Part V: Denali - The Cliffhanger

           Cloud-wrapped mountains and misty trees stood sentinel as we pulled into Denali National Park. There would be no seeing “The Great One” on this trip.


Heidi had agreed to come along with my parents and I. She had spent a summer working as a guide in the park and knew the area well. We bought our bus tickets and waited patiently inside as the cold drizzle continued to fall. Suddenly, a feeling of dread came over me because of a familiar sound coming from a corner of the building. It sounded like the horrible child that was on the train to Fairbanks.

Gathering up my courage, I walked over cautiously to investigate. It was the very same beast! Quickly, I alerted my parents much to their dismay. It seemed that we were doomed to repeat our journey but in bus form. As the minutes fluttered away, so did our hopes of having a decent day in Denali. Now, the wait for the bus held a weight of burden on all of us.

I tried to talk to Heidi to make the wait more bearable. In doing so, I almost missed the couple and their demon-spawn exit the building never to return. We all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that we had avoided catastrophe. Boarding the hunter-green bus, we all sat down and began our journey through Denali.

Everyone on the bus clung to the windows on the sides of the bus as the driver provided some narration along the way. Our first wildlife encounter was a few Caribou on a misty mountain slope. The bus stopped and all was silent for a few moments save the sound of camera shutters clicking away. I was, of course, one of those noisy shutterbugs.

As we continued around the corner, one of the passengers yelled out, “Dall sheep, eight o’clock!” We could see on the top of the ridge two rams lying in the patchy grass and rocks. They seemed to take no notice of us, probably because of their superior proximity to us. The bus reached the bottom of the valley, and there were a few composting toilets near a great mountain river. Bathroom break! I went straight for the frigid river in search for interesting rocks.

I had just enough time to come back to the bus and clean my mud-stained window before we were off again. This next stretch of “road” had to have been the scariest I have ever been on. It snaked along the mountain’s side with no support, pavement (only gravel in Denali), or railing. Thankfully, we clung to the mountain side when another bus had to pass us because there was only enough room for two buses to graze past one another.

On our way back, however, we would be the ones on the loose talus side. One weird passenger asked the driver if they had ever lost a bus over the side. The wry driver responded, “No. We have always been able to find them!” He then said that no bus had gone down the couple thousand foot drop to our right. Heidi then spoke up and recounted an incident she had heard of during her time working at the park. The driver thought for a while and then took back what he said. Comforting.

Photo by: Tom Wright

Part VI: The Conclusion