Here is our Youtube video of Alaska and Denali is a portion in there. It is a 3 part series of the ultimate road trip make sure to check it out!
On to Our Trip to Denali
We started out our adventure a few days back, hiking into Denali National Forest. We stopped in the town of Healy and got our photo next to the infamous bus of Christopher Mccandless. Then we headed to get our permits for back country hiking in Denali National Park. We flipped through a notebook to pick our unit that we could backpack in. The park is split into units to keep it from being overcrowded in areas. Our unit seemed like gorgeous views on paper!
We found out you had to pay $40 per person for a bus ticket or we could ride our mountain bikes for free. So we chose to ride our mountain bikes! We took the free shuttle to the end of where they bused you and hopped on our mountain bikes and rode 15 miles into the park. We got to mile 29, where we left our bikes at Teklanika river and started our trek into the forest.
It truly is back country, so we had to go off landmarks without any trails to follow. Out first we had to cross several rivers and I lost my sandal, as the current was moving pretty quick. We pressed on. We got over to the forest where we needed to head east, but we were met with deep moss. It was pretty bad so we decided to look for another route. Eventually, we saw that the moss/thick brush was everywhere so we decided to venture through it in hopes to getting where we needed to go. Needless to say, we ended up turning around after hiking for 6 miles in ankle swallowing brush and getting eaten by 30+ mosquitoes if we stopped. We felt defeated in our back country skills!
After that, we just decided to camp out near the river and we found the most beautiful spot. We were surrounded on all sides by water. It was amazing. The next morning we packed up and grabbed our bikes to head back into town.
The bike out was pretty treacherous, it was a solid hour straight up hill. Nonetheless, it was beautiful. We biked a total of 30 miles back out and got some awesome speed on some of the hills. We hopped in the van and headed for Anchorage!
LIVE//LOVE
-The Ruths
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