Camp Denali

Camp Denali ~ An Inclusive Backcountry Lodge Since 1952

Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Guest speakers, James Edward Mills and Dr. Carolyn Finney, joined us once again this past July, this time to celebrate the 10th anniversaries of their respective books: The Adventure Gap and Black Faces, White Spaces. The timing of their visit also happened to be the 60th anniversaries of two landmark pieces of federal legislation, the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act, and 60 years since the first African American, Dr. Charles Crenchaw, summited Denali. As scholars of racial equity and inclusion in the history of land stewardship in the U.S., James and Carolyn shared important and too often untold perspectives on how Black Americans have figured into the history of land conservation and how essential access and inclusion in the outdoors is for all people. Below is James’ lovely reflection on his and Carolyn's week spent at Camp Denali.

Camp Denali ~ An Inclusive Backcountry Lodge Since 1952

In the summer of 2024, I spent more than a week traveling through Alaska’s Denali National Park with my long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Carolyn Finney. Our careers as scholars of racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the history and management of public land, sometime afford us the opportunity to have an all-expenses paid excursion through exquisitely beautiful spaces in the United States and around the world. Our work aims to share our research, reporting and personal experiences to help others understand the urgency of making our natural recreation areas accessible to everyone. On this occasion, our hosts were the owners and staff of Camp Denali.

Founded in 1952 by Celia Hunter, Ginny Wood, and Morton “Woody” Wood, this backcountry resort aims to provide its guests with an immersive wilderness experience. Set deep within the park boundaries but on privately managed land, Camp Denali is just two miles from Wonder Lake with a captivating view of the mountain that the Native Athabascan people call “The Great One.” Over several days, we enjoyed a variety of delicious meals, and rigorous hiking excursions, along the trails of a magnificent landscape.

This stunning site in the Alaskan wilderness has special meaning for me. It was near this location, in 1964, where Dr. Charles Madison Crenchaw began his ascent of Mount McKinley today called Denali – to become the first Black climber to reach the summit of the highest peak in North America.

As guests of Camp Denali, Carolyn and I are among a series of featured storytellers who are invited each year to share our work. Other authors who have visited here include our friends Dr. Drew Lanham, a McArthur Genius Grant recipient, and Yosemite National Park Ranger, Shelton Johnson. By shear coincidence this year was the 10th anniversary of the publication of both my and Carolyn’s books, respectively, The Adventure Gap and Black Faces/White Spaces. Presenting as a team for the first time, we gave informative talks and led discussions on the importance of creating an environmental ethos that includes the interests and cultural contributions of all people. As an expansion of the Land Ethic – proposed in the last century by Aldo Leopold, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison (where I also teach) – this idea reflects the values and traditions of Native Americans whose stewardship of the natural world dates back more than 10 millennia.

In our talks to the Alaska Roads Scholars at the Denali Education Center and the visitors of Camp Denali, Carolyn and I made a compelling case for the preservation of public land as prescribed by the founding principles of the National Park Service: “for benefit and enjoyment of the people.” And we mean all people.

For more than 70 years, the owners of Camp Denali have worked diligently to make this corner of Alaska as accessible as possible. Near the village of Kantishna, at the end of the Park Road, and 90 miles from the park entrance in Healy, the camp is extremely remote. Still, our hosts, the current owners and operators, Simon and Jenna Hamm, provide amenities of food and lodging that seem luxurious in this rustic setting. Prepared by talented chefs, the meals are comprised of locally sourced ingredients that include organic greens and vegetables from their own greenhouse, as well as fish, meat and poultry from Alaska. The fresh baked bread and deserts are especially decadent with everything from homemade ice cream to a moist and rich Tiramisu.

Each day, guests are invited to enjoy scenic hikes of varying lengths and degrees of intensity. My favorite is a steep climb up a rugged trail along the ridge above the compound of rustic cabins. On a clear day, from the top, you can get a fully unobstructed view of the entire Alaska Range. Other guided hikes, with trained naturalists, offer sojourns into the park, out on the tundra, at stops easily accessible from the single-lane road.

