2026-06-19 to 2026-06-27 - New Hikes, SAR Intro, Cool Birds!
#alaska #birds #hiking #denali
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Hiking!
New mountain view!
Super cool hike outside the park on Sugarloaf (why are there so many mountains named Sugarloaf??? There's at least two other ones I know of on the east coast).
A little grainy, but this is a cropped close-up from a pic that shows how much Denali looms over the other peaks. From down in the valley it looks smaller, but as you go up you get to see just how much of a MOUNTAIN it is.
A rare photo of me(!) near where we cutover to head down a different ridgeline. Slope behind could be a beautiful little bowl to ski under the right conditions in the winter.
Wacky wavy rocks along the ridge line! I'm sure there's some interesting geological history behind these.
Light n' Dark Juxtaposition and Savage Alpine
We've had some weather roll through the past week or so, and it's led to some majestic juxtapositions between the sunny and rainy parts of valleys. Seeing the weather patterns evolving in real time from somewhere up on a mountain is so interesting. We're just little observers wandering around the landscape and watching the confluence of huge, synoptic (or perhaps more mesoscale if we're talking technically) systems.
Looking out from Sugarloaf at sunny snow-capped peaks while rain showers down in the foreground. We only caught a few sprinkles from the edge of these rain clouds.
Fortunately, the Savage Alpine Trail was on the sunny side of the valley on this day. Some booming thunder spooked us off the ridgeline we wanted to check out though!
View across the valley from Savage Alpine - featuring sunny peaks out in the distance and a nice rain cloud floating over one of the near foothills.
Wildflowers are still popping off! This one is Moss Campion (Silene acaulis) which sprouts fun pink flowers out of mossy carpets.
Wildlife
A golden eagle! This was quite the saga. We watched this eagle glide by about 100ft over our heads. As soon as it appeared, the short-billed gulls nesting in the area started going ballistic. They were making loads of noise and then two of them started divebombing and harassing the eagle (even though the eagle is at least 5x bigger than them). After a minute or two, they successfully chased the it off around the next ridge. Not sure if it just couldn't be bothered to deal with the hassle of angry gulls or if they were just maneuverable and aggressive enough to give it problems. Apparently these gulls have dove at people too, so they're fearless protectors of their nests.
Ground squirrels! They're everywhere on Savage Alpine and are definitely pretty acclimated to the people there. This particular one with its cheeks full is how I feel when someone walks in right after I've been gorging myself on ice cream.
Another big predatory bird! I saw this great-horned owl swoop into a tree in the middle of our cabins and then proceed to hang out there for a while. Photo taken through the lens of my binoculars with my camera which was a very delicate process, but turned out decently.
Intro to SAR
I had the opportunity to spend a day learning about how search and rescue (SAR) works here in Denali. We spent the first half of the day in classroom sessions (got to see the CalTopo setup for SAR which is super cool as it lets the search leaders see real time tracks of all the folks on the SAR team) and doing litter carry practice (they've got a fancy litter with a wheel!), before doing a simulated ground search in the afternoon. The search featured some light bushwhacking and lots of yelling for our mysterious missing person.
It was a great opportunity to get some more insight into SAR operations and left me feeling more prepared to help out if they need teams to search or carry out folks in the future. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often though!
Pasta Night!
I'm typing this while procrastinating going to bed post-pasta night (that darned midnight sun still messes with me)! I baked up some cookies and foccacia + heated up a bunch of pasta and sauce to contribute to our latest social gathering in C-Camp. It's such a great experience living together with a bunch of friendly folks in this little community. I'm also loving having the time, energy, and motivation to contribute to more social events! The vibes are good 🤙