Denali Highway

The first portion of our trip brought us south of Fairbanks along the Richardson Highway. Once again we were following the Alyeska Pipeline. We passed Summit Lake where they hold the Arctic Man Competition. This event involves a skier and a snowmachine and driver. The skiers start at 5,800 feet elevation and drop 1,700 feet in less than two miles to the bottom of a narrow canyon, where they must catch the tow rope from their partner on the snowmachine, who then tows them 2 ¼ miles uphill (at speeds up to 86 miles per hour), before they separate and the skiers finish the race by going over the side of a second mountain and dropping 1,200 feet to the finish line.

Dave Checking out Summit Lake.

We had a great wolf sighting just north of Paxson. We saw a dark colored wolf on the gravel bar near the highway. As we watched it, it started coming straight towards us. It crossed the highway just behind us and followed the road for a bit before turning into the woods. Here is a blurry photo of it.

The salmon are running throughout Alaska. At a stop on the Gulkana River we saw a bunch of red (sockeye) salmon hanging out in the river. You can see them at the bottom left side of this photo.

In the small community of Paxson we turned west and headed down the Denali Highway. Neither of us had been on this stretch of highway before. It parallels the southern side of the Alaska Range. Although we didn’t get to see the tops of the peaks due to the clouds it was beautiful non-the-less. Here is one of the better photos.

We camped off a small road near a lake. The view was spectacular as you can see in the following photo. Much to our delight, the blueberries were ripe everywhere we went. We have been celebrating with blueberry pancakes in the morning.