October 3, 2025
Overall, the weather today was better than it was yesterday, but there were still waves of dark clouds passing through the area. Once again, I could only travel on the first 15 miles of the road into the Park. I had already taken lots of photos of the various mountains and again focused much of my time looking for animals. I would either crawl along the road in my car or park and walk along the road, keeping my eyes peeled for animals.
Here are more of the things I saw as I drove and walked up and down the road:
I returned to the place on the road where there was a plaque showing where to look to possibly see Mt. Denali. In the two photos above there is a faint image of a mountain in the distance but I honestly don’t think it is Mt. Denali. Even if it is, you can’t see it clearly so I really don’t think it matters. Given the general visibility and clouds moving through I doubt that it was visible. Having seen it two weeks ago it was pretty much fully covered with snow and there seems to be too many dark spots in these photos. There will be others later in this post.
There is a huge gap of time between the time I took the photo above and the next mountain picture I will post. I honestly don’t remember what I did during that time other than continue my search for animals. I know I spent a good bit of time at the high spot on the road just before the bridge, scanning various areas with binoculars.
At one point I had driven towards the Visitor Center, turned around and was coming back in and there were several vehicles stopped by the road. That almost always means an animal sighting. Sure enough, other visitors pointed out a cow moose, probably two hundred feet off the road. I got my digital camera out and was able to zoom in and get these photos. She was in an area with pine trees and scrub brush, and didn’t move very much.
After two and a half days of searching I considered it a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
I believe the two mountains in the distance (above) are the lower “black” mountains shown on the sign. The distant mountain on the right is just below the words “North Peak” on the sign, and the one further left is the long mountain which goes over to where Double Mountain starts to rise.
This is Double Mountain…
… and Denali, if visible, would be about 2/3 as tall.
I have looked online and haven’t seen an image that was taken from that spot.
You can see that by late in the afternoon most, if not all, of the snow that had been plowed off next to the road had melted.
That’s pretty much it from inside the Park for the day. The next post will be of a small village out on the main highway just north of the Park entrance. As you will see, just about everything there was closed, and most of the shops were literally boarded up for the winter.
I will come back into the Park for part of the day tomorrow before leaving to drive up to Fairbanks. I can tell you now, there won’t be many photos.
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