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. 

Savage Alpine Trail

After having a lazy 3-day weekend of catching up on responsibilities and sitting in the sunshine, yesterday I decided it was time to kick myself back into gear by tackling the 4 mile strenuous-rated Savage Alpine Trail. 

The trip started off a little bit rocky. My hiking buddy and I were just headed to the bus stop to catch the shuttle out to Savage when we saw it roar by, too far away to catch up with. Determined to still make it out there, we hustled down the trail to the next bus stop, and just as we came out to the road we saw the bus about to turn and leave. Waving frantically, we chased it down and the driver was kind enough to wait for us, though I suspect the rest of the passengers headed to Savage got a good laugh out of it. 

Full Sail Ahead!

How am I already 3 weeks behind on blog posts?? The good thing about this is that I have been so busy and having so much fun that time has completely flown by. The bad thing is, I know a lot of really cool stuff has happened, but I'm inevitably going to forget a lot of it as I try to encompass the events of the last 3 weeks into one post. But I'll give it my best shot. 

Windflower, or Northern Anemone

A Tundra Wilderness Tour

Last Thursday for training, we got to take one of Denali's tour buses out into the park for the day to get an idea of what visitors experience when they come, and also for us to get a better look at the park we'll be working in for the next 5 months.

Our bus

Sugarloaf Mountain Loaf

As I staggered up to the narrow plateau where most of my other hiking companions were already resting, I felt sharply aware of how out of shape I was for this steep of a trail. Nothing can really prepare you for a nearly vertical trek up 2,000 feet of elevation in less than 2 miles (ROUGH estimate), especially when you've been in flat Florida for the last 6 months.

View of Denali Park area from the ridge

Nonetheless, panting and gasping for breath as I broke out of the treeline, the view was nothing short of spectacular. I could see all of the headquarters of Denali National Park and Preserve, from the visitor center to the post office all the way back to C-Camp. 

Training Week 1

It's Saturday, and I've completed my first week of training at Denali. Admittedly, it was super overwhelming at first, but that is to be expected anywhere and especially at such a massive park, but thankfully things are starting to make a little more sense now. 

So far we've spent at least some part of each day outside, learning about botany, geology, hike guiding, and interpretive techniques. For our first excursion earlier in the week, we hiked the Horseshoe Lake Trail, which is one of the main trails from the visitor center where we will be leading hikes all summer. With over 30 of us in training, it was good to see the logistics of how to lead a hike for that sized group or even larger, on the narrow trails and under varying conditions. 

Heading up the trail with our big group

Journey to Denali

OH my goodness it has been a long 4 days, and quite the adventure so far at that! Let's just jump right in!

Thursday night I flew across the country to Fairbanks on two long flights where I didn't get any sleep really to speak of. The second flight was the real kicker though: I had just started to doze off when I had a sudden vivid dream about the northern lights. I woke up with a start and peered out my window, and right there, a pale swath of the aurora was smeared across the sky above the clouds! It was extremely faint and grey, but it had enough of its own luminescence and the classic slow-moving waviness that there was no question what it could be. Such an incredible sight!