June 8, 2026 Denali National Park Day #1

The alarm sounded just after 4 a.m. (7 a.m. in the Central Time Zone). It was already daylight here at latitude 63.2828° North and longitude 150.7894° West. The Holland America Denali Lodge campus is located on the Nenana River, several kilometres from the Denali National Park Visitor Center. The Nenana River is a tributary to the Yukon River.

The temperature was 6°C, heavy clouds and the wind 6 mph with gusts.

We walked to the main lodge in eight minutes negotiating the 74 step staircase up the Lodge level. We had a light breakfast at the Grizzly Grind Café, in the main lodge, where there were croissants, muffins, scones and cookies plus yogurt. People could also order boxed lunches.

We beat the rush, before the 5:40 a.m. departure of the Tundra Wilderness Tour into the park for the first 43 miles of the Park Road. There was permafrost thawing under the road just after mile 43, which is resulting in a bridge being constructed, over that part of the road, due the instability of the road bed in that section of the 90 mile long road. Alaska has warmed 1.7°C in the past 60 years, a rate that is double that of the lower 48 states.

Our driver/guide was Brian from Wisconsin, he has been driving the luxury school bus for 21 summers (May to September). Rain held off for the first hour then, drizzled or rained lightly for the next three plus hours. It relented for the final 45 minutes.

When we boarded the bus each seat contained a box which included snacks - a KIND bar, a small bag of Cheese curls (Cheezies), a small pouch of cranberry and nut mix, brownie crisps and a wild turkey meat stick. There was bottled water as well to sustain the passengers for the five hour journey.

The paved first 15 mile road section had a speed limit of 35 mph. The gravel road after that had speed limits that varied between 20 and 30 mph. Only the designated cream and light brown coloured Denali National Park and Preserve tour busses and the green busses, which drop off and pick up hikers, are allowed past the Savage River ranger station, where the road becomes a gravel road. Cory, the park ranger, alighted the bus for a brief welcome to Denali greeting. We crossed the Savage River bridge, one of many bridges on the route. The river, with a few chunks of ice still visible, follows north into the Yukon River then into the Bering Sea.

Brian was a wealth of information giving commentary as we travelled the Park Road. Denali National Park is the third largest national park in the United States. The other two larger parks are also in Alaska. There are no groomed hiking trails in Denali, you can walk wherever you want to venture. Backcountry campers must have permission and their campsite cannot be within viewing distance of the Park Road. All land further than 150 feet from either side of the road is protected wildness area. No hunting, logging, fishing or mining is allowed.

The Teklanika River is fed by springs and glacial melt. Denali National Park receives a modest 80 inches of snow annually and about 12 inches of rain. The soil is poor quality. Fish do not inhabit the water because of the glacial silt. The shallow river beds have several channels of water meandering in the glacial pebbles, giving them the category of braided rivers.

The altitude of the Holland America Denali Lodge is 1,700 feet above sea level while the highest elevation on the trip was 3,900 feet. The vegetation begins with alpine forest, gradually transitioning into Boreal forest then tundra. The alpine forest trees are black spruce, white spruce, aspen, balsam, poplar, dwarf birch and willow. We were surrounded by the Alaska Mountains which stretch 600 miles and the Outer range which is 4,500 to 5,500 feet high and much older than the Alaska Mountains. Due to the cloud hovering at the higher elevations of Mount Denali (6,190 metres) only 30% of visitors get to see its peak. It was shrouded in cloud today.

Denali National Park was established in 1917, then called Mount McKinley National Park, at a size of 1.6 million acres of wilderness, almost as large as Yellowstone, but a supervisor was not hired until 1921 when funds were allocated to the park. By 1980, under the Carter administration, the park grew to six million acres in size. Due to funding issues, it took 15 years from 1923 to 1938 for the park’s road system to be completed. The park bus system was created in 1972 to preserve the wilderness from the wear and tear of unlimited private vehicles. There are a few Alaska Road Commission cabins scattered along the road. They were used as cookhouses during the road construction and now as lodging for the maintenance crews and researchers.

As we followed the meandering Teklanika River we passed through the Igloo Forest to begin the climb to the highest point on the road. We passed the historic dry (no electricity or plumbing) cabin at Igloo Creek, where there is also an unserviced campground for seven tents nearby. At Igloo Canyon we saw a Dall Sheep, with large curled horns, grazing in the mountain side.

