October 1, 2025
Having driven up from Wasilla, I had now arrived at the Park. My first sign that there was something amiss was when I pulled into the parking lot at the Visitor Center. Hardly any cars. I had been here about two weeks ago and while it wasn’t “packed” by any means, there were definitely a lot more vehicles. I also discovered that the large Visitor Center I had been in two weeks ago was closed, with a sign directing people to the “Winter Visitor Center,” a short walk away.
I walked down the hill to the other Visitor Center, only to find that it, too, was closed.
I walked back to where I had parked and found that a few other vehicles had arrived. I told them not to bother going down the hill. This was when someone mentioned that the US Government had “shut down” the night before due to a funding bill not being passed. I knew that the last time that happened the National Parks remained open, but with limited staffing. I explained that in my opinion, if we weren’t supposed to go in they would most likely have had a barrier across the road to keep us out.
I went ahead and drove in, but I believe most of the people I had seen probably left, thinking the Park was actually closed, because I hardly saw any vehicles after I went in. I did see two Park rangers drive by at various times during the day but they never stopped to talk with me.
My first stop was at the viewpoint where I theoretically could have seen Mt. Denali if the conditions were right. Given how poor the distance visibility was as I drove up I wasn’t terribly optimistic.
Nope. I could barely even see the shorter mountains which were much closer.
I proceeded to drive in on the 15 miles of paved road which I knew would be open. There had obviously been some snowfall recently and these are the things I saw. Most of the mountains I will show you were on the left side of the road going in. Having been here two weeks ago, I knew they were larger and more “impressive” than the ones on the right.
The next two were on the right. They basically start higher than the road surface so I was looking up at them.
Back to the left side:
The next shot is looking right from the same spot on the road. This is one of the places which drain water runoff from the mountains on the right, downhill to a river near the base of the mountains on the left.
Three more on the left:
One last one on the right:
This is from the road looking back towards the Park entrance.
I honestly didn’t remember that I could see that many mountains looking that direction but there they are. They may not have had snow on them when I was here previously, so wouldn’t have been as noticeable.
I continued deeper into the Park towards the gate at the 15-mile mark.
This is the small parking area there. It is the end of the paved road and is normally where regular vehicles must stop and turn around. As you can see, there were only two vehicles parked there, and it was 440pm.
This is the mountain on the opposite side of the Savage River:
And this is the bridge which crosses the river.
This is me driving over the bridge!
The gate was OPEN and the rangers I had spoken with two weeks ago told me that since the Park buses had stopped running for the season, visitors were allowed to drive in an additional 15 miles on a dirt road, weather permitting. As it turned out, there will be snow coming overnight so today will be the only day I will be able to drive to the “Back 15”.
I will show you those photos tomorrow in the next two posts. There are lots of photos but I have gone through them several times trying to pick the best ones. I will tell you now that I saw NO animals! Based on my discussions with other visitors two weeks ago it sounded like the “Back 15” was the most likely place to see bears, but don’t get your hopes up. While I spent lots of time every day scanning the fields for moose or bears (sometimes with my binoculars), I hardly saw any animals the whole time I was here.
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