Up in Coldfoot, we were within Alaskan spitting distance of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, maybe ten miles on foot to the park’s invisible demarcation line. Gates of the Arctic, which is about the size of Maryland or Belgium, has no human infrastructure or services of any kind.

That’s an evocative national park name if there ever was one, summoning dreams of primeval remoteness. Only about 10,500 people ventured there in 2019, making it the least-visited U.S. national park even in an ordinary year, since the logistics of a visit are quite involved. I was no more prepared to visit Gates of the Arctic last week than to go to the Moon, so it was close but no cigar.

Denali National Park and Preserve is another story. It’s easily accessible to everyday folk, at least those willing to spend the time and money to go to Alaska, and willing to forgo private-car travel into the park. I was all in.

Chronologically, the sign was the last picture I took at Denali, but never mind. It marks the entrance off the highway Alaska 3.

This image is also out of order, strictly speaking, since it was taken mid-tour. Our bus was the one on the left.

The bus traversed part of the 92-mile Denali Park Road, which roughly parallels the Alaska Range. The tour took us to Mile 53, a spot called the Toklat River Rest Stop.

“During summer, roughly late May through early September, private vehicles may drive the first fifteen miles of this road, to a place called Savage River,” the National Park Service says. “The road to Savage River is paved, and features numerous pull-outs for folks to stop and snap some scenic photos. ‘The Mountain’ can be seen as early as Mile 9, if the day isn’t too overcast, and animals of all sorts can sometimes be seen on this stretch of road — although chances to see wildlife increase greatly with a bus trip farther down the Park Road.”

Lest anyone think that mandated bus transportation is some new innovation by the feds to restrict freedom of movement, the NPS points out that banning private cars on most of the road goes back almost 50 years.

“Prior to the 1972 completion of the George Parks Highway (Alaska Route 3), which is the main travel artery into interior Alaska, visitation to Denali National Park and Preserve was fairly low. Anticipation of major increases in traffic resulting from a direct route to the park prompted park officials to implement a mass transit system beyond Mile 15 on the Denali Park Road.”

Good thing, I believe. It’s a narrow, mostly gravel road after that point. Even a few dozen cars at a time could easily jam the thing up, and fools would sometimes (often?) get stuck. Occasional unlucky souls would be in cars that pitch over the edge of some pretty steep slopes without guardrails.

So at about 9:30 on the morning of July 29, I boarded a Bus #10 outside the park and spent the day in my 24th or 25th U.S. national park (I’m never sure whether to count Guadalupe Mountains NP). One of the most magnificent so far, too.

The magnificence started early in the drive. Even before Mile 15, we could see a mostly cloudless Mount Denali, the peak I probably learned as McKinley poring over maps in elementary school, the tallest in North America. Actually there are twin summits.
Tour guide, bus driver and all-around effusive fellow Brian told us that maybe three out of 10 visitors to the park actually get to see Mount Denali. Like Fuji and some other mountains of renown, clouds often cloak it. Later in the tour, when we were closer to the mountain, it was invisible. Throughout the day, in fact, clouds came and went with rapidity over our entire field of view.

At Mile 15 is the wide view of the Savage River.

Further along the road, an illustration of how far greenery can reach up mountainsides.

Around there, we spotted a bear. Brian stopped the bus for a few minutes for us to watch. It wouldn’t be the last time he did so.

Make that two bears.

In the fullness of the day, we spotted a total of five brown bears, some of whose coats were actually blondish. Brian noted that an estimated 300 bears live in the park, and if so, we saw nearly 2 percent of them. He further said that often enough tours buses see no bears at all, the creatures being as elusive as Mount Denali. So we were a charmed bus almost from the get-go.

One of the bears took a stroll on the road. Why not? For all we know, the bear considered the bus just a big lumbering animal that posed no harm, and could not be eaten, and so deserved no further consideration.

Caribou probably felt the same way.

We also managed to see, as the day went on, Dall sheep, moose, and a lynx — another animal the guide said was rarely seen on a tour. As for the Dall sheep, they were white spots way up a mountainside, walking where I thought no animal ought to be able to walk. That only reflected my ignorance of all things Dall.

The conservation of Dall sheep was the original motive for creating Mount McKinley NP, as it was known when established in 1917. One Charles Sheldon, who made a fortune in mining and retired young to the life of a naturalist, successfully advocated for the creation of the park in the early 20th century to keep Dall from being wiped out by hunting.

At Mile 30, the rocky Teklanika River.

Further in: more views of the road, which winds around. The second image looks like another road branches off, but there’s only one road in all of Denali NP.

The purest of the purists might object to this work of man in the park, but it’s the thinnest of ribbons in a vast wilderness, built from 1923 to 1938. Since Alaska 3 didn’t exist until 1972, visitors who wanted to travel the park road before then came up by railroad to the entrance of the park.

The road went on, but our tour made its turnaround at the Toklat River Rest Stop, Mile 53.

On our return, we stopped at a place that we had bypassed earlier, Polychrome Pass, at Mile 46.

Most of us climbed the hill next to the road.

The view more-or-less north, into what are known as the Wyoming Hills, was nice.

The view to the south proved to be my favorite in Denali NP, and in fact my favorite of the small slice of Alaska I got to see last week. Colorful, as the name implies, but much more than that. The cool brisk wind in otherwise absolute quiet added to the impression, but it was more than that too.

I will publish pictures here, but even more than all the others, they’re poor substitutes for the way the sweeping vista impressed my eyes. The view toward the Alaska Range at Polychrome Pass is, I believe, the grandest vista I’ve ever seen.

How so? Even now, a week later, the enormity of the scene staggers me. It isn’t obvious from the image, but the mountains are at least 10 miles away, leaving me the impression of the largest valley, the longest sweep of vision over a wild plain, that I’d ever encountered.

Maybe that’s the conditioning of Romantic ideas about nature, echoing down the last few centuries and taking the form of TV specials, coffee table books and a tourist industry that takes people to such vistas for a fee. Maybe God speaks through the grandeur of a place like Denali NP. Maybe I have wholly idiosyncratic ideas of worthwhile vistas, because to me the view from Victoria Peak over the nighttime illuminated urban canyons of Hong Kong was almost as grand. Maybe I don’t really care about any of those ruminations. All I know is I was exceptionally glad to be there in Denali NP and see that.