[You may view a Denali National Park brochure with map in PDF format here.]

I awoke around 1:30, and the rain had stopped. :) I quickly went back to sleep.

I awoke around 5:00 naturally before the 5:30 alarm. Mt. McKinley was covered by a solid cloud bank. Had breakfast of trail mix and instant coffee. I put a new battery in my brain. That's my Palm Treo 755p that I use for keeping my log. The battery was still about half full (much better battery life than the Palm Tungsten T3 that I used previously), but I had bought two extra batteries for this stay at Wonder Lake (I only brought one out to the Wonder Lake) and figured I might as well get my effort's worth and also change it at my convenience before the Palm started complaining about a low battery. I boarded the 6:30 Camper Bus and we departed at 6:45.

I got off the bus at 6:55 just east of the Y because the top of Mt. McKinley was visible and the clouds were starting to get interesting. I changed the Canon 1Ds Mk III battery because the battery level indicator was blinking to show that it was really low. The battery didn't last quite as long as usual because I had been doing a lot of exposure reviews and also initial image editing in camera. I've been using my two-stop graduated neutral density (ND) filter, with a soft transition, a lot recently because I really like getting the image "right" in camera instead of doing lots of processing in Photoshop. As recently as a year ago, I would have taken two exposures of this scene with one set for the mountain and sky and the other for the foreground, then I would have combined them in Photoshop to get a nice overall image. It's much faster to take just one exposure, with the help of a graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure, especially if the scene has a nice straight transition between the bright and dark parts of the image like this one does. I packed up around 7:15 when the clouds started to cover Mt. McKinley completely and started walking west.

I stopped just before the Y around 7:30 to photograph Mt. McKinley after the clouds had broken up a bit. I left around 7:45 when the clouds covered Mt. McKinley again and headed up the road to Kantishna.

I got off the road near my favorite knoll near the cabins, and headed over the knoll and down to the next bench to look for a nice composition. I photographed a nice mushroom, some bright red bearberry, and a small blueberry bush in a patch of lichen, then I set up for a photograph of Mt. McKinley with a large patch of reddish-orange blueberry bushes in the foreground. Mt. McKinley was still cloud covered, and the blueberry bushes were still in the shade of the nearby hill, so I ate some blueberries, from bushes behind the composition, while waiting. It was 38°F (3°C) with a light breeze, and my hand started to get cold from the dew-covered berries and the wind chill. I changed compositions and photographed Mt. Foraker (17400 ft, 5303m) that was clear. I changed back to the composition with Mt. McKinley, then ate a lot of blueberries while waiting. I must have eaten two cups of blueberries while waiting today! At 9:30, the Alaska Range was completely socked in by a bank of clouds to the south, and I started wishing that I had gotten on the 8:00 Camper Bus on its way back south along Wonder Lake because now I was stuck out at Wonder Lake until the 12:30 bus leaves. :( However, I enjoyed spending time there all by myself surrounded by blueberries. It also occurred to me that I could do something like this tomorrow when I leave Wonder Lake instead of getting on the 8:00 Camper Bus like I had been planning. I started walking back to the campground at 10:00.

The top of Mt. McKinley started to show above the cloud bank around 10:40.

I reached Wonder Lake Campground at 10:47. I had three cups of Quaker Natural Granola - Oats & Honey & Raisins because I had time to kill. Usually when camping, I have two cups of Quaker granola for breakfast sometime in the middle of the morning, but on this trip I hadn't had any yet because I've left the campground so early and didn't have time to eat before I left. A gray jay landed on the picnic table while I was eating.

I headed to the bus stop around 12:00 to get in line for the bus. I chatted with an older gentleman for a while, and discovered that he was camping at Teklanika. I asked if he'd pass on a message to J that I might take the 1:10 Camper Bus back instead of the 8:00 Camper Bus tomorrow like I told her I would. I boarded the bus, and we left at 12:45.

