Denali Trail Tale, Finale

Photo credit here.

 

Latitude 63 in July does not leave much time for darkness. As soon as the girmen closed their eyes, the wakening dawn nudged them. 

 

While the hours of hiking helped aid their slumber, sleeping on a thin Therm-a-Rest camping “mattress” on gravelly and pebbled terrain did nothing to encourage a shift of position to continue the night’s rest. Compounding the issue, the eyes respond to light, setting off a chemical reaction in the brain which brings the whole body to life. 

 

The McKinley River percolated around them, and they eventually reached for the zippers to greet the morning properly. As they righted themselves after crawling out of their tents, they found themselves face-to-face with Denali. It was as if the mountain saw all the effort they made to arrive at its base, so graced them by standing boldly before them – snow its only covering, reflecting the light so intensely its peaks seemed to glow. 

 

They stood attempting to fix the moment in their minds. The girmen meant for the camping adventure to lead them to bears, but the wilderness meant for them to stand awestruck before the highest mountain in North America. 

 

Their revery lasted some moments before the next thing had to be done. It was getting the food down and over for breakfast, then breaking down the tents, packing all the gear back into packs and finally beginning the trek back up the hillside toward the road. 

 

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on the trip back up. The mosquitos buzzed around them, small helicopters crashing into skin, mouth, eyes. Remarkably, they ran into another hiker – a solo hiker – his head covered in mosquito netting. He knew Jen’s roommate somehow and became an unofficial 5^th wheel. They all appreciated another focus for their conversation. 

The hiker wore a “pith helmet” with netting hanging from the brim’s edge and draping his shoulders. The girmen had heeded the advice to “bathe” in DEET, but with the clear day, the humidity and the exercise inherent in carrying a 20 pound pack up a hillside, the DEET seeped into their eyes and mouths, stinging and souring them in turn. Had they been hiking further; they might have heeded the baser instincts of the survival of the fittest, tore the hat from his head, then argued and fought over the hat until one conquered the rest. 

 

Instead, they knew the road, and civilization, lay just above the horizon, and they pushed forward. Once returned to some semblance of a road, they sat on their packs beaming at their accomplishment. They had braved the wild of Alaska and returned intact. They would not be a headline or cautionary tale. Instead, they would eat their lunch and wait for the school bus returning to the park’s entrance, swatting mosquitos and aching for a soft bed.

 

2/27/26