taking a stroll in Highway Pass in Denali National Park
The plan for the day was to hike around hill 5014 in the Highway Pass area. I got off the bus 2 miles early (my mistake) and when I got to the area I realized it was the place for the Discovery hike and it reminded me of being alone hiking close to the bear so I was not going to do that.
Anyway, about one mile on the road I caught up to a couple of buses parked on the road ….. bear. I took my binoculars (I highly recommend binoculars instead of cameras to look at the wildlife. You get to experience it better than trying to focus and start still to take a picture). I saw another gigantic male bear about 300 yards up a ridge, eating berries. I never saw me or smelled me, good.
Once I passed the bear at a safe distance, one mile, I crossed the road to go up a hill. Went down the hill and ran into these fellows:
After meeting these dudes, I crossed the road and hiked south toward some hills that looked appealing. This was a joy, decide where to go with no trails. So I hiked up another hill and got this nice view:
From that hill I could see some creeks that were feed from the mountains to the south. I took the highest point on that hill and noticed some backpackers returning to the road.
I went down the hill and crossed the creek, Then went up another hill and ran into very fresh bear scat, scary.
Unlike other national parks where the park rangers close trails due to bears, here you are on your own. I then reached Stony Dome and climbed quite a bit up but not to the top. It was fun reaching a dead end and then deciding how to backtrack and find another route to progress the hike. I was running into mud slide areas and I was afraid on a couple of them that I could get swept. Global Warming is real, people. The rangers have never seen these large mud slides, which expose the permafrost to the sun (not good).
Finally, I went down to the Thorofare area meadows.
I then came back to the road to catch a bus back. I stopped a bus and the drivers told me the bus was full (it happens, but buses run every 30 minutes) and the driver told me that all buses are full and that I should hike back to Eielson Center since there are bears in the area so people are not getting off the buses …………. in hindsight this bus driver was a total asshole, why ?
I started walking towards Eielson when a park ranger drove down the road and stopped next to me and asked me where I was going. I told her Eielson and then she told me the buses at Eielson are not letting people out since there are bears all over the place, so imagine me walking into the area full of bears. Yes, the bus driver gave me horrible advice. The ranger told me it was not true that all buses were full, so just stay put and wait for a bus there.
I got on the next bus. A few miles down the road a couple of backpackers got on the bus and we exchanged bear stories. Their story: they were lifting the camp after breakfast when a humongous grizzly casually walked 40 feet from them, looked at them and kept going. Uf !!!