Thursday, July 27, 2017

Denali Park Road





Finally, I got to bikepack the Denali Park road! And it was effing magnificent. I mean the weather was just perfect, the company as well and the road was not as much of a suffer fest as i expected.
I already bikepack the Denali Highway last year and had this trip on my mind to do before we leave Alaska and here it is an open weekend when J has a tennis tournament down in Oregon. The decision was quick, called couple friends to do this with me and off we go on the way to Denali National Park.

Yes this time the Denali park road is actually the road in Denali National Park ( as oppose to Denali Highway). It spam 92miles from the Parks highway to Kantishna and all of it is national park. We bikepack from Savage river to Wonder lake, which is about 74 miles.

On Our way to Wonder Lake we had to go through about 5 mountain passes so this ride on the gravel road can take a good toll but the landscape is just spectacular. Huge mountains, big rivers and valleys along with crap load of wildlife. And yes bears a lot of bears! The Denali park grizzlies are huge. We saw couple of them along with bunch of caribous, ptarmigans, hares, goats and moose.
The weekend went as follow: We drove to Savage river (13 miles into the park) after work on Friday and camped over night. We start biking Saturday morning and got to Wander lake (mile 85 of the park road) at about 7 pm. Camped over night and took bus back next day morning.

If i would need to sum this weekend up into one word that it would be "Views".
Views are just ridiculous, well as long as its clear, The Denali ( the tallest mountain in North America) is just smacked down into your face just towering over everything. The  Wonder Lake campground has the private view of Denali so just sitting at your campground having couple beers and watching sunset reflecting on the mountain is breathtaking. Anyhow, if anyone want to do one bike ride in Alaska than this would be it.