I got to see Denali!! Such a clear view this past weekend with beautiful weather! I just went to Denali National Park for the 1st time since moving to Alaska!! I was able to take a field course called geology of Denali through Alaska Geographic. I was offered a 75% scholarship to attend the course, and it was absolutely amazing!! Denny Capps (the park geologist) was a wealth of knowledge that kept us captivated from start to finish. I wasn't sure what to expect going into the course, as geology is not really my thing, but I was totally stoked to visit Denali nonetheless. I ended up gaining an interest in geology and having the best weekend camping out at Teklanika campground in the park and visiting sites that other visitors might not know to visit. I knew nothing about Denali going into this course so lets just say I learned a ton and probably have forgotten half of it by now. The park road is 92 miles and we went to the Toklat River which is at mile 53 in the course of the weekend. We were lucky that we had our own shuttle and did not have to take the bus, which would've have meant relying on that time schedule. You can see below why a bus system is needed as the road is only 1.5 lanes wide with no guard rails. It is quite dangerous to drive for the inexperienced.
This part of the road is failing due to a debris flow as well as other factors. You can see in the picture below where the debris is falling. This part of the road as well as many other parts of the road are difficult to keep open due to many debris flows in the area. The park is tasked with cleaning up after each instance. To try to figure out what is going on with this section of the road they are currently in the process of digging 2 wells and placing instruments in the wells to collect data. This well is down to 140 ft. and you can see the wires for the instruments. The coolest thing by far was taking a hike to see dinosaur tracks from the duck-billed dinosaur. Scientifically they are known as Hadrosaurs. Click here for more info from the park. We saw over 20 of these fossils, but these are some of the better ones. As you can imagine some of the fossils are either broken or the tracks weren't as clean as these ones. These are all cast fossils. "Cast fossils are formed when an organism dies and is buried between layers of mud and silt. The mud and silt form around what is left of the organism and slowly hardens and becomes sedimentary rock. The buried organism decays and the hardened rock leaves an impression where the organism once was. Lastly, mineral-enriched groundwater fills in the mold and hardens to form a cast fossil" (castfossils.weebly.com). In other words there was a print in the mud or some sort of soft ground that was filled in and hardened. In addition to seeing these amazing fossils and doing so much other site seeing we had some of the best views. Here is one of the only pics I took with me in the photo. After the course I did a midnight sun ATV tour with Denali ATV tours. They were great!! Not much wildlife, but with seeing wildlife on my own I wasn't that concerned. I just wanted to do something fun and not hurt my foot anymore, as I had already hiked more than I should've. Yes, I am still in a boot hoping that the stress fracture in my foot heals soon. I then stayed at the McKinley Chalet Resort. It was a great stay that wasn't too expensive. I didn't get any great views but the room was spacious and everything was clean and comfortable. I'm sure if I had payed more I could've gotten a better view, but since I was really just there to sleep it wasn't worth it. Overall it was an excellent trip, and even though the Alaska Geographic courses are a little pricey, they are totally worth it. I would consider going back and paying full price to take another course with them. Source:
https://castfossils.weebly.com/how-are-cast-fossils-formed.html
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8/1/2022 08:53:14 pm
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