Fantasy Caravan Day 30 - Denali Tundra Wilderness Tour

On Sunday, Fantasy had arranged for us to go on a bus tour in Denali National Park -- Tundra Wilderness Guided Bus Tour. 

We met the bus at the Princess Hotel across the street -- on the way, I took a picture of the fire damage on the hills beyond Denali village. You can see that it was a brilliant blue day -- we were hopeful that we would be able to see Mt Denali! We heard during the tour that the fire damage was from earlier this summer, a "relatively small" wildfire of just over 400 acres. But, it caused evacuations from this area and closure of the park for some period of time. While many times fires are allowed to burn if they are determined to be of natural cause, this one was aggressively fought as it endangered property including the visitor rail line and the power lines that connect Anchorage and Fairbanks.

As the bus tour took us into Denali National Park,

... we started enjoying the views around us.

We were hopeful that we might see Denali -- this was at the first stop where it *might* be visible...

... the lower slopes of Denali are barely visible in the clouds in the center of this picture...

... if you don't know better, you might just think those are clouds, but they are granite outcroppings on Denali. We were about 70 miles away at this point.

Denali is the tallest mountain on the North American continent, but is not even in the top 100 among the highest mountains in the world. It is, however, tall enough to create its own weather systems, which contributes to why it is so rarely seen even on a clear day.

We were also looking for wildlife and saw a few Willow Ptarmigan...

These birds change their feather color from summer brown to winter white and back each year -- Our guide told us that they molt twice a year.

Do you see anything in this picture? Taking it through the window of the bus didn't help... but there is a caribou right near lower center of the picture -- just his head and antlers are visible.

We stopped at a rest stop about halfway in to the park -- this was the Teklanika River -- according to our guide, the river never fills this plain, but the river follows different paths from year to year.

Our group (and some others) at the river overlook

Re-boarding the bus -- note that it was a Bluebird!

In some places, the fireweed was just magnificent. It grows in disturbed soil, so therefore grows where there have been fires (thus its name) or along roadsides. In this case, it was growing out further from the road -- I'm not certain what caused the disturbance that allowed its growth there.

Our bus driver saw another caribou, and used some of the technology on board -- these fold down screens allowed him to show us where to look...

.. and allowed him to zoom in with his camera to give us a good view (this picture was taken of the picture on the monitor).

Even if we couldn't see the tallest peak (Mt Denali), the mountains around us were pretty wonderful!

The Arctic Ground Squirrel is one of the primary building blocks in the park -- many other species depend upon these for food.

A close up of some fireweed beside the bus

We could not go as deeply into the park as this tour had been accustomed to do in the past... there has been a landslide, called Pretty Rocks landslide, on Polychrome Pass that has closed the road at about mile 46 (we went to mile 43). The road in that area had long been subject to slide activity, but it significantly increased in the past couple of years -- from needing to supplement the road with about 1" of gravel added per year in 2016, to needing 1" of gravel added per month in 2018, 1"/week in 2019, 1"/day in 2020, and in August 2021, needing 15" in a day -- unsustainable for the park service to continue keeping the road open. Thus, the road has been closed and the park service is working with the Federal Highways Administration to construct a bridge across the landslide. This is looking across the area beyond where we had to turn around.

Fireweed and looking toward Polychrome Pass

Overlook looking toward Polychrome

We had a short time off the bus at this point -- the driver had told us that there were some Dall Sheep on the mountain on the other side of the bus, but that he would show them to us when we re-boarded the bus.

He again used the monitors...

Even with the monitors, they were very small. Dall Sheep are the only all white wild sheep -- I think there are two where I marked with blue arrows... I am not sure whether the thing I marked with an orange arrow is a rock or a sheep.

Our guide's camera was focused at the mountain over there...

... specifically in the area where the blue arrow is pointing. I don't know how the driver saw them... he said he could see white specks...  we sure couldn't!

Continuing onwards -- still beautiful sights...

... I was often taking pictures across the bus and out the windows on the other side of the bus -- so I'm surprised they came out at all!

This was at the place where we stopped for restroom break earlier in the trip (we stopped again) -- this time I noticed how loaded the spruce (I think) tree was with cones!

And another view of the Taklenika River

We were now heading back for the end of the tour when we saw a bull caribou right by the road...

It happened to be on my side of the bus, so I got some better pictures...

... he was a bit camera shy...

The caribou has antlers (not horns), meaning that they grow and shed them each year.

Heading up the bank...

... continuing on up the hill.

While we did not see Denali, we did see Mt Deborah -- its elevation is just over 12,000' -- not much compared with Denali at over 20,000', but still impressive!

A last Willow Ptarmigan...

... and we saw a number of vehicles stopped at a river crossing, and thought that it might be a moose, but it was another caribou.

We were hoping we'd get to get a good view of the Denali peak, but we enjoyed the day and the wildlife that we were able to see.