[at-l] a little off topic

[RoksnRoots@xxxxxxx (RoksnRoots@xxxxxxx)]

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In a message dated 1/21/2003 11:38:28 AM Eastern Standard Time,
rsharp@tgedirect.com writes:



> Has anyone ever hiked up in Denali National Park?  Just interested if anyone
> could give me any insight.
>


      Yes, I was there for a week in september 1995. To limit overcrowding
the area is restricted by a quota system and divided into zones. You have to
bid for a zone. Alaskan weather is fairly predictable. The first 2 weeks of
september are post season and the zones are easier to get. Still, I had to
hike in 2 other less interesting zones before the best ones opened up under
Denali. After mid-september the snows appear with regularity...

     Denali is full of wildlife. You have to take a park school bus on the
single dirt highway in. On the way I saw boreal forest, moose in ponds,
caribou herds running through the tundra, the Alaskan Range, and plenty of
bears. You have to keep your food in plastic bear barrels they give you at
the ranger orientation at the entrance. Listen to the briefing, it got me out
of a grizzly bear encounter. I was confronted by a circling grizzly in the
best zone and followed the directions. The bear backed down.

     In september the grizzlies are foraging 24 hours a day on ground berries
to fatten up for the winter. They are all over the place and will appear on
the road in front of the bus or off in the tundra on your trek. I found out
later I was lucky to have seen a wolverine moving above my camp in the scree
one morning. Sightings are rare...

     Pooping is a chore there since the tundra doesn't ever thaw and the
deposit lasts a decade or more. Some recommend blue-bagging your own waste
out. I found gopher holes. (I feel sorry for the resident gopher)...

     One day I forded a difficult ice cold stream in a valley bottom
(wilderness - no bridges), climbed up a side canyon underneath a craggy
ridgeline and camped up on a dome of grass tundra just under some rocky
castellations. I cooked supper a 1/4 mile from camp by the stream and washed
up good. That evening I lay in the tundra looking back down the gully at a
large grizzly busy about 1/2 mile below. My gortex camouflage suit kept me
dry and comfy lying face down in the damp tundra. That night I saw a neon
green aurora over the mountains. In the morning I thought my pack was shifted
from where I put it a 100 yards behind my camp. As I walked back down and out
of the gully I looked back at the sand hill beneath my camp and saw grizzly
tracks going right up to where my tent was that weren't there the evening
before. Just before reaching the valley floor I spotted a grizzly about 100
yards away up in the willow scrub moving diagonally uphill and away from me.
His look back at me was a sight. A BIG burly beast with a cute sort of face,
eyes, and expression like a big cuddly doll. Kind of a contrast between fuzby
cuteness and killing ability in which I would stand no chance. When the
grizzly is on the move around you, you feel very alive and close to your
survival genes. When I reached the park road another grizzly appeared and
strolled down the road. I stood still and took pictures as he moved off and
back into the tundra...

      My other encounter was a grizzly tracking me down and circling me. I
stood my ground and did what the rangers told me and he quit it and ran off
up the valley.

      (If you can get a cheap fare I recommend Denali)...