Denali Wildlife

Since Matt and I spent 7 nights in the backcountry of the park, we had a lot of opportunities to see wildlife. Some of the best chances were on our bus rides. We spent at least 10 hours on the buses between all of our trips. The bus drivers have a keen eye to see the animals and as they pass eachother they use hand signals to tell the other drivers what animals they just passed. The drivers talk about the "big five:" bears, wolves, caribou, dall sheep, and moose. We got pictures of all of them except the moose, though we did see one and about a million hoof prints. Besides the bus trips, we had some lucky encounters with animals while hiking as well- and no, no bear encounters from the ground.

A lot of the pictures are from far away, so you may want to click on the pictures to see a bigger version.

The dall sheep like the steep cliffs. They were also the reason the national park was first created- to protect them from poaching. The only sheep we saw were from the bus.We saw about 18 sheep on the top of this hill. They always just look like tiny white dots.This cliff is near vertical.There are zillions of arctic ground squirrels in the park. In the winter they hibernate and their body temperature can drop to below zero. We're still not sure how they do that! We also heard that the one species of frog found in the park survives by freezing solid in winter... try to figure that one out.We're pretty sure these were willow ptarmigans. They were in a group of about 20 and they moved around the ground from bush to bush making funny little clucking sounds. They lived right where we ate our meals in the polychrome glacier unit.

Ptarmigan video.

There were caribou all over the place. We saw many from the buses, sometimes they would walk right in front of the buses to cross the road. But we did have some walk right past us when we were camping.This caribou saw us when we were out for a hike but paid us no attention and walked right past us- eating grass and drinking from the stream. It looked like she was molting also, we found clumps of brown fur in a few places.

Caribou video.

We followed this wolf in our bus as it ran down the street towards a visitor center where a healthy population of arctic ground squirrels resides. When we were staying in the mountains near Igloo Creek Campground on our trek to find water we came across a wolf laying at the top of a ridge. We had just come over the top of another ridge when we saw it. It was so black I couldn't tell if it was an animal or not at first. He just laid there, yawning, eyes heavy. Not really caring about us, until he decided to walk off, down the hill.Our first night in the polychrome glaciers this red fox ran by us. He ran by, then stopped, sat and stared at us, then continued until he was past us.On our way to the road, back toward the bus to go out of the park, a small animal poked out its little head and proceeded to scurry around us for ten minutes. He was the cutest thing we saw, hopping back and forth, wanting to get close to us, but not having quite enough courage. We looked at our animal guide and we think he was a short-tailed weasel, maybe a baby.

Cutest little weasel video!

Yes, we did see several bears in the park, but luckily only form the bus. I think we saw maybe 7 bears total. We were still pretty paranoid about them, since we saw maybe fifty piles of bear scat. It was everywhere! Especially in the Igloo Mountain regioun where we stayed in the backcountry. It is eerie to see it. This sow was eating berries with her two cubs in the polychrome glacier unit.After getting tired of eating berries, the mom laid on her back and pulled her two yearling cubs close to her and began to nurse them. It was pretty awesome to see.

On our bus drive out of the park, we came across this bear in the road. He was in the unit we had been in, at the base of the mountains near igloo campground. The bus driver said that because he was darker and larger it was probably a male. Did you know that bears live into their 30's? We didn't know they lived so long. Here is a short video Matt got of the bear:

The morning we were supposed to leave the park, we woke up and saw that we were swamped in with a heavy fog. At first we felt really bad for everyone entering the park because they would never get to see anything in the park past the fog. But as the morning went on, the fog burned and a bright blue sky began to peak through. Once we were all packed and heading to the road we saw the tip of a rounded white mountain. We wondered if it could be Denali and by the time we got to the road we knew it was. So instead of heading out of the park, we took the bus back into Eielson to get a good view of the mountain. It was only the second time in 9 days that the mountain came out and we really wanted to get another good view of it. We were sure glad we went back into the park. The views were spectacular. Apparently only 5% of people who go on the buses get to see the mountain with no clouds in front of it. We considered ourselves amazingly lucky to see it twice.

We stayed right near the ridge next to the river- never knowing that a nice view of the mountain was right there.After arriving back at the entrance to the park, we went to the dog kennels they have for winter dog sled runs into the park. Dog sleds are the only method for getting into the park in winter, so the rangers use them to patrol and to do work around the park. These dogs are bred for size, thick coats, and tough feet. They love to work and as soon as a couple dogs were hooked to the sled they all started to bark and they could barely wait to run. The trainers bring the dogs out on their two hind legs because otherwise they would pull the people over. I guess they are the strongest freight hauling animal in the world pound for pound- each dog is able to pull about 100 pounds when they only weigh between 60 and 80 lbs. They have pretty long lives also- about 15-17 years but they get retired at around age 9. After that they go to a home in a cold climate where they will still be able to run. This is important because they still love running and are used to running about 1000 miles a year. We knew that Teak would totally fit in here, since he's so tough and brave and never tires on a run... The dogs loved sitting on top of their kennels.

Dogs being hooked to the sled video.

After watching the show we returned our bear canisters, ate some delicous hamburgers and drove home. Then we took long overdue showers and washed our bodies twice to get rid of the filth. It felt great and our bed felt even better!