Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

It is May 5, and here in Denali snowflakes swirl outside my window. Robert Frost’s words from “A Prayer in Springtime,” do nothing for my morale. Instead, his words make me wish for the crocuses, forsythia and daffodils of my Connecticut childhood.

I sit at my desk, and consider lighting a fire in the woodstove. I thought we were done with the woodstove, when we hung up the dogsleds two weeks ago. The mushing season ended late this year. I heard the first song of an American Robin when I was preparing the dogs for a run on a frosty –20 degree April morning.

Returning birds are usually the first signal of spring in this country. The Sandhill Cranes fly high overhead long before the flowers bloom. Now in the midst of a snow flurry, a Yellow-Rumped Warbler lands on the windowsill inches from my face. He hops, then flies off, but not without giving me a message. If he can wing his way from another hemisphere to visit me during a May snowstorm, it is time for me to embrace the new season.

I grab my binoculars, camera, and a bird book and drive into the park. The road has recently been plowed, and invites me to visit a wildlife corridor that has been off limits since late September. I recall the first time I traveled the park road. It was in June of 1985, and my father had recently died. My mother found herself lost without her wilderness companion, so my husband and I were determined to take her on a new adventure. We planned a five-day trip to Camp Denali. None of us had been there before, and we hoped our visit would relieve Mom from some of her grief.

Our drive on this road to Camp Denali was a journey into springtime. After winding through the initial miles of taiga forest, we entered a wide tundra valley where we admired an enormous cow moose with twin calves teetering at her side, and a puffed-up Willow Ptarmigan who scuttled alongside the bus, her downy chicks in tow. As the miles continued we listened as Wally described the landscape’s history, and we contemplated the span of geological ages. When the road took us alongside the rock outcroppings of Polychrome Pass, pink clusters of moss campion enchanted my horticulturist mother. She delighted in “meeting” a new flower. Grizzly cubs playfully tumbled down snowfields on Highway Pass, and caribou trotted along eskers that reached toward Wonder Lake. By the time we walked inside our cozy log cabin at Camp Denali, our dark winter had faded from view.

Today the park road is closed at mile 13, so I park the car and walk a mile further. The Savage River valley is blanketed in snow, but the river runs open in places, cascading beneath shelves of ice. Winter doesn’t yield easily here, yet the signs of a new season are all around me. Pussy willows wave in the cold north wind, and a thrush lands on the branches. A Mew Gull sits on a snowbound bench that’s designed for summer tourists. I imagine he is already looking for their breadcrumbs. A ptarmigan cackles in the brush. His feathers are no longer winter-white; they’ve already turned to summertime brown.

I take heart in these confirmations of spring, but I know it is a vital yet fleeting presence. Long before the final flower blooms on the slopes of Primrose Ridge, snow will bury its chance. Soon after moose calves find their strength, a skim of ice will form on the kettle ponds, making their lives difficult. The snowshoe hare will shed its summer coat of brown, and turn white. Now I’m distracted by the cheep cheep cheep of a ground squirrel. He scampers to a rock and I watch him forage in the snow. He is skinny after months of hibernation. He is already busy preparing for next winter.

I return to my car in high spirits. The same way my mother found renewal at Camp Denali, I have found hope today. I no longer wish for the crocuses and daffodils of my childhood, but am grounded in the elusive certainty that spring is present. Somewhere nearby a pasque flower is pushing through the snow. That flower, the earliest to bloom each season, will certainly be followed by blossoms of monkshood and arctic poppies, arnica and moss campion. Denali Park is defined by her glorious uncommon season of springtime. I wouldn’t trade it for any other.

It’s springtime in Denali. It snowed for three days in a row last week, today is in the mid-50’s, and just a bit north of our office, the Park’s Spring Road Opening Crew is hard at work plowing the Denali Park Road.

I realized recently that my knowledge of this process was woefully inadequate, and that perhaps it was time I find a more suitable explanation than my theory of aliens simply zapping the road with their magical, snow-melting lasers. My quest to discover “How They Plow the Park Road” complete, I now share my findings with you.

The goal is simple enough: remove snow and ice from the 90-mile road. Ideally, the crew reaches Kantishna by around May 18, which yet allows a few days for the last part of the road to dry out before it is opened to administrative traffic. The crew therefore begins plowing around the third week of March. The total process averages about ten weeks and is tackled by two crews, each consisting of three equipment operators for plowing, and two steam crewmembers for thawing culverts.

The plow team relies on three machines to get the job done: a grader with a snow wing, a D7 bulldozer, or “dozer,” and a front-end loader with a 6-way plow. There is also a flatbed pickup that follows carrying extra gear, oils, tools, and a generator: machinery gets plugged in at night in cold temperatures.

The steam team follows the heavy equipment and is primarily concerned with the culverts. By attaching a steam hose to the steam pipes attached to and inside some culverts, the crew is able to run steam all the way through, which helps melt the ice that has frozen solid inside. When there’s no steam pipe installed, the process becomes more of an art form than an exact science, and it’s a lot of work. Much time is spent getting water away from the road to help it dry and avoid structural damage.

