At 1:30 on our day in Denali, we boarded a converted school bus, converted in that is was a off shade of gray instead of bilious yellow. Other than that… all the creature comforts of a school bus. Our tour of Denali was about the most basic tour one could take, more of a education walk than a full blown tour, a simple jaunt about 3 miles into the park then a 1 mile stroll, just to get a flavor.
The good part of this mini tour is that it does expose us to the 3 areas of the park in pretty short order, the Taiga, the Tundra and the Alpine. Onboard, we had a couple of Park Instructors from the Murie Science and Learning Center providing background and commentary on what we were seeing as we drove deeper into the park. Both were extremely knowledgeable and much to my relief, not political.
We took the bus a few miles up the Denali Highway (McKinley Park Rd.) seeing mostly Taiga and Tundra on the way finally stopping at a campsite near the Savage River, this is where we got off to take a bit of a walking classroom tour. Our instructor was lady named NJ Gates (That’s NJ above with my brother-in-law Peter). And let me tell you, she knew her stuff, and provided not only an informative tour but a fun one.
We began by walking down a gravel path through the camping area on our way to the Savage River. Our first stop was at a Fir tree that had one of the largest burls on it I had ever seen. I did notice while in Denali that Burl woodworking is a pretty common trade/craft.
At one point down the path NJ stopped us and pointed through a clearing at a cloud shrouded massif over a rise in the distance, “There is Denali, or Mt. McKinley whichever name you wish to use.” We could only really make out the base of the mountain as, per the majority of the time, much of the peak is indeed hidden by its own weather, like a bride breathing her own veil.
After a few quick photo attempts at the mountain, we continued down the trail, toward an area where we we could sit a moment to learn more about the Flora and Fauna of the area. But as we strolled, I looked down to my left and noticed a small pile of brown fibrous droppings, like a box of 5x Milk Duds had been spilled. NJ walked over and identified this pile as Moose droppings. She took this opportunity to educate our gathering about the Alaskan Moose, explaining how this was indeed their habitat and that Alaskan Moose tend to be the largest moose in North America reaching some 7 feet at the shoulder and weighing over 2,000 pounds.
She then proceeded to educate us on what a trained biologist can learn from animal’s scat. She extracted her pocket knife, opened the blade and then promptly skewered one of the Moose Duds. Picking it off the end of her knife she explained that this particular sampling was a few months old, yet cutting it in half she was able to see that due to the compaction the moose had been feeding on young willow and other moist plants at the time. Tossing that piece aside, she bent back down to the pile and selected another, she stood and promptly informed us that one “can also tell a lot from the taste.”
THE WHAT?!!!!
That’s right… TASTE! To wit she proceeded to bite her selected dud in half and chomp on the moose morsel! Gunaaaguhhh! Was the common utterance head from her students as we stared in disbelief as she, with mouth half full, began expressing what she could glean from the flavor and… ehem… texture of the turd.
Appears that “This particular moose was approximately 3 years old, female, and hmm… yep… not pregnant!” … “Anyone have some floss?”
Wait… What? … Wait a minute… I think we’ve been had. And indeed we had been had. In a brilliant slight of hand, when NJ stabbed her first dropping with her knife she dropped another “Moose Turd look-alike confection” on the turf. She returned to pick that imposter up from the area and sucker us all in! Once it dawned on us, we all had a great, much to our relief, laugh! She laughing the most!
So after this High School Talent show flash back, we walked over to an open air make shift classroom, where the park had a bin loaded with animal pelts, caribou antlers, and ram’s horns. She laid these on the ground
before us and began to educate us on the various animals that populate the park and their behavioral tendencies. How I wish all of my college professors where like this one. We all sat attentively listening to NJ explain about the wildlife and learned quite a bit in our short visit. We even had opportunity to learn about tracking collars used on the local Wolf Packs, using an actual collar that a former wearer had gnawed off, a tracking antenna, and a receiver broadcasting a telltale chirp, varying in tone and strength depending on the angle of the antenna and distance to the collar. We even dialed in a frequency of a known female wolf and were able to ascertain that she was within 3 miles of us in a southeasterly direction from our current location, all without having to taste one of her droppings! Ain’t modern technology awesome? Very cool, in a Marlin Perkins-esque kind of way.
Before we knew it, our nature hike was over and we headed back to the bus, along the way spotting a Snowshoe Hare, not yet turned winter white, and a small covey of Ptarmigans (prn: Tar-meh-gan). Let me tell you, we were only a few feet (5 or 6) from those birds and still had trouble spotting them in the vegetation thanks to their impeccable camouflage. There are 3 in the image immediately below…
Back aboard our bus, we headed back toward the visitors center, but all of the sudden a voice shouted “Stop! Moose! Three O’Clock!” Our bus driver deftly pulled over to the side of the road, and we all plastered ourselves to the starboard side of the bus looking for the declared moose.
“Where???” “How far?”… “Gimme a landmark!” and after a few useful clues, sure enough, there was an Alaskan Denali Moose! Grazing about 2,000 meters away! (That’s right, someone in our moving bus, spotted a moose in the brush at over a MILE!!!) I had my big lens on the camera (70-300mm DX) and pointed it at my target, insured that my vibration reduction was on and I had the fastest possible shutter speed I could afford on this gray cloudy day. And still I could only manage semi blurry shots. That’s a long throw! Even with that big lens here is the best I could shoot off-hand at over a mile on a jiggling bus as people fought for a vantage. Turns out there were two of them, both huge!
Digitally (not optically) zoomed below, thus the degradation of the image… but you get the idea.
After about 5 minutes of moose watching, it was time we moved on, we had to get back to the visitors center to catch a coach to our next destination for the evening, The Princess Mount McKinley Lodge.
Upon our arrival at the center we bid farewell to NJ, thanking her for her levity and her obvious knowledge she was most generous in sharing with us. Then we all proceeded to the gift shop and snack bar, not so much because we had to have the latest paperweight trinket, but just to get out of the continuing cold breeze, while we waited for our coach to McKinley.
I’ll leave it here for now… as always more and greater detailed images can be found here [Link]
Next post… McKinley, AKA ‘Denali’ the Shy Mountain!
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