August 10 - Wolves in Denali! - Day 4

We got real lucky today....no it was still raining....we got to see a family of wolves!  Moma and 3 pups were hanging out within sight of the park road as we drove out to Savage River Trailhead.  Roxane got some good pics of them.  The pups look pretty big - the third one ran out of the brush just as we drove off so we didn't get a picture of it.

Pretty cool.  Not everyone that comes to Denali gets to see a wolf, let alone a moma with pups.

We continued on to the end of the paved part of the park road.  For some perspective, here's a map of the park area showing where everything is at.  The paved part that is the end of the line for all except the park buses is in red.

We put on our rainsuits to keep the rain and wind off and started up the trail.  The maintained part ended after about a half mile, but there was a well-used trail that continued on. The first hill was a good picture spot.

A mile or so down the trail and we could still see the park road behind us.

And a valley that the River emptied into in front of us.  So we decided to keep going.

We rounded the next corner and by now had gone about 2 miles downstream.

The valley was getting closer, but the trail was narrow, muddy, and brushy, so we decided to stop here.

Matt and Greg tried to make their way up to the rock on the right to get a better look, but with no trail and a lot of thick, wet, brush, decided about half way up it wasn't going to be much fun.

We stopped to rest and look for Dall Sheep along the way back.

But the only critters we saw were a couple of these ground squirrels.

Taking the bus out to the Eielson Visitor Center tomorrow, which is a 66 mile ride, so hopefully we'll get to see some sheep and bears.