I was eager to photograph the large bull moose that the gentleman said was by the road on their way to Wonder Lake, so I stayed on the bus as we went by a common loon in a nice pond by the road. I was really tempted to get off the bus though. We went by the pond where the bull moose had been, and there was no moose. :( I stayed on the bus to see what else might be out because the loon was too far back to reach in a timely fashion by walking. We went by some caribou far away from the road and not worth hiking out to.

The bus stopped around 1:10 to watch a swan, and I hopped off the bus and ran to a bus heading to Kantishna that was stopped maybe 75 yds (70m) behind us. The bus driver asked for my ticket which was odd. However, she might have thought that I had purchased a ticket to Wonder Lake, then hopped off that bus to walk for a bit before getting on a bus to Kantishna which would be a more expensive ticket. My Camper Bus ticket, however, was good for travel throughout the interior of the park, so there was no problem there, just the hassle of digging out the ticket. The caribou were closer to the road, but it still wasn't worth getting off the bus. I didn't see the loon on the pond, so I got off the bus shortly before the Y at 1:33 and started walking back east.

I got on an eastbound bus at 1:37 and got off at 1:44 at a pond with what looked like a loon as we were approaching. It turned out to be an uncooperative grebe. :( I left and started walking east along the road.

I came upon the caribou at 2:12, and they were much closer to the road. They were backlit, so I hiked out into the tundra to get on the right side of the light. One female was particularly cooperative and let me get quite close. Then some clouds moved in and created some spectacular "mammal light": bright overcast to provide good fur detail with no harsh shadows. The lighting in the image to the left is about a good as it gets! :) The clouds moved on and the harsher light returned at about the time the caribou was ready to move on, so I left at 2:48 and continued walking east along the road.

I reached the beaver pond at 3:20 just as a group of ducks flew in but no beavers were out. I saw a beaver hauling a leafy branch towards its lodge at 3:27. I set up to photograph as the beaver started heading towards me, and it made a nice close pass letting me capture some nice images. A westbound bus stopped around 3:40, then left after watching the beaver for a while. The beaver went back to collecting food on the far shore of the pond, so I packed up and started walking west at 4:08.

I boarded a westbound Camper Bus at 4:26.

We reached Wonder Lake Campground at 4:44. I reloaded my water bottle, then got back on the bus so I could go photograph the beavers north of Wonder Lake. We left at 5:14.

I got off the bus by the beaver pond at 5:30. The beavers were in a different routine than the previous day, so I changed my photography style a bit. The images I was taking initially with the 500 f4 on a tripod near water level were too similar to what I had already captured on this trip, so I did some handheld shooting with the 100-400 from a higher vantage point. My favorite image of the evening was of young beaver swimming near me that I captured with the handheld 100-400. The light was good and the beavers were active, so I decided to catch the next bus so I could spend more time photographing in the nice light. The beavers disappeared around 7:30, and I wished I could be back near Wonder Lake because I could see the top of Mt. McKinley in the clear above the nearby hill. I was especially antsy to get back because a jet leaving a contrail was about to fly right over the mountain. I packed up around 8:00 and got back on a Camper Bus at 8:18.
As we came out of the hills around Kantishna, I could see the whole top of Mt. McKinley in the clear — the first time it's been out in the evening.

We reached Wonder Lake Campground at 8:33. I changed into clean clothes so I'd stay warm, then started to make dinner of the second half of the Mountain House Beef Stroganoff & Noodles from last night. As dinner was cooking, I started to photograph Mt. McKinley. The contrail near Mt. McKinley was already dissipating, but it looked totally unnatural to me so I concentrated on close compositions where the contrail wasn't much of an issue. The mountain was covered by clouds by 9:35. I was sad that J wasn't out here to experience this with me. This trip to Wonder Lake has been the best weather-wise I've ever had, and the wildlife was fantastic too! I went to the tent around 9:55.