from the Teklanika to the East fork of the Toklat, over to the Polychromes, and then ended up heading down the west fork of Toklat to catch a bus. As is apparently typical, Stephen's first day in the tundra was kind of rough, but he soon re-found his love for backpacking.

As we pulled into camp on our first day, it had started to rain. We went to sleep thinking that we might wake up with wet tents. Turns out it snowed the whole night, and there were 2 inches of fresh snow on the ground, a trend that continued throughout the day. Here's Stephen rocking it on a ridge we decided to climb.

Here's me on the same ridge. Our temps went from these sub-freezing to 70s by the end of the day. Only in Alaska can you experience all 4 seasons in one trip.

I discovered while we were out there that I had forgotten my spoon. Fortunately, you can use cardboard as an exceptional spoon for almost any backpacking food.

At the end of the second day, we hiked the East Fork of the Toklat into camp. It was pretty sweet, because at this point in the season there was still a lot of what is known as overflow ice, which meant we were walking the whole time either on ice or on gravel. Our feet were quite drier than when I was in Denali last year.

Nice little moose rack on the Toklat.

Our camp at a creek coming off of the Toklat.

Bear print in the ice. I still have yet to see a bear on foot in Alaska...I think all these bears supposedly in Alaska are a myth. They only live and come out within 1 mile of the Denali Park Road.

Stephen shooting some caribou. He brought some heavy camera gear, and was cursing it on the first day, but I think he was glad to have it here.

Our camp on the third day. We'd climbed partway up a ridge hoping to push over the Polychromes the next day, but the weather wasn't looking so good.

When we woke up the next day, though, the clouds had lifted to a beautiful Alaskan day.

Here are some of the mountains surrounding our ridge.

We started to climb up to go over the Polychromes, one of those addictive high alpine get-your-blood-pumping it's good to be alive climbs. Awesome.

When we reached the top, though, there were some significant snow difficulties on fairly ridges, so we ended heading back down.

We ended up hiking out on a wide valley through a canyon-y stream to the West Fork of the Toklat and taking the river the last three miles in.

Here's a picture taken from the bus ride back.

And another. Which just goes to show why even the bus ride is an incredible treat.