Backpacking Denali National Park – 10 Day

Your trip begins today in Anchorage, Alaska. You’ll be staying at the Aloft Anchorage Hotel. You can arrive anytime and transfer to the hotel on their complimentary shuttle. Depending on your arrival time, the remainder of the day is yours to relax after your flight or to explore some of the city’s notable sites including the Anchorage Museum of History & Art or the city Park Strip. This afternoon, you’ll meet your guide at 5pm for an orientation and gear check, followed by a group dinner featuring gourmet pizza and local craft brews. The orientation will include a discussion of the route, an introduction to our unique style of Alaska wilderness travel, a familiarization of the principles of Leave No Trace, and a conversation about traveling safely in bear country.

This morning after a healthy breakfast at the hotel, we’ll make our way over to Lake Hood Seaplane Base, the busiest float-plane airport on earth, where we’ll board a float-plane bound for the Denali National Park and our home for the next 5 nights. This 1 hour scenic flight will take us over alpine tundra, braided rivers, and cascading waterfalls. We’ll enjoy spectacular views of Denali, the highest peak in North America as we travel up the mighty Ruth Glacier, to the entrance of the Great Gorge – the deepest trench on earth! Our skilled bush pilot will then take us down to a small lake nestled in a cleft between the Ruth and Tokositna Glaciers, where we will unload our gear on a small beach and then wave the airplane goodbye. We’ll set up camp near the lake, bask in the new-found solitude, and then take a short afternoon hike.

We’ll spend the next 6 days headed doing a 30+ mile circuit. Our route will take us through gun sight passes, over open tundra benches, down spectacular creeks, and along big Alaska Range glaciers. We’ll camp near small lakes, drink from alpine streams, and walk through country that has seen few human footsteps. We’ll bask in the majesty of the Alaska Range and scan mountain sides for black & grizzly bears as we hike through north America’s crown jewel, completely immersed in the wild. When the weather permits, views of north America’s highest mountain range will dominate our panorama and we’ll savor the incomprehensible vastness of Alaska. By the afternoon of day 9, we’ll arrive back at our final camp near the lake, and we’ll spend our last evening truly enjoying our final moments of solitude in Denali.

After a celebratory tundra breakfast and coffee, our bush pilot will arrive at the lake by early afternoon to extract us from the wilderness. Our flight path will take us down the massive Ruth Glacier, over the Tokosha Mountains, along the mighty Susitna River, and back to Anchorage by early afternoon. If you’re returning home from Anchorage this evening, please schedule home-bound flights for after 8pm.

Please note that occasionally weather conditions prevent us from flying into our basecamp location in Denali National Park.  Given the schedule limitations encountered when our air service provider faces weather delays, there are few options available to fly after our scheduled time.  If weather looks to be improving AND the air service can accommodate a later flight, we will wait in Anchorage as long as possible. However, If we aren’t able to fly into Denali National Park on day one, the itinerary will revert to Lake Clark National Park. Please download the detailed itinerary on this page for more information.