hiking in Little Stony Hill in Denali National Park

I was weighing hiking in the Sable Pass area or hike around Little Stony Hill. The sun was out, so I was thinking there was a chance for Denali to come out so I decided for Little Stony Hill ….. turns out it didn’t come out.

On the way in, a young moose decided to race the bus from about 100 yards. That was cool, the dude kept running for quite a bit.

I arrive to Stony Hill Overlook and got off the bus. I went down to Little Stony Creek and hiked along it for a while. I had a thought of hiking it upstream to reach the valley beyond the mountains, but it was starting to get cloudy and I thought I was not going to get good pics. I went instead up the Stony Hill side. Lots and lots of berries and bear scat. My Achilles tendon was starting to hurt, so I was not in the mood to scale to the top of Little Stony Hill and instead circumnavigate it.

I took this video on the other side of the hill:

Reaching the other side gives you a nice rest area to gaze down on Stony Creek:

I climbed down to the creek, crossed it and then started walking on the road since it was getting ready to rain. I walked until a bus stopped and warned me about bear on the road ahead (at that time it started to rain), so I just stopped and got on the next bus …………. I picked the perfect bus driver !!!! This guy didn’t rely on people calling for wildlife, he found them himself. For the whole day this bus saw 18 bears; I got to see 10 of them.

One of those was pretty unique: there were two groups of bears moms with their cubs about 400 yards from each other and didn’t notice each other. Bears do not get that close to each other.