Hiking in Denali National Park Part 1 - Wildlife



68231 - Goshawk

 Note that I was without internet access during the trip to Valdez and I did not have time to write anyway. So now the plan is to work on getting the blog back up to date over the next few days.

Hiking the trails of Denali National Park proved to be a small adventure, and I had time to explore three different trails during my visit. Rock Creek is a 2.5 mile trail that meanders through forests of spruce and aspen trees and was colored with many varieties of wildflowers and grasses, as well as mostly yellow shades of tundra. Walking on tundra is like walking on 6-inch thick sponge, and it's amazing how it springs back to its original position after each footstep. The stuff would probably make a comfortable place to drop a sleeping bag to camp for the night.

The first part of the trail I only saw plants, grasses and flowers, and no wildlife at all. I will show some photos of the wildflowers later in a separate post. About 45 minutes into my hike I walked up on a goshawk that had killed a snowshoe hare and was having lunch. The biggest surprise was that he allowed me to approach him very closely and sit on the tundra and take photos for about 20 minutes.


68243 - Goshawk




68116 -  - Goshawk

 Another fun hike was a the Horseshoe Lake trail, which features a 250 foot elevation drop down to a lake surrounded by a spruce forest. This photo shows the view of the lake from above.



67130 - Horseshoe Lake

 There is a huge beaver lodge on the edge of the lake and we saw a couple beavers across the lake gathering tree branches to bring back to the lodge. We waited quietly in the woods at the edge of the lake and then photographed them as they went by carrying the tree branches. We had hoped to get photos of them chipping away at a tree such as the one in the 2nd photo below, but we never saw them out of the water.



7145 - Beaver




67137 - Horseshoe Lake


There is a hike at Savage River at mile post 15 near the ranger station that afforded us quite a few photo opps in just a short while. We saw an arctic ground squirrel, a full family of ptarmigans including a male and female and about 15 chicks, plus a coyote that tried his best to make a meal of the ptarmigan chicks or mew gull chicks that were in the same area.



68377 - Arctic Ground Squirrel



68673 - Male Ptarmigan



68861 - Mew Gull



68626 - Ptarmigan Chick



68867 - Male Ptarmigan hiding in flowers



 When a coyote approaches, you can usually tell where he is because the nesting birds in the area will dive bomb the coyote in attempt to keep him away from their nests and chicks. We witnessed this and it was fascinating to watch. The coyote was stalking the chicks directly in front of us across the creek while the ptarmigans were running to the left with their chicks to hide them from the coyote. Then the mew gulls were flying in from left to right and attacking the coyote to try and scare him off. They finally succeeded and the coyote retreated across the stream and up into the thick brush on the mountainside across the creek. We laughed as some startled hikers on the other side of the creek saw the coyote suddenly pop out of nowhere and pass right in front of them on his way up the mountainside. Below are photos of all the players in the scenario I described above:


68387 - Mew Gull Attacking Coyote



68800 - Female Ptarmigan with chicks
If you look closely, you can see 4 chicks in this photo. There were at least 3 or 4 more chicks under the mother's wings and out of view.



68800 - Female Ptarmigan with chicks



Denali National Park, Day 3 - Small animals



67977 - Snowshoe Hare





67930 - Snowshoe Hare

 Day three was uneventful as I took a bus back to the Toklat river station (mp 53) but did not see much wildlife. It began to rain a couple hours into the ride, but I did manage to snap a couple photos at a reflecting pond just west of Toklat, and of the braided river as we crossed the bridge. It began to rain a couple hours out and this would have made photos difficult anyway.



67935 - Snowshoe Hare



67646 - Mew Gull calling



7358 - Arctic Ground Squirrel

 Upon my return from the day's trip, I rode out to Savage River and photographed some snowshoe hares on the wayback. I was able to take time and approach them very slowly, and one of them allowed me to get within about tenfeet and photograph him as he was chomping on some roadside vegitation. I was watching a mew gull sitting on afence post and he began calling, which made an interesting photograph.
Below is an arctic ground squirrel that I actually photographed on Thursday near the Eielson Visitor Center (mp66).



7327 - Grey Jay

 The last photo is a grey jay photographed at Wonder Lake on Thursday.

 The next post will deal with animals encountered while out hiking some of the trails inside Denali National Park. It will include photos of a fairly rare bird that I photographed yesterday while hiking the Rock Creek Trail, as well as several others during three different hikes. I hope to post it tomorrow if I can find internet access. Tomorrow is a travel day as we will be driving down to Valdez (approximately 10 hours away) and camping out, then taking a cruise on Prince William Sound Tuesday, hopefully to photograph whales. Please check back for updates.