John Rachal's Blog

DAY 36, June 26, Wednesday

We needed another day near Denali NP; three nights were not enough, especially given that each of us essentially dog-sat and did minor errands and some shopping for one of our days. But DNP had no late vacancies, and the Rainbow RV park only had the three nights we stayed. Our originally planned four, or even five, would have been perfect.

Our first technical problem of the last couple of weeks (not counting technology problems, which have been an ongoing pestilence for me, despite all of Val’s help without which I would be an innocent babe in the wood), occurred when the flip jack that we added to the manufacturer’s jack refused to roll up once the hitch receptacle was properly on the ball of the car hitch. We weren’t going anywhere if that didn’t get fixed since the jack is the third leg, along with the two wheels, of the camper. Our fiddling with it seemed unavailing until finally I took the one tool that we joked decades ago came in a Harley-Davidson tool kit: a hammer. It just required a gentle love tap and up it went. We’ll see if this problem repeats itself; our hope is that the ground was possibly not level enough and the flip jack was not quite vertical or some other anomaly.

Val took the wheel and the ride down from just outside the DNP entrance to our destination at Denali State Park, a new park just opened two years ago, was grand. Good highway, spruce trees everywhere, small rivers and large creeks, and huge mountains, though not tall enough to have snow. It was just as pretty to me as the ride into the park, at least almost. The day was very warm, though officially only in the low 70s, but the sun must add 15 degrees to that. We stopped at one of the viewing turnouts for Denali, and Val got her first view since her shuttle ride day before yesterday was too cloudy. We got a better view about 31 miles farther south, a mere half mile from the entrance to DSP. Here the mountain was 42 miles away, yet astonishingly massive, dwarfing its neighbors. Oddly, its outlines are not perfectly distinct, at least at this distance and in these weather conditions, since the whiteness of its snow and the whiteness of the clouds blend a little, and it is certainly possible that the winds on its upper reaches are blowing snow. And of course at that distance there is some haze. We’ve been told that the best time of year for viewing is February. We have now made three additional trips to this nearby viewing site, hoping for no clouds at all. The last trip over there, about 8 pm, the mountain itself seemed light blue, matching the light blue of the sky. We should get other views, and hopefully better photos, in Talkeetna tomorrow night.

Denali State Park is quite pleasant. We have a pull-through site with nice trees all around. It only has electric hook-up, but given how warm it is today, the a/c feels good, and the $30 is worth it. There were, however, several pull-outs in today’s 110 mile drive, a few of which would have been great for a night of dry camping (i.e., no hook-up of any kind and usually no vault toilets) since some of these pull-outs were right alongside the forest and a few had creeks or small rivers close by. But we were in the park, and I went on a little ranger-led walk at 3, and Val and I both went to a 45 minute talk about local animals at 7.

I wonder if I should add “explorer” to my little triumvirate of tourist, traveller, and wanderer. Or is it a separate category? I bought and have started reading a book about some of the ascents or attempted ascents of Denali and am reminded of the now derided and much clichéd reply Everest mountaineer Mallory gave for why he attempted (but failed) to climb the world’s tallest mountain: “Because it is there.” But I have always liked the answer the great 19th century explorer Richard Burton—master of 40 languages and dialects and first European to enter the holy place in Mecca (in life-saving disguise)—gave as to why he did these things that I would never think of doing: “The devil drives.”

DAY 37, June 27, Thursday

Talkeetna is a dusty, touristy, but nevertheless quaint, tiny town, sort of an Alaskan version of a quaint but non-dusty New England town. Several gift shops, cafes, a museum, a roadhouse, a small park with music venue, a little league baseball park. The end of the town, which is about four blocks long, has a few cabins on one of the three rivers that flow together here. It is quite a tourist attraction, though I’m not entirely sure why, with Princess tours both busing in and coming in by railroad, the station being 200 feet from our back door. The village, as one local called it, is at the end of a 14 mile spur from the main highway heading down to Anchorage. The spur is the only road in. We had a good pizza and salad at Mountain High Pizza Pie.

