During the day, we took long walks in the middle of anywhere. Some of these walks went almost straight uphill, like the Exit Glacier trail that led to a view of the Harding Ice Fields. It was less than 5k, but the trail map said to get there and back would take approximately seven hours. 5k in seven hours? Must be a misprint, we laughed. We weren't laughing long. The experience was similar to climbing a 1200 foot ladder made out of mud. I whined about getting "stairmaster butt", but we kept going. There we were, sweating in shorts and sports bras, next to a huge blue-ice glacier. After a while we were so giddy we got the sensation we were on a mountaintop sucking breath mints and feeling fresh.
The bear we saw in Denali was cute, cuddly and probably woulda ripped our heads off for a granola bar if given half a chance. We were lucky. Actually I think we felt more at risk in some of the bars we went into in Fairbanks -- at least the bear wasn't all in our faces asking us to dance. There's wildlife and then there's...well, there's all kinds. I especially appreciate the sea lions, since they seem to have their priorities straight and know what's important in life.
This last shot was the only clear one I got of Denali, off the reflection in the visitor's center. All the ice-glare made for quite a bit of overexposed film, as I discovered later. Sitting beside the visitor's center was a caribou. The guides explained that Mr Caribou had found an ingenious way to evade predators, although it looked a lot like lounging to me.
