On my last day in the park, I climbed Mt. Healy. It's near the entrance, so no need for the shuttle-bus, and it has a maintained trail, so it can't be that hard. Right? Of course not. This one was brutal.
I packed all my gear early in the morning and checked it into the train station, but still had about 5 hours before my departure. For some reason, I had it in my mind that the base of Healy was at about the same elevation as the base of Cathedral Mt. So, I thought I'd be doing about the same elevation gain (+/-), but over a shorter distance. All I was really concerned with, however, was just making it down in time catch my train. I'd be pretty screwed if I missed it and the train took off with all my stuff.
Half-way up Mt. Healy
About half way up the mountian, I start watching the clock, and it doesn't seem like I'm making much as much progress as I should.
3/4ths of the way up Mt. Healy
The views just keep getting better. Almost to the top, and I figure that I'll have to descend about twice as fast as it took me to get up. Two hours to get to the top, and one hour to get down.
From top of Mt. Healy
From the top of Mt. Healy (above), we're looking south towards the Alaskan Range, which runs East-West, and most of the peaks are +/- 5,000 feet. The views are stunning, but these pictures are a bit hazy because they were taken in the morning, and into the sun. If I had know better, I'd have come up here at the end of the day.
Turns out that the peak of Mt. Healy is at 5,400 feet and the valley is about 1,600 feet. So that's almost 4,000 feet of elevation gain - nearly twice the elevation gain of Cathedral Mtn. With the clock ticking, I had to essentially jog the whole way down to make the train in time. I was lucky to have gravity on my side and a maintained trial most of the way.
First-Class cars
As mentioned, I did buy a first-class ticket from Denali to Fairbanks. The seating is up in the top of the car, and the first-class dining is on the bottom. There is an open-air deck at the back of the seating area. The first-class seating is a bit nicer than excursion-class, you have a cute bar-tender in the car and you're sitting higher, which improves the views, but I don't think that it's worth twice the price of the excursion-class.
Mama moose and he baby in lake
As the train left the park, we passed this lake (above), which has a mother moose and her baby taking a swim (top-center of the lake). The picture below shows the Nenana River, which runs North, up the Eastern side of the park. It's a popular for white-water rafting, but it's really cold (there's a raft near the middle of the picture). Only a few days ago, this river water was part of a glacier, and is only a couple of degrees above freezing.
