Between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors a day typically arrive at Alaska’s Denali National Park during the week of Independence Day.
They find lodging at “Glitter Gulch” across the Nenana River, board park tour buses, use binoculars to scan slopes for grizzly bears, and swat mosquitos.
Not this year.
The park has been closed and many staff evacuated due to a fire burning less than a mile from park headquarters. The Alaska Railroad suspended its Denali Star service.
The Last Frontier has experienced a dry June, with fires burning more than 400,000 acres, from tundra above the Arctic Circle to boreal forests further south.
The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on the planet. The fossil fuel economy is a massive presence in Alaska — a source of revenue that dominates state politics — but its footprints are on display. Come to Denali when it reopens, and you’ll see.
A ninety-two-mile park road extends westward from the entrance near the river canyon to the old mining encampment of Kantishna. It provides access to Camp Denali, the legendary backcountry retreat and learning center.
NPI’s executive director and I were on the verge of beginning a trip there in August of 2021, only to learn that climate damage had claimed the road. Accelerated melting of permafrost caused the road to slump on a steep slope called Pretty Rocks at the 45.3 mile mark. The National Park Service evacuated visitors.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, R‑Alaska, used her seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee to secure $100 million to build a bridge over the slide. It is slated for completion in 2026. Murkowski is, in the meantime, a major advocate for oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Refuge, and a vociferous critic of President Biden’s efforts to protect critical bird and wildlife habitat in the National Petroleum Reserve west of Prudhoe Bay.
When the pricey bridge is built, and the Denali Park Road fully reopens, visitors to the west fork of the Toklat River can look for another climate impact. The valley is home to “drunken forests” — trees tipping in all directions due to permafrost melt at their roots.
The park remains glorious.
In August of 2022, we made it to Camp Denali, having turned the 2021 trip into a stay at the Skyline Lodge. We caught sight of grizzlies in the Toklat, and admired views of the Wickersham Wall and north face of 20,300’ Denali (formerly Mount McKinley). Documentarian Ken Burns has said that watching the mountain light up was an awe-inspiring moment during the filming of his series on America’s national parks.
Yet, you come away with a feeling that the land is trying to tell us something.
Fires have consumed vast tracts of land, especially in Siberia and Canada’s Northwest Territories. The Arctic ice pack is shrinking, endangering the polar bears who hunt seals from the ice. The retreat of ice has denied indigenous coastal villages protection from fall storms arriving from the Bering Sea. A young girl tried to explain this at a House hearing in D.C., only to get an angry rebuke from the late Representative Don Young, R‑Alaska.
The Portage Glacier, south of Anchorage, has retreated so far and fast that it can no longer be seen from the Portage Glacier Viewpoint.
John Muir helped introduce Americans to the wonders of Glacier Bay. Cruise ships can no longer approach the namesake Muir Glacier due to its rapid retreat from tidewater.
Even the atmosphere in parts of the Arctic has become a collection point for pollutants from “down below.”
As a Northwesterner, I’ve become used to hearing UW weather expert Cliff Mass decry “exaggerations” and unnecessary fear provoking in press reports on climate damage. Yet, there is the evidence in front of my eyes, and change happening in my lifetime.
The country has done an exemplary job protecting scenic treasures and critical habitats in Alaska, thanks to the last four Democratic administrations.
Yet, for all the battles won, pollution of the planet and buildup of gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere threatens what has been achieved.
What’s happening up north should be a warning to us down here.
But how many warnings do we need as heat waves, wildfires and violent weather spread across the Lower 48?