Sadly, since the Pretty Rocks Landslide of 2021, the road into the park has become impassible from the entrance after about mile 45. The only way to make it this far into Denali is by private airplane. When such a remote location is made even more difficult to reach, it is a critical time to discover new ways to ease the limitations of accessibility. The disparities of visitation to Denali National Park, along racial and socio-economic lines as well as accessible transportation, are exacerbated by the collapse of this vital public highway.

In addition to the expense of air travel and lodging, access to our national parks is encumbered by the cost of camp site reservations and a complicated system of booking backcountry permits. These barriers disproportionately impact of those modest means regardless of race or ethnicity. It is under these circumstances that we must reflect upon how we can bring these majestic places into the lives of those who need them most. I am grateful that Carolyn and I can inspire others to visit through the power of our stories. If we learn more about how these disparities of access to the outdoors came to be, perhaps we can find ways to remove them.

Though known formally since 1917 as Mount McKinley, this snow-capped range was reaffirmed to its original Athabascan name, Denali, in 2016 by President Barack Obama. Designated the year following the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, we must recognize that this land in the Alaskan wilderness, stolen from Native people, was being managed by an institution that was racially segregated. Under the discriminatory policies established by then President Woodrow Wilson, at the dawn of the Jim Crow Era, Black Americans would be ineligible to serve as National Park Rangers until 1953. Moreover, many parks denied people of color access to public land for activities such as camping or backpacking. Even after the Brown V.S. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ended legal discrimination in public accommodation in 1954, many of the communities near national parks, and other recreation areas, would prohibit Black Americans from visiting these sites until the passage of the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.

Our visit this month to Denali is particularly fortuitous because it coincides with the 60th anniversary of the first Black American Ascent of Mt McKinley. On July 9, 1964, Dr. Charles Madison Crenchaw reached the summit seven days after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. A historical moment witnessed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was less than a year earlier, on August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that King defined his dream of a great American nation in which we might, “Let freedom ring from every mountainside.”

Here, not far from Camp Denali, Crenchaw, and a team of 14 fellow climbers, began their ascent of the mountain. From Wonder Lake, with packs of equipment weighing over 80 pounds, they walked across the tundra and over the McKinley River to the Muldrow Glacier. During our hikes into the park, I traversed with Carolyn and the other guests along the same path, now a well-established system of trails and a lengthy boardwalk. Here, at the height of the Jim Crow era, Crenchaw overcame the limitations of bigotry and the resistance he likely faced to become the personification of King’s mountain-inspired dream.

The founders of Camp Denali, Celia Hunter and Ginny Wood, served in World War II as Women Airforce Service Pilots (the WASPs). They faced a variety of obstacles because of their gender, but these two women persisted in their efforts to create a community where everyone could feel welcome. “When they established this place, they didn’t care if you were a man or woman or what color you were,” said the current co-owner, Simon Hamm. “If you could get here, you were welcome to be here. That’s all that mattered.”

Camp Denali was established shortly after the National Parks Service was formally desegregated. Even during the Jim Crow era all people were invited to spend time there. Two photographs taken in 1961 indicate that at least one visitor to the Camp was a Black man. Unfortunately, the image is uncaptioned, so we don’t know his name, who he was or why he was there. From the photograph, standing with co-founder Morton Wood, it’s not clear if he was there as part of the construction crew or as a visitor enjoying the landscape within an inclusive community. The impression you get from the photograph, however, is that he belonged there. Wearing a fur-collared fleece bomber jacket at the Kantishna airfield, the man might have also been a pilot. Like Charles Crenchaw, he could have been a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during the war and came to Alaska to enjoy the peace and freedom of an arctic wilderness. For whatever reason he was there the man was welcomed. Three years later in 1964, Crenchaw himself might have visited this place following his return from the summit of Denali.

In sharing our stories, Carolyn and I hope to show that people of color have always found our place in the outdoors. Despite the challenges imposed by the limitations of time and money, as well as the indignities of past discrimination, it’s worth the effort to visit these spaces of natural beauty preserved for each of us to enjoy. At the core of our relationship with the outdoors is our ability to make one another feel safe and welcome. Hospitality at Camp Denali is expressed through good food, warm beds and thoughtfully guided explorations of a true wilderness.

