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Favorite thing: Kantishna in Denali National Park is set in the midst of thousands upon thousands of acres of wild blueberry bushes. In July, the blueberries were amazingly abundant. They are so different than the blueberries you buy at the supermarket. They are smaller, tarter, and much more flavorful.

Fondest memory: Cooking is a favorite hobby of mine (and my husband's), and so I know that the key to great cooking is using the best and freshest ingredients. When I saw all the blueberries around me, I had to take some home with me. (The birds, bears and caribou won't be deprived - there are far more berries there than the wildlife can consume.) So I set out on our last full day to pick a bushel (or less). Picking these berries is tedious. I had to wear my anti-mosquito garb, and it took me about 2 hours to fill up 3 water bottles. However, it was worth it. I carted them home on the plane, made a wild blueberry sauce for a baked Alaska with one cup, made wild blueberry muffins with another cup and froze the rest. The sauce and muffins were so very tasty - definitely a cut above what I would have made with California supermarket ingredients.

Favorite thing: Before I arrived in Denali, I pictured deep canyons with narrow valleys. I learned upon arriving that my expectations were all wrong. Every thing is bigger, wider and taller than I imagined. Mountains are tallest. Valleys are widest. But rivers are not deepest. They are very shallow and are a lattice-work of meandering streams on a flat silty wide river bed. The ground is frozen almost all of the time, and therefore, water cannot cut deep gorges like it can in other parts of the world.

Favorite thing: This beautiful flower is abundant all over Alaska. It is edible - the blossoms can be thrown on top of a salad for a vibrant accent. As those living in the state will tell you, the flower blooms from the bottom up. When the top of the flower blooms it means summer is almost over. One of our guides said, "I don't like to see that." Summer is so short in Alaska.

Favorite thing: Our bus driver pointed this sight out to us on the ride into the park. As you may know, glacially-fed rivers are "dirty" looking because of all the silt carried with it, while spring-fed rivers are much cleaner looking. In this picture, you can see two rivers coming together, one glacially-fed, and one spring-fed.

Favorite thing: Mount McKinley is so overpowering that some visitors seem surprised to learn that there is so much more to Denali National Park and Preserve than just the mountain - as impressive as it is. The expansive landscape of Denali encompases three distinct units. They are:

Denali Wilderness, includes most of the former Mount McKinley National Park. This is basically undeveloped wilderness parkland, except for the single road which brings tourists 85 miles through the wilderness to Wonder Lake, with few amenities along the way.

Denali National Park additions, established in 1980. In this area customary and traditional subsistence uses are allowed by local residents. This recognizes the longstanding dependence on wildlife, fish, and plant materials for subsistence in rural Alaska.

Denali National Preserve allows subsistence uses and also allows sport hunting, trapping, and fishing under Alaska Fish and Game regulations. There are two such perserve areas.

Denali National Park and Preserve is a vast and diverse land, rich in wildlife, and offering almost unlimited possibilities to the outdoor and wilderness enthusiast.

Favorite thing: In addition to Mount McKinley, there are several other very impressive peaks in Denali National Park. In this photo, taken from the banks of the Susitna River near Talkeetna, you can see Mount McKinley on the right - 20,320feet; Mount Hunter, 14,573 feet is in the center, and Mount Foraker, 17,400 feet, is on the left. Other notable peaks in the Alaska Ranger include:
Mount Hayes - 13,852 feet
Mount Silverthorne - 13,220 feet
Mount Deborah - 12,339 feet
Mount Huntington - 12,240 feet

The Alaska Range arches about 600 miles altogether, dividing Alaska's coastal regions from the tundra prairies of the interior. This range of icy peaks and extensive glaciers has some of the worst weather in the world, since it forms a barrier between the relatively warm and damp Pacific air and the frozen interior.

The mountains are beautiful to behold from a distance, but only experienced and well equipped mountaineers, preferably with a local guide, should venture onto these potentially deadly slopes.

Favorite thing: Only plants adapted to long, bitterly cold winters and short growing seasons can survive in the subarctic wilderness of Denali. Permafrost underlies much of the park, and only a thin layer of topsoil thaws each summer to support the life. Even so, more than 630 species of flowering plants grow here, as well as many types of mosses, lichens, fungi and others.

There are two major plant associations in the park, taiga and tundra. Taiga is a Russian word for the northern evergreen forest and describes the scant tree growth here near the Arctic Circle. The limit of tree growth occurs at about 2,700 feet in Denali, so much of the park is above the timber line.

The area above tree line but below the glaciers and permanent ice fields is tundra, a fascinating world of dwarfed shrubs and miniaturized wildflowers adapted to a short growing season. Above 7,200 feet the only plants are lichens and mosses, on the slopes not permanently covered with ice.

Favorite thing: Numerous glaciers, rivers of ice, slowly creak down the slopes of Mount McKinley and surrounding peaks. Some seem to be literally frozen in time, while others have been known to flow at a rate of 10 inches per minute. Twenty of the McKinley glaciers are longer than 5 miles, and six of them are 25 miles or longer. These are:
Kahiltna Glacier - 43 miles
Muldrow Glacier - 40 miles
Ruth Glacier - 35 miles
Yuenta-Laeuna Glacier - 32 miles
Eldridge Glacier - 30 miles
Tokositna Glacier - 25 miles

Kahiltna and Muldrow Glaciers are used as pathways by climbers trecking their way up the mountain using sleds and skis. Tourists can hire a private airplane to take them for a glacier landing, using a ski-equipped light plane. I chose rather to view the glaciers from above in a flightseeing trip over and around Mount McKinley.

Glaciers of Denali National Park