Interior Alaska

A view from the Denali Highway.

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We spent our second night on the Denali Highway camped east of the Tangle Lakes at the edge of a large gravel pull-out. The view north across rolling tundra to the Alaska Range and southeast to the Wrangell Mountains was spectacular, and we enjoyed dinner as the sun set, watching the light change on the peaks. But just after going to bed, we heard human footsteps crunching in the gravel, approaching our unlocked van. Immediately alert, we sat up and peered into the darkness. The footsteps passed close and receded. I locked the van from the inside and moved bear spray from my daypack to a bin beside the bed, more worried about humans than bears. 

Ten minutes later a truck entered the pullout and unloaded several loud guys just far enough away that we couldn’t hear their conversation. They left and then showed up again at the far end of the pullout, piling out of their truck and milling around noisily. There was more loud discussion and more driving around. We contemplated fleeing to another camp spot, but neither of us felt like packing up and driving.

Slowly, it dawned on us that these were moose hunters looking for an overdue buddy, presumably wandering the tundra in the dark trying to find the road. A couple of days earlier, one of the few moose we’d seen in Alaska was splayed beside the highway being converted from an impressive herbivore into someone’s winter meat supply. We knew it was the start of moose season when the ruckus began but, in the unexpected anxiety of darkness and half-sleep, hadn’t put two and two together. Eventually we managed to relax and sleep before continuing to Paxson and Delta Junction the next morning.

It’s presumptuous to title a post “Interior Alaska” after driving tiny corridors through the ten or so percent of the interior that even has roads. North and east of where we traveled is the other ninety percent, a vast landscape, much of it wilderness, that I know little about. To access that deeper interior requires bush pilots, canoes, bushwacking, bear spray, and a lot of time. We had bear spray but otherwise were unprepared, so instead we visited Denali National Park, spent a few days driving the Denali Highway, and returned to the Yukon on the Top-of-the-World Highway that connects Tok to the tiny mining town of Chicken before continuing through a remote U.S.-Canadian border station west of Dawson City. 

We nailed the timing except for camping during moose season. Our route traversed a vast mountainous landscape in full fall color with almost none of the mosquitoes that Alaska is infamous for. It only frosted once or twice, though it rained often, and despite it being berry season, we never encountered grizzly bears, though we looked for them eagerly from the safety of the van and nervously while we hiked. We ate huge cinnamon rolls at Chicken just before the Chicken Creek Cafe closed for the season, and we walked through bright yellow aspens to a river where Klondike miners had toiled to dredge up gold over a hundred years ago when the Alaska outback was utterly different than it is now. The only thing we missed was wildlife, seeing almost none the whole time we were in Alaska. Moose and caribou know better than to stand beside the road in September looking like impressive trophies with their enormous racks glinting in the sun. 

This is as close as we got to a moose while in Alaska--an old skull and rack in Denali National Park.

A local denizen in Talkeetna where we stopped to walk around in the rain. In the background is the office of Talkeetna Air Taxi, the famous flying service that has shuttled climbers in and out of the Alaska Range for more than half a century.

Baked goodies at the Talkeetna Roadhouse.

Ellen hiking in the mist on the Healy Ridge, Denali National Park.

Healy Ridge, Denali National Park.

The foggy crest of Healy Ridge.

A drainage in autumn tundra near the west end of the Denali Highway.

An appealing cabin on the Denali Highway.

The Denali Highway, mostly gravel, was the route used to access Denali National Park before the Parks Highway was built. It traverses a gorgeous tundra landscape and parallels the Alaska Range.

Wood plank bridge over the Susitna River on the Denali Highway.

One of hundreds of small lakes along the Denali Highway. 

Ellen hiking from the MacLaren Summit with our friend Terry. We met Terry and her husband, Bruce, in a laundromat at Denali National Park and ran into them again on the Denali Highway. From there we leapfrogged each other all the way to the ferry at Haines. 

Patterned ground beside a tarn along our hike on the MacLaren Summit.

Lenticular clouds over the Alaska Range. I looked at the forecast for the Denali summit one day while we were in the area: 90-100 mph winds with subzero temperatures and three feet of snow. Not a great time of year for Alaskan mountaineering.

The infamous Alaska Pipeline south of Delta Junction. The pipeline carries oil from the North Slope to Valdez.

Northern lights near Chicken, Alaska. 

The Top-of-the-World Highway crosses rolling mountain ranges from Tok, Alaska to the Yukon border.

Ellen ordering cinnamon rolls at the Chicken Creek Cafe in Chicken, Alaska. Supposedly, miners wanted to name the town "Ptarmigan", but couldn't spell it, so they settled for "Chicken". These cinnamon rolls were huge and delicious.

A floating dredge viewed from a bluff above the Mosquito Fork of the Fortymile River near Chicken. These huge contraptions were used to extract gold from rivers during the gold rush.