Adventures in the Backcountry

I am sitting on a computer in the little Mercantile of Denali National Park in Alaska as I write this entry. I'm rather out of the loop with respect to news and current events, something that is rather odd for me. But that is because I have spent five days in the backcountry wilderness of one of America's largest national parks.

We departed from the Denali Headquarters on July 20 on a "Camper Bus," which drives across the rough, dirt/gravel road through Denali National Park. Along the road, we saw a number of grizzly bears, golden eagles, caribou, and ptarmigan. Of course, we had to stop for every animal at 1,000 yards so people could take pictures that would most certainly not develop well. I couldn't tell for sure, but I don't think anybody on the bus was in possession of Mini-Hubble to view the animals. Nevertheless, after several hours on the bus, we made our final stop past the Eilson Visitor Center, right above the Thorofare River. We made our way along a game trail (that's a trail carved out by wildlife, for those of you who are unfamiliar with outdoors jargon) for a short ways down the hill from the park road, until we came to some rather thick brush. We had to find a place to descend into the riverbed, but there were really no gentle slopes, so we selected the slope with the most brush. Normally, one would never want to travel in thick brush, but whenever traveling up and down very steep inclines, brush is essential, because it is the only thing that keeps one from losing his footing and plummeting to his certain doom--ok, maybe not that dramatic, but broken bones are pretty bad in the backcountry.

We get down into the riverbed, and spot a moose at about 300 yards, just trapsing across the Thorofare. As we began to cross the classic Alaska stream, with its 25-30 braids, we discovered the water, while cold, was pretty shallow in most places, and not terribly swift. With ease, we finished crossing the Thorofare, and thought we were well on our way, when I looked up and spotted a male grizzly bear (quite large...500 lbs or so) at 150 yards. We stopped, hoping he had not yet seen us, and then noticed that he most certainly had, and was moving directly towards us. We waved our hands and shouted "BEAR! BEAR!" as if that is the thing one ought to say to a bear instead of "GO AWAY GO AWAY" or something else (I figure that talking to bears is like giving political speeches, it's not so much the message, but the delivery that matters). He raised up, gave us a second sturdy look, and then nonchalantly moved in the opposite direction. Danger had been averted.

I will continue this post later, but my time on the computer has run out...