The park’s original concept was as a wildlife refuge so, at Sable Pass since 1950 there is a no hiking zone to encourage wildlife to venture closer to the road. At Mile 39, we reached the road’s highest point of 3,900 feet above sea-level.

At Mile 43, the construction of a new steel bridge can be seen. The rest of the road beyond Mile 43 has been closed since 2021 at Polychrome Pass. A rock glacier caused by thawing permafrost under the road bed, was moving faster under the road than maintenance could keep repairing it, to the point that the glacier was moving inches several times per day making it unsafe for travel. At Polychrome Pass we turned around to return to the lodge.

There were many stops, initiated whenever a passenger called out “STOP”, upon seeing wildlife. Brian would pull over to the side and engage his video camera. It would broadcast the picture on six fold down screens and zoom in on the animal’s distant position. Our first wildlife sighting was a moose laying down in a meadow. We saw caribou several times. The male caribou have large antlers. There are 1,500 to 1,700 caribou scattered throughout in the park, about the same amount of Dall Sheep inhabit the park. Other sightseeing animals were a Willow Ptarmigan (bird) and a grizzly bear which could only be seen on the screen and a bit blurry. It was busy foraging for roots. We also saw a solar powered field camera,

We watched a raven guarding its nest on the side of a bridge. Our final wildlife sighting was a moose foraging in the water and moving onto land where you could see that its winter coat was moulting.

At the last rest stop, when there was a light drizzle, Brian suggested that anyone who wanted to start walking on the mucky gravel road back toward the paved road, would be picked up after the others returned to the bus. Sixteen, of the 50 passengers, decided to walk at different paces, and were picked up on the journey back to the paved road section.

Brian distributed a booklet, Denali National Park and Preserve, Preservation in Times of Change to each couple before we left the bus. It was published this year by Alaska Geographic.

We returned to the lodge by 11:30 a.m. After gathering our computers from our room, we returned to the lodge via the 74 step outside staircase for specialty coffees (Americano and Mocha), to post and label yesterday’s photos and write up this morning’s adventure. On the way back to the cabin, we stopped at the open gazebo behind the lodge to see the two four week old sled dog puppies.

On our cabin door was today’s information from Zelzen, our tour director. Americano and Cappuccino. We spent the rest of the afternoon in our cabin sorting this morning’s photos and writing more of the blog.

We had accumulated 6,325 steps.

We returned to the lodge just before 5 p.m. to be driven, along with others from the lodge and the Princess Wilderness Lodge next door to the Black Diamond Covered Wagon Adventure with Backcountry Dining near Healy. From the Princess Lodge it was just a 20 minute drive on the Parks Highway #3 to Otto Lake Rd.

A light rain greeted us and the staff offered warm chocolate chip cookies as people alighted from the bus. The 52 passengers were split into two groups, 42 for the covered wagons and ten for the ATV rides to the dining cabin. The covered wagon group was divided into three groups to fit into the three covered wagons, each pulled by draught horses. There were thick dark grey wool blankets provided to keep our legs warm. The temperature was about 10°C with the wind occasionally blowing a bit of rain into the wagon. We were glad that we had dressed in layers - lined pants and shirts, sweatshirts, gloves and our waterproof jackets. Our horses were King and Duke driven by petite Lauren who has ten years experience with horses and lives on a hobby farm in the off season. Our guide, Joe, from southeastern Ireland, had been in Alaska for ten days and was a fountain of knowledge about Alaska for the 40 minute wagon rides in the light rain both ways to and from the dining cabin. The food was served Family style on long tables capable of seating 20 people with our guides and some other serving staff bringing the bowls of food and taking drink orders. The first course was corn muffins, coleslaw, macaroni salad and creamy potato salad. The second course was corn on the cob pieces and chili. The third course was chicken wings, ribs and sockeye salmon. Dessert was blueberry cake and whipped cream.

Once finished eating we were allowed to have pictures taken with the horses. On the route back to the parking lot, the wagons stopped for a panoramic view of the cloud shrouded mountains. We were dropped at the Denali Lodge about 8:30 p.m. The rain had changed to a light drizzle so we walked the ten minutes back to our room via the 74 step staircase, to scrap the thin layer of mud and small stones from our shoes. We settled down to finish today’s entries over perked coffee from the in-room coffeemaker.

Total steps were 9,326