The Caribou Incident

On Monday, I was working at the Savage Check Station, just doing my thing, standing on the road with my clipboard waiting for a line of buses to pass over the bridge so I could hop on and give my ranger-welcome to the park. The buses were stopped on the bridge so the passengers could view a couple caribou in the river below.

As I stood there patiently waiting, suddenly the bushes across the road from me began to rustle, and out pops a huge caribou with a full rack of velvety antlers. It was way closer than 25 yards -- probably more like 25 feet. The caribou began to trot towards me.

Intent on increasing the distance between myself and the beast, I calmly began to walk up the road backwards, facing the caribou with my clipboard held tightly in front of me. The caribou followed. I crossed to the other lane. It continued to follow. I crossed back to the right lane. And still, it followed, closing in the distance between me and it. The buses were beginning to creep forward, and the caribou quickened its pace. There was nowhere to hide.

At a total loss for what to do, I hopped off the shoulder of the road and up to the base of the tall embankment on the right, with absolutely no plan for what to do next, gripping my pathetic clipboard-shield with white-knuckled uncertainty. Fortunately, the caribou continued on its way up the road in the righthand lane. As it passed by, our eyes locked and we had a moment together. And then it was trotting off into the distance and a bus rolled up in front of me, its front window plastered with visitors and their cameras.

When the driver opened the doors for me, everyone was roaring with laughter. Picture perfect for all of them, slightly hair-raising for me. Still, I hope that one day in the distant future, one of their photos will surface. Would love to see what that looked like from the bus.

Erratic Adventures

I am alone. And I'm out of water, dehydrated, and overheating, my heart pounding in my ears. I can only see about 10 feet around me in any direction, the alders are so thick. I can barely fit through the tangle of their trunks with my huge backpack, and I'm not tall enough to see above them to re-orient myself. I know I need to continue downhill, but unless I can get out of these alders, I'm going to tire myself out before I ever reach the creek. Up until this point I was having the time of my life, but now I'm seriously questioning whether I'll even make it out of this wilderness just a couple miles from the road. 

The journey begins

The adventure began at 8pm the night before. It was a late start for a backpacking trip, but because it's almost summer solstice, the sun doesn't really "set" until the wee hours of the morning, so it was totally doable to start the hike after one of our friends got off work. 

Adventure is coming...

Fun things are about to happen (hopefully). I'm leaving this evening for my first backcountry trip of the summer. Hooray! It's been a couple years really since I've had a good backpacking trip, so I cannot wait to get out there and enjoy this warm, sunny weather and explore the wilderness.

Photos to come when I get back tomorrow or Saturday!

Endless beautiful days

After days of sunny, 75-degree weather, we've finally started getting some rain. And of course sun + rain = lots of wildflowers! Denali has way more wildflowers than I saw last summer, and almost as many as I remember from Bering Land Bridge. I spent a decent amount of time last week walking the trails with a wildflower guide trying to learn all the varieties. 

Saxifrage, with alpine arnica in the background

I've gotten pretty good at recognizing the genuses, but narrowing it down to species still confounds me sometimes. For instance, the saxifrage pictured above -- still can't decide if it's tufted saxifrage or yellow-spotted. Either way, it's gorgeous so hopefully it doesn't mind if I just call it saxifrage for the time being.