Very hot here, near 90. Shade is a much-prized commodity, and our campsite has none of it except the little we create ourselves. With a little breeze, sitting in the shade is actually quite pleasant because the humidity is so low, around 30%. For the first time on the trip we put out our “clam,” an octagonal tent-like affair with all screen siding, but even the screen is a tiny insulator, and it is hotter in it than out of it.

DAY 38, June 28, Friday

Hiking options are a little meager around here, the main one being a three miler around a couple of lakes, a hike I may do before we leave. But there is a paved eight foot wide path beside the spur road, and I rented a mountain bike for the 28 miles round trip up to the main road and back. Val disapproved of my riding a road bike, urging me to take the mountain bike, apparently presuming that since we are in the vicinity of Denali, with one good view of it along the path, a mountain bike was just the thing. There were splatterings of shade along the way, but generally it felt as warm as any Mississippi day. As is my way, I underestimated the effort required by a mountain bike, underestimated the heat, underestimated the hilliness of the terrain, and overestimated my fitness, and so I was glad to get home.

We drove into the village to check out the farmers’ market, which Val quickly assessed as disappointing. There was a string band in the park, and it was quite good. We somehow managed two seats at a picnic table near the stage. Some romantic song came on and the older fellow in front of us—about my age—made some endearing gesture to the woman beside him. After all these years of connubial bliss, the romance was still there: how sweet. He would touch her face, pick up and rub her hand, and stare with unquenched intensity into her eyes. But as the minutes passed, he seemed less and less quenched, and he did it all again and kept right on doing it, with several ongoing smooches along the way, and I was becoming alarmed that the local constabulary might have to intervene as the situation escalated. I thought it entirely possible that assorted garments might soon be flying through the air. The band started missing notes and children started asking inconvenient questions, and a dog was sufficiently concerned that it bit me on the shin. The woman, whose face I never saw, never complained, but seemed less reciprocal in her attentions, to her considerable credit.

We then went to K2 Aviation, to book a flight for me the next day to view the mountains at closer range. Val wanted to go, but she is no fan of little planes, and considers anything under a 747 to be little. So I put down $315 for an hour and fifteen minute flight, to begin at 830 tomorrow morning.

Did I mention that it was hot?

DAY 39, June 29, Saturday

We got up about 7 for the short ride over to the little airport by 8. For my flight there were only the three of us, two passengers and the pilot. We taxied out on to the runway, but the pilot said he didn’t like the sound of the engine, so we taxied back in. We fixed the problem pretty easily by getting another pilot, an experienced World War II veteran. His canes and oxygen canister caused him a little difficulty getting into the six seat Piper, but once he was settled we managed to miss a few of the planes still on the ground and were soon in the air headed straight to Denali and its neighborhood. What impressed me as much as anything was how close the mountains were, since at a mere 11,000 feet we were flying through them rather than over them, and we were close enough that at one point I was pretty sure I saw a couple of spiders cavorting on one of the cliffs. But between deep breaths from his oxygen canister the pilot said we were typically a half mile to a mile from eternity, though at one point we flew through a pass he called 747, alleged to be just wide enough for a 747, at which point he said we were still no closer than 1,000 feet on either side. But scale was so tricky. The best sense of scale and distance were the few other planes we saw, tiny specks, with a couple landed on the glacier. Our visibility was about 40 miles instead of the customary 100 miles, almost all due to smoke from fires near Anchorage. Virtually all the climbing parties fly in from Talkeetna rather than bushwhack for a month to get to the base of the mountain, and in so doing they start their climbs a little over 7,000 feet. The pilot got us back down with no more than four or five bounces on the runway and soon shuffled away for his mid-morning nap.

We had lunch at a little place outside of town on the Talkeetna spur where Val had had breakfast, and I caught up on some writing. Also did laundry.