Hello From Alaska,
We just completed a week at Denali National Park. Of all our plans this was the one place I was most eager to see. We were blessed with great weather as evidenced by the picture of Mount McKinley. Most visitors to the park do not see much of the mountain. We had beautiful views on three days.

The picture of McKinley is taken from Wonder Lake which is a 5 hour bus ride from the entrance of the park. You cannot drive your car into the park. At the end of the road is a campground that we stayed at for 3 days. We saw bear, a wolf, caribou, eagles, fox and more from the bus.

Denali doesn't have vary many trails so when we went into the backcountry to camp for 2 nights we were all alone. The picture of our tent captures a bit of the feeling of being in the backcountry. We took a long day hike from our camp spot on a river bar and had a bit of an adventure. The views of the mountains surounding us were beautiful as we walked along. At one point we were on the side of a steep hill. There was a social path (a path created by animals and or the few people who hike in the same area) that was at most 6 inches wide. If you stepped off the trail you would slide down the hill. Probably not a fatal mistake but likely one that would cause injury, a very bad thing when you are alone. So we were very careful and successful in crossing this rather scary part of the hike. We had only walked another 10 yards when we looked up and saw the pictured grizzly bear about 100 yards ahead of us. The "safe" distance for bears is 300 yards so we were too close. The protocol for encountering a bear is to calmly back away and change your course. We didn't want to do this as the only way back was over a rather treacherous narrow path. So we stopped and stood there while the bear looked up at us and continued to eat berries. I wasn't sure what we would do if he started to amble toward us. I will never know because he slowly moved the opposite direction away from us. as soon as we felt like it was no longer paying attention to us we moved toward him and down the hill. Other than this occasion all our bear sitings have been from the bus or a much safer distance.