Certain stretches of road often see deeper ice and snow levels. Around mile 4.5, there’s a quarter-mile section where crews have seen ice 12 feet deep in the past. Other tricky spots include mile 17 (just past Savage River), mile 40-41 (just shy of our picnic supper stop), and a long stretch just west of Camp Denali, to name but a few. How does one go about removing 12 feet of ice?  In the old days, they drove over it when they could and let it melt, or spread coal ash on it to speed up the process. These days, the dozer uses three ripper shanks—think giant claws (that would humble any grizzly)—to break up the ice so it can be removed by the loader. Recent road projects, particularly at mile 4.5 and in Igloo canyon, have helped significantly in reducing the amount of ice found on those sections of the road.

Toklat marks a significant point in the process for several reasons. First, the timing of their arrival is a good gauge for whether the teams are on schedule. This is also the time to address any equipment maintenance issues. Last but not least, it marks the start of snow country; farther west, snow depths are typically greater than those on the eastern half of the road. Highway Pass often sees drift depths of 12-15 feet, or a bit further west, up to 20 feet. (I might parenthetically add that by park entrance-area standards, this is quite substantial. Skiers and snowmachiners in our east end winter community rejoice at any snowfall exceeding a few inches.)

So with all that snow and ice, does not one wonder how they know where the road goes? Experience. Most of the time they can see an edge or two, but sometimes, they go by feel. The dozer operator is therefore the most experienced member of the team (and also he who has most recently paid his life insurance premium).

Is it dangerous? Yes and no. In much the same way that guides leading hikes in bear country are aware of their situational hazards and take appropriate precautions, so does the road crew. Putting cleats on the dozers helps to reduce slipping sideways, for example. And experience helps operators recognize hazards, such as an “ice lens” that forms on the road itself as surface snow melts and runs down through the snow pack, then freezes on the road surface.

All things considered, it's probably safer than zapping the road with lasers.

Want to read more? Follow the road crew's progress here.

Special thanks to West District Roads Supervisor Brad Ebel for patiently providing all of this information, and also for sharing the bus photo from his own personal collection.




 

Wolves in Alaska represent for some an icon of the rugged north and a land left undisturbed—a symbol so important people will travel thousands of miles and spend great amounts of money to see them.  For others, wolves are viewed as a consumable resource, providing important furs that keep so many people warm in the harsh environments of the arctic and interior Alaska.  And the prevailing political opinion in the state is that wolves are a direct threat to game species such as moose and caribou, so predator control has long been in effect.   With so many passionate views, and politically appointed decision-makers, it is no wonder the state is in turmoil over its wildlife resources.

The wolves have endured a series of blows this winter, beginning with the untimely death of perhaps their greatest advocate in the state, Dr. Gordon Haber. As an independent researcher, Haber spent the better part of four decades closely studying and advocating for the wolves not only in Denali National Park, but elsewhere in the state. 

In early March, the State Board of Game ignored requests from the National Park Service and its biologists, many wildlife and conservation groups, and numerous local citizens to reinstate, and even slightly enlarge, no-take wolf buffer areas located immediately adjacent to Denali National Park. The wolf buffer, which has been in place for the last six years, would have continued to prevent wolves within it from being hunted or trapped.  Park boundaries, while drawn on maps of the area, are obviously not recognized by wildlife. NPS managers are tasked with managing for healthy wildlife populations, which can be difficult to do when park animals regularly cross its boundaries. In Denali, once those animals leave the park, they are on state land where wildlife is subject to intensive management for the greatest possible game species yield (moose & caribou).  Park managers have long recognized the buffer area as important habitat for Denali National Park wolves straying beyond the park boundaries in pursuit of winter caribou. Not only did the Board of Game disregard this information as a viable concern and vote to eliminate the Denali wolf buffer, the Board also instituted a six-year moratorium on considering the issue again.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has drawn attention in the last week for a couple of controversial moves. As part of Fish and Game’s intensive management for maximum yield of the Fortymile caribou herd and moose in the eastern Interior, the agency is using fixed wing aircraft to spot wolves and then returning in helicopters with gunners to shoot them. They hope to remove and kill 185 wolves through the efforts of trappers, hunters, private pilots and the state, leaving about 100 wolves remaining in the control area. While this is controversial in itself, last week the State’s team killed an entire pack of wolves just outside of Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve, including two wolves collared for research by the National Park Service. Fish and Game had agreed beforehand that it would not kill wolves collared by biologists from the Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve, and then afterwards said they killed the wolves wearing radio collars by mistake.  

The second controversial ADF&G issue involves the appointment of Corey Rossi to be the new Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation.  Given his lack of a college degree or other qualifications necessary for even an entry-level biologist position within the Division, a group of 40 former agency biologists are crying for his removal. They cite concerns regarding his lack of scientific background and the potential move the Division is heading regarding managing Alaska’s wildlife—a move away from the standard of science-based management, and toward a simplistic abundance management model where the single, overriding objective is maximum production of wild game meat. Thus far, the Commissioner of Alaska Department of Fish and Game is standing by his leadership choice.

What does all this mean for Alaska and it’s great wealth of wildlife? What does it mean for those who are non-consumptive wildlife “users”—those who rely upon wildlife for tourism, photography, and as indicators of a healthy ecosystem? The answer isn’t simple or clear, and will likely be a moving target as politics, appointees, climate change, public views, and other factors evolve over time.   For now, despite the hostile environment wolves and other large predators may experience elsewhere in the state, Denali National Park, and other national parks within Alaska are sanctuaries where nature’s food chain remains un-manipulated (at least while the animals stay within the boundaries). Denali continues to be one of the best places for viewing wolves in North America, a place that illustrates there are economic rewards in watchable wildlife, and where we as humans might be reminded of what is truly wild.