Co-owner Jenna Hamm says the first step toward protecting the natural environment she loves is ensuring everyone can experience it. “For those of us who live in these beautiful places,” she said, “we have an obligation to share it.”

Since I first visited this wonderful place in 2013, the Hamm Family has been exceptionally supportive of my work. As a freelance writer of humble means, I can’t afford the asking price of even a single night’s stay at this amazing facility. But as a scholar of various topics they are eager to share with their guests, I can offer a great deal of value in exchange for my services. Not unlike the naturalists, chefs and housekeeping staff who earn a living wage while performing their duties in this gorgeous setting, as guest speakers for the week, Carolyn and give back to this community by sharing our knowledge and expertise.

That first summer Simon and Jenna hosted me and several of the support team members of Expedition Denali for a week. From this inspiring place I was able to write several online accounts of that historic climb as well as the first few chapters of the Adventure Gap. In the summer of 2021, they welcomed me back with my wife Shamane to share stories from my book with their guests as well as a screening of our documentary film An American Ascent. This year, to mark the anniversary of the 1964 climb of Denali by Charles Crenchaw, they received as a gift from me a reproduction of the painting by Lamont Joseph White commissioned by the Joy Trip Project and funded by Outdoor Research. Now on permanent display in the Camp Denali reference library, this is the first placement of a commemorative display dedicated to Crenchaw anywhere in the park. At this most inclusive backcountry lodge, it is only fitting that this work of art should find a home just a few miles from where this great adventure began.

- Written by James Edward Mills

A Pinch of Recipe Planning, a Cup of Bulk Ordering, and a Whole Lot of Heart: Preparing for Fine Dining in the Wilderness

Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

by Erin Werner (they/them, Executive Chef at Camp Denali)

Staying at Camp Denali comes with a checklist. See a grizzly bear. Hike to the Muldrow Glacier. See the Northern Lights. See the Midnight Sun. Go bird watching with David Sibley. There are many more, but among the less-than-expected things that our guests take home are the memories of our dining hall. Biological necessity aside– food is foundational to the hospitality business, and the dining room is where we gather to spend time together, to share highlights from the day’s events, and to get to know fellow travelers and Camp staff.

Which brings me to my checklist. As the approaching season takes up more and more of my brain space, I’m all too aware of the many puzzle pieces that must fit together to keep guests and staff fed throughout the summer season. It is truly no small feat! I’m endlessly grateful for the years of tradition and labor to set precedent and expectations, but that doesn’t mean the preseason is without unique challenges and effort.

I’ve had the great fortune of being able to take October off since I transitioned to seasonal work. Most of the Camp Denali staff have a work season that is only a couple weeks longer than our time with guests, a handful of us are busy year round working in the office, and I operate in an odd middle ground of a winter that slowly builds up to the full-on intensity of summer.

We take great pleasure in sourcing 100% of our proteins from Alaska–reserving whole hogs and lambs from Homer is usually the first step I take toward the season ahead, usually in November. Then there’s hiring in December and January. In January, I take a brief trip back to Denali where seasonal supervisors and year-round staff have a mini-conference and hammer out an enormous amount of details in a few short days (we also play pond hockey, have plenty of potlucks, and enjoy the other extreme of Alaskan weather– winter!). At this point I’m starting to feel the excitement of the coming season.

As January turns to February and February to March, I’m menu-planning, looking through reservations to assess the volume and quantity of food I need to order, and taking note of guests’ dietary restrictions. During this time I also speak with our Greenhouse Manager, Hannah, who makes the most of our brief growing season to bring us fresh salad greens, herbs, radishes, peas, edible flowers, rhubarb, and more. We are truly blessed by our greenhouse bounty, and as long as I’ve worked at Camp Denali every salad served in the dining room has been grown in our greenhouse. As April comes around I’m busy contacting purveyors and working on our delivery schedule (as a fly-in lodge everything arