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| Denali from Wonder Lake at dawn |
Such a stunning wild landscape as Denali National Park & Preserve and its impressive wild creatures warrant a second look.
US Person presents more of his digital photography for your enjoyment*. Despite the official designation as a national park (1917) and international biosphere (1976), it may interest readers of
Persona Non Grata to know that the Current Occupant signed the Denali National Park Improvement Act 2013 which allows the National Park Service to issue permits to permit the construction of a natural gas pipeline in the park! Whether this unwelcome development project every becomes reality remains to be decided. Denali itself is a granite peak that has the highest elevation gain of any peak in the world at 5500m. Part of the Alaska Range, the mountain's hard granite is deeply carved by glaciers, but it is still rising due to convergence of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates. The park experiences seismic activity all the time, but only a few are large enough to be felt. On November 3, 2002 a 7.9 quake started thousands of land slides.
Most of the terrain is tundra since treeline is about 2500 feet. Trees that grow there are stunted due to harsh climate, thin soils, and permafrost. Three types of forest occur in the park according to altitude: bog, bottomland spruce-popular forest, and upland spruce-hardwood forest. Spruces, white and black and willows (11 types) dominate the forests. Tundra consists of mossess, ferns, grasses and lichens living in harmonious balance and forming a thick, springy mat covering the terrain. Wild berries, especiallly blueberries, cranberries and soap berries thrive in the tundra and provide an abundant food source for Denali's bears.
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| tundra contains bearberry (red) and caribou lichen (yellow) |
Besides the more obvious mammals because of their size and number, Denali is also home to marmots, artic ground squirrels, beavers, pikas, snowshoe hares, foxes, martins, lynxes and wolverrines. Migratory species of birds stay in the park in late spring and summer. They include waxwings, artic warblers, pine grosbeaks, ptarmigan, grey jays and tundra swans. Preditory birds include the northern harrier (spotted by
US), gyrfalcon and the golden eagle among others. Only one amphibian makes its home in Denali, the difficult-to-find wood frog.
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| big bull moose |
The North American grizzly bear
(Ursus arctos horribilis) is probably the large mammal every visitor wants to see besides Dall sheep. There are over 300 in the park today and chances are good that a casual visitor will see a bear, at least in the distance. But when a dark male uses the road beside you bus to chase an attractive blonde Toklat female, you have an unforgetable image to retain in your mind and hopefully find in your camera viewfinder. The park recorded its first ever human fatality from a bear encounter in August 2012. Most grizzlys are too busy with their own survival to threaten humans, but suprising one in the bush is definitely to be avoided. Boars will attack if they feel threatened, and their aggressiveness is only exceeded by a sow with cubs. During
US Person's brief visit, rangers closed the Eielson Visitor Center due to intense bear activity in the area. Some areas such as Sable Pass are permanently off-limits to visitors to afford maximum protection to wildlife.
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silver tipped or blonde Toklat female
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| two Dall rams on distant ridge |
Human habitation in Denali is estimated at about 11,000 years based on dated sites just outside the park boundaries. No remains of permanent settlements have been found, only evidence of hunting camps. The oldest site in the park is the Teklanika River site dated to about 7130 BC. Eighty-four archelogical sites are documented within the boundaries. Recently, ichnites or fossilized footprints of prehistoric animals have been found. In the Vistor's Center a cast of a
hadrosaur footprint is on display. The
park's Kantishna Hills region also hosted gold miners at the turn of the last century. A minor rush occurred in 1905 when placer gold was located in Eureka Creek. The camp that sprang up near the source of gold endured into the middle of the 20th century until the gold became uneconomic to mine. Today Kantishna, as it is now known, hosts a few visitor lodges and a nearby airstrip.
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unusually clear view to Denali from the access road
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*US Person uses a lightweight Leica V-Lux 4 with a 2.8f 24m-600m zoom lens
