This day turned out to be pretty eventful. The plan was to be left off the bus at Highway Pass and explore a drainage that I found on google earth; it turned out I would be exploring more than that.

At the Toklat River bus stop I told the bus driver of my plan (side note: the bus driver was from Puerto Rico, so we talked in Spanish) and he told me to keep quiet because he was going to make an announcement once people got on the bus: just at Highway Pass there is a bear kill down the ridge (maybe wolves took a caribou down and now a bear and her two cubs have claimed the carcass) and every bus is stopping there for people to see. He will allow me to exit the bus one mile past the bear kill, which my luck was exactly where I wanted to get out. It took a very blurry pic of the bear kill:

Below is my idea of a joke once I got off the bus:

Suffice to say, people were weirded out when I got off the bus. Jokingly the bus driver told me he hoped to see me again, ha ha ha. My only fear was that the smell would attract more bears and I would run into them, so I was extra noisy during the hike. The eventual path that I took is shown below:

I entered that small drainage and explored it. It took a lot less time than I expected so I then started to improvise and hike towards Eielson. I had all that area to myself, no one else was there.

this is the view from the drainage back to the park road.

then I got up on a hill to the west of the drainage.

I realized that I was hiking way faster than the one mile per hour that I expected, but I was hiking next to a dry creek so there were no real obstacles. I reached the end of the drainage and decided to freelance. I found a hill to the west and climbed it (that is the video below).

I came down the hill to that second drainage and kept bushwhacking (I lost my gps in the process) west, always on top of hills. I really went pretty fast going from hill to hill (good route finding since I was avoiding high brushes) and I reached Stony Pass and got this nice view of Little Stony Hill:

And here comes the “fun” ……………… take a look at the image below and see if you can spot anything:

I was reaching Thorofare Pass; I just crossed Stony Creek and I was going to hike that meadow in front of me where I have seen caribou the day before. The road is to the right of the image and I noticed a bus stopping and I assume they saw caribou. Well, let me quote from the book that I used to now plan my visit: “if you see buses stopping on the way back from Eielson for more than a few minutes, determine the reason because by this time in the bus trip, longer bus stops mean bear have been spotted”. I decided to use my zoom lenses and I saw a GIGANTIC blond bear with two of her cubs. I was downwind from them, so they were not aware of my presence. At that point I was about 300 yards from them. I decided to take out the bear spray and start walking towards the road and not the meadow.

The road was curving towards the bears and I was about 200 yards from them. A bus stopped but I declined to get in, I wanted to spend more time seeing them. I passed the bears and now I was north of them. Another bus stopped by and the driver was assuming I was hiking south so she offered me to drive me “past the bears”. Little she know I already “drove past the bears in the other direction”. I planted myself at a safe distance and took more pics:

At this point I am upwind from the bears and while I am looking thru my camera lens, I see the mamma bear smell the air and look in my direction. That was my cue to stop the next bus and get the hell out of Dodge.

hiking from Highway Pass to Stony Overlook in Denali National Park

hiking in the Thorofare Pass in Denali National Park

hiking in Tattler Creek in Denali National Park