The Rise Up Ride: Day 108, Epic Adventure Cycling Inside Denali
Date: 8 August 2021
Start Location: Sanctuary Campground, Denali National Park
End Location: Wonder Lake Campground, Denali National Park
Distance: 102 km
Time: 8:23
Total elapsed: 11:22
Elevation: 1546 m
In the sport of adventure cycling there are epic rides. And among those epic rides there are some that manage to tick all the boxes and then several extra credit ones as well. This ride had check marks for distance (103 km), time on the road (11:22), elevation (1546 m in three 7-9% mountain passes), road surface (wet dirt/gravel), weather (rain, fog and cold), natural beauty (Denali Freaking National Park), danger (grizzlies and moose on the road), and isolation (no services, no people, no cars and only the occasional lumbering bus.)
After this ride, when I sat down to begin writing this post (it has taken several days to finish while still processing the experience), I was so full of joy, utter exhaustion, and profound gratitude for the unspoiled splendor that I had experienced by bicycle. If Missoula is the mecca all touring cyclists must visit while in the US, cycling this stretch of gravel to the feet of Mt Denali is the road that must be ridden. Today's ride was the most intense full-of-wonder experience I've ever had on a bicycle.
Rising early and with no chance for food or water all day, I fetched and filtered four liters of Sanctuary River powder-blue glacial melt, cooked a big batch of muesli, dripped a Sierra Cup full of black coffee, hydrated a dried meal of spicy mac and cheese with added spoonfuls of peanut butter, and started pedaling. The Denali Park Road is delineated in miles, heading west from the entrance of the National Park (0) to the end of the road at Katishna (89). The pavement and all private vehicles stop at Savage River (15) and the camper bus dropped me, gear and bicycle at the Sanctuary River Campground (23) yesterday afternoon. My route to the Wonder Lake Campground (85) would take me deep into the wilderness, over three mountain passes on a narrow hard-packed dirt and gravel no-guardrail dead-end road across the wild boulder-strewn braided Teklanika and Toklat Rivers that drain the north slope of the majestic Alaska Range, including the highest peak in North America, Mt Denali (6201 m).
The bus drivers were so helpful but I dreaded seeing them slow to a stop and open their window to warn me about the location of grizzly bears that they had seen on or just off the road ahead. Over the past week, several sections had been closed to cyclists, who were shuttled by bus past a bear protecting his kill (moose) and another grizz that had been sprayed once and bean-bagged twice for charging at humans and was about to buy his relocation ticket north by helicopter. In the Denali Venn Diagram, my interests did not overlap much with the bus people when it came to bears. They'd warn me in a hushed whisper in order not to scare them away, while I'm playing Bob Seger and Biggie Smalls at full blast on my Bluetooth speaker while yelling "Hey Bear, Hey Hey Bear" in a full-throated holler. We were all looking for bears, but I desperately did not want to see them as desperately as they "did."
Sable Pass is no joke. Climbing on curvy cliff sides, hauling 50 kg of bike, gear, water and food up 7-8% grades on packed dirty gravel is seriously technical work. I realized then that today would be challenging. The route profile for the day's ride was viciously jagged, climbing and dropping down uneven descents. First it was up Sable, then descending to Toklat River through the spectacular Polychrome multi-colored section, and then the mist shifted to drizzle for the climbs up Highway Pass and finally Thorofare Pass before the Eielson Visitors Center for the beginning of a long false "downhill" of rollers into Wonder Lake.
Camp hosts Wendy and Jeff (usually from Gardiner, just outside Yellowstone) were waiting at the Wonder Lake bus stop when I pulled up, more than 11 hours after leaving Sanctuary. They showed me where Vera, the young Catalan/German woman who I was pooling campsite reservations with, had set up her tent. She and I had met onboard the ferry crossing the Gulf of Alaska and ran into each other again boarding the train in Anchorage. She shared my campsite reservation in Riley Creek and Sanctuary, and I piggybacked on her site here at Wonder. Vera is headed to the backcountry unit she has reserved to backpack and paint. I'm taking the bus, safe from bears and no pedaling required, for the four-hour journey back to the Park entrance. But first, I'm spending a day at camp, recovering and processing, waiting for the clouds to lift and reveal Denali.
