We were finally able to make our first trip to Denali National Park this year. Normally we go at the end of May or early June, but 2020 is far from normal. The transit buses inside the park didn’t start running until July 1st. How different is it during the pandemic? Well, last year they hired 145 bus drivers. This year they brought back 13. Last year one of 17 green shuttle buses left the park entrance almost every 15 minutes starting at 6:45 am until the last bus left at 3:35 pm. This year there were only 6 buses leaving once an hour starting at 7 am.

As usual, we stayed inside the park at Teklanika campground and used the transit buses to access the park with our mountain bikes, but because of the very limited number of buses—and therefore, bike racks on buses—we had to change our normal routine a bit. We call it the Denali Downhill. We put our bikes on a bus to the top of one of the passes and they drop us off. We slowly coast our way down to the bottom of the pass and then wait for another bus to come along and then we do it again. We can work the buses going in both directions, so we can ride the Park Road from Tek out to Wonder Lake and back if we want on normal trips and not have to pedal up the big hills. My knees like this system a lot. Yes, gravity is definitely our friend :)

Teklanika campground felt a lot more empty during the week than in the past, although they said it was supposed to be full this weekend. They drastically cut the number of passengers allowed on the buses, and for the most part, people were really good about wearing masks and social distancing.

So Denali is still our favorite place on earth. The animals were still there, the mountains and rivers were still there. Denali herself came out for us. It was actually more enjoyable for us on the bikes this trip because of the longer gaps between buses, but we really missed all of the drivers we’ve come to know and become friends with over the years, and we hope they’ll be back next year or the year after.

Oh yeah, and we only had to be escorted around a bear that was way too close to the road while we were on the bikes once. A very nice Ranger saw the bear we were watching and offered to turn around and we rode right next to her truck safely past boo-boo.

So come along for the ride on our first trip of 2020 to Denali.