Rocky Ridges and Tundra Tentsites

A week of field trips! By a few strokes of luck, I was able to get out of the office this week and experience science in many different forms both in and outside of the park.

A couple weeks ago I was contacted by a science communications team that was visiting the park from NASA Earth Expeditions. They were working on a few promotional projects in the park and invited me to join them for a day! I spent time with science writers and a videographer as they interviewed first a park scientist about her research in the park and later the head of resources and acting deputy superintendent. Seeing science communication happening in such a real way was an incredibly valuable experience.

On Tuesday I went on a field trip to a nearby permafrost observatory site as well as a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) climate monitoring station. I learned about the local research concerning permafrost, which is soil that stays frozen year-round. As permafrost melts, methane is released from underground and is added to the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is one of the major areas of climate research happening in Alaska, and over the next few decades we are projected to lose the majority of underground permafrost in the park.

3:30am alarm on Thursday! I traveled into the park with two of the park avian biologists. Their mission: to capture a fox sparrow. We drove out to mile 17 of the park road (also known as Primrose) and descended into the willow thickets, mist nets and poles in hand. The morning was clear, and as the sun began to rise over the mountains behind us, the great Denali was illuminated in front of us. After listening to the calls of the birds for a few minutes, I helped the biologists set up the mist net in a small clearing. An iPod with a speaker was hung to one side of it, producing a bird call that would hopefully cause the fox sparrows to become territorial and fly around in search of the intruder. Sure enough, a bird landed in the net less than five minutes after we had seated ourselves on the tundra to wait.

After his measurements were taken for data collection purposes, he was fitted with a small backpack. If recaptured next year, the small chip would hopefully tell the researchers everywhere he's been in the last year. I was even given the chance to hold and release him, and he was surprisingly calm!

The week ended with one of the most amazing adventures of my summer so far. My friend John and I decided to take a quick backpacking trip for a night in the park.

We were dropped off about a mile past the Polychrome Overlook, staring into a wall of willow shrubs as the bus rumbled away. After climbing through, we popped up over a small ridge and found the pond that the backcountry office recommended as a starting point. After eating lunch on a slope overlooking the pond and the park road, we decided to explore the ridge parallel to the road and started climbing up. It offered spectacular views, and even though dark clouds lurked over parts of the mountain range, the blue sky was also straining to come out.

View from our cooksite!

Eventually we hit a point along the ridge that was too steep and rocky to climb up. We backtracked and climbed down the valley, bouncing along on the squishy tundra, fighting through willow shrubs, and hopping across a stream. We continued up again through more willow bushes, these slightly easier to navigate, throwing out a "Hey, bear!" every couple of minutes to alert any nearby grizzly bears that we were stomping through the brush. We took a break on a tundra ridge next to a gorge as we planned out the rest of our route and scoped out campsites. Because we were above the treeline, we were able to plan out our general route for the rest of the day from where we were standing.

It's the backcountry of Denali, and we were hiking in trail-less terrain. Sometimes the planning became a game of which shade of green means which kind of plant. We eventually learned the dark green color that signified knee high dwarf birch shrubs and the minty green that meant overhead willow shrubs.

We continued through the small plain until we were able to find a way down into the stream valley. On our not-so-graceful climb down to the gravel, we slide past a patch of early ripe blueberries! They distracted us for awhile as we piled them into my bandana for the next day's oatmeal. The creek at the bottom provided its own kind of delay. After John leaped across while I wasn't looking, it took me awhile to find a place I felt comfortable crossing. I finally made him turn his back while I jumped across and crashed into the gravel on the other side in one fell swoop. (The important thing is that I didn't get wet). We also found this awesome pair of moose antlers in the gravel! They were inCREDIBly heavy, but I think it was well worth the photo.

One last steep slope to climb and we found a perfect campsite nestled in between all of the mountains. We took all of our food and hiked 100 yards away from our tent to cook dinner, also making sure to brush our teeth at the cook spot. Everything scented—including food, toothpaste, bug spray, and sunscreen—went into our bear canister, which was then put 100 yards away from both our tent and cooksite, creating a large triangle.

Around midnight, we heard galloping outside, and we cautiously stepped outside of our tent to see what was there. Though the sun had long since gone behind the mountains, a soft light still filled the valley. There below us on the ridge, around 30 yards away, was a moose cow, running through the brush and pausing occasionally to graze, just a dark silhouette against the mountains.

Since we were leaving the next morning, we cooked breakfast by our tent, pouring our fresh (but maybe slightly squished) berries into our oatmeal. The wind was picking up but the skies were fairly clear, or at least not angry with rain clouds yet. Once we were packed up, we decided to start up a shrub-covered slope in order to see the creek drainage (and possible impassible gorge) on the other side. We reached the top of the ridge and quickly realized that the fastest way back to the road would continue to be up over the rocky ridge instead of diving deep into the vegetated river valley. So up we climbed, up slopes that I wouldn’t have imagined were scalable when viewed from below. Slow steps and steady balance were the key, and the more we climbed, the more fun we had.

The weather was beautiful, and before long we made it to the highest point along the ridge. It’s impossible not to feel alive, joyful, and inspired when surrounded by views like these.

We continued along the ridge on a path that animals and other hikers must frequent. Eventually we had to scramble down the rock scree slope that we were afraid to try hiking up earlier. But we made it down without too much difficulty, ending our journey bushwhacking through willow thickets and more “Hey, bear!” exclamations every few minutes. A green shuttle bus arrived within minutes of us climbing up to the gravel park road.

This was the highest mountain that we climbed,
with the rest of the ridge ahead of us

There are few times in my life when I have felt as connected to nature, and as lost in its vast wildness and wonder. I hope I am fortunate enough to be able to get out into Denali more before the summer is over.

“Perhaps then, wilderness will become something as humane as it is natural, as much within us as it is around us.” –Kim Heacox, Visions of a Wild America: Pioneers of Preservation, 1996.