July 19, 2007 – Denali and Wildlife

We awoke early and boarded our bus for Wonder Lake at 6:45 AM. What an incredible day for wildlife.

(I have to preface this before I show you pictures. The animals were far away from the road and I was using my longest lens (300mm) but some of the pictures may be blurry. Some of the animals, I was not able to get a good picture because of the distance but in the binoculars we have, the sights were awesome.)

We saw many caribou:

And Grizzlies (This is a picture of 2 of them. We also saw a mother and her two cubs.):

And we were very lucky to see wolves after they had killed a caribou. (The gray wolf is on the right, the black is on the left, and the carcass in the middle – notice the antlers.)


We saw many Dall sheep – herds of females and ewes and then herds of the males. (No pictures – they were too high and far away.)

We saw a hoary marmot:

And also (but no pictures), a red fox running with its kill, a pica, snowshoe hare, lots of different kinds of birds – how amazing.

It is so hard to tell the distance because of the vastness. So here is a picture with 2 people walking in the river bed for a comparison.

This valley is 5 miles wide.

We also learned about different kinds of rivers. Rivers caused by snow melt will be clear and rivers caused by glacial melt will be milky (due to the dirt and debris on the glaciers).
As we went along our driver (Frank) showed us the different ones.

A picture of the road:

Wonder Lake:

More pictures – notice the clouds. Mt. McKinley is somewhere behind them (the only disappointment of the day).

And this evening we were treated to this beautiful site right up the road from our campsite – mom and her two babies… (Notice the radio collar.)

What a wonderful day!!

We stopped at a local restaurant in town (Crow’s Nest) for supper. Very nice.