Denali NP, Savage and Sanctuary Rivers

Ben

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The summer of 2013 i had the opportunity to go up to Alaska with my family. My Mom's grandpa had had a homestead on the Kenai Peninsula. Any way, we went up to Denali National Park, and two of my brothers and i did a slightly rushed two night backpack. One of my brothers ended up throwing up violently right before we started, and had to see the park from the road with my parents.

The park does not accept advance reservations for backpacking permits. You just have to show up and see what they have available. We got up there late after noon the day we arrived, which limited our options by how far the buses were still going in to the park. That's the price i pay for traveling with my family. We settled on going up the Savage River, less than an hour up the road from the visitor center. Near the head waters of the Savage River we'd cross a pass over to the Sanctuary River, and follow it back down to the road where we'd wait for a bus to pick us up. It would be about thirty miles. Also, there are no trails in the park.mapdenali.png


Pictures on the bus ride out.
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Caribou near where we left the road.
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View up the river from near the road.
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Looking across the river. Here you can still see the park road on the other side.
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Walking along the river. We started hiking about 700pm, which was ok. It was july, so it wasn't going to get dark for a while.
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Tall brush.
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This is probably like ten oclock at night or so. We set up camp about elven oclock.
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Getting closer.
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I found this blonde porcupine and took a couple blurry pictures of it. I did not have a good camera for this trip.
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Near where we camped. We pumped water here from the gray glacial water.
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The next morning.
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There are mushrooms in Alaska.
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I couldn't decide if this was a game or a social trail.
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Bend in the river.
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Two big hills we passed through where things narrowed up.
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One of the hills.
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We found some of these things.
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It's impressive how many colors there are here. And you can see them all because there are generally no trees.
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In some places brush was a real problem.
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Beaver dams. Spencer dunked his self in one. Reported that it was exceptionally cold. The water was also extremely clear in the pools.
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The river starts to get smaller and braided farther up.
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Wolf tracks apparently.
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Empty gravel bars.
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Erosion.
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This is what the grass looks like.
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Green.
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The pass is in the draw here.
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Going up. We gained about 500' fairly quickly. It wasn't too bad.
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Up the pass. I still don't know where all this water was coming from. It was the strangest thing.
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Looking back down.
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Looking up at Spencer ahead of me.
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Last look at the Savage River.
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Spencer in the saddle.
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Looking over the saddle.
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Moving to enter the Sanctuary drainage.
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We descended near here to the river going across the picture. We avoided the smaller stream flowing up to it to stay away from the brush surrounding it.
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Mutant reindeer. There's a bonus antler.
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The Sanctuary River, after midnight. Still dusky. We went to bed at about one.
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And here are the prints found at the river in the middle of the night. Going up the way we'd already come from thankfully.
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The final morning. We just had to walk back out to the road.
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Looking back.
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The Sanctuary River was much larger than the Savage River.
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There were some low clouds this day.DSCF7001 (2).JPG



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I saw this packrafter float by us. I just stood there and watched him come and go. There was some amount of envy.
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Eventually we had to hike up over this bluff, and then back down through the trees beyond it.
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The trees were a little thick. Mosquitoes were awful beyond here, but that was the only time they bothered us.
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Discussing which wayto go.
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Almost back to the road.
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And we're there.
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The river beyond the bridge.
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I loved it. One of my brothers had a hard time. The other brother had recently broken his collar bone, so only carried a day pack, while we carried the majority of his gear. This and the Grand Canyon are the sweetest places i've ever backpacked.

Here are a few unorganized panoramics from the trip.
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I've been looking forward to your trip report. I wished I had been able to do a backpack when I was there, but the day hike was wonderful. I've read some other trip reports on another website and it looks like everyone (including animals) uses the stream beds to get around since the bushwacks are so bad. It was interesting seeing the pack rafter. It seems like anyone doing some serious hiking out there carries a pack raft cause eventually you have to cross streams and they're just too dangerous to wade across.

Did you have any trouble with the grey glacial water clogging your filter? Looks like you had great weather at the start and it deteriorated from there, but it doesn't look like it rained. I noticed that everyone was wearing cotton. Any problems with that?

I would have to agree that this place is as wonderful as the Grand Canyon - and that's saying a lot.
 
very cool stuff. Alaska is so wild. A great lack of people, too bad about that climate ;)

edit: lake-to Lack.
 
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Nice report and photos. That area is just so jaw-dropping. When I was there we were just able to do a day hike up the Toklat River a few miles. I really want to get back there to hike up to Anderson PaAss and back around Mt. Eielson in 3-4 days or out to McGonagall Pass in 5-6 days.
 
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Those mountains look unbelievably beautiful. Great writeup and pics. I really hope I can make it up there one day.
 
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it looks like everyone (including animals) uses the stream beds to get around since the bushwacks are so bad. It was interesting seeing the pack rafter. It seems like anyone doing some serious hiking out there carries a pack raft cause eventually you have to cross streams and they're just too dangerous to wade across.

Did you have any trouble with the grey glacial water clogging your filter? Looks like you had great weather at the start and it deteriorated from there, but it doesn't look like it rained. I noticed that everyone was wearing cotton. Any problems with that?

the brush can be really bad. there are some places that we were walking more on the it than on the ground. but if you stay along the river there are also places where there are no gravel bars to walk on which creates problems. some times you can get out of the vegetation if you're far enough from the valley bottom. you just have to be careful where you plan on walking.

the glacial water didn't clog our filter. i have had problems with the same filter though, a katadyn hiker, clogging in southern utah and arizona. silty waters. the weather was great while we were there, only cloudy for part of the last day. no real rain that i remember. we had no problems wearing cotton. i never have, even going around mt rainier, when it rained on me for days.


speaking of the great weather, here are some pictures of the mountain we took from a stop on the way up to the park.

Denali is the white peak sticking up above the clouds.
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Denali center, Foraker left.DSCF5177.JPG

view across the Chulitna River.
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Foraker, i believe.
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it was clear enough while we were up there we were able to see Denali from Anchorage the day before.
 
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Great photos of the mountains. I assume those are from the stops along the George Parks highway. When we were there everything was clouded in. In the park for three days and never saw Denali.
 
Awesome! Makes me miss the mountains. When are you starting your trip up there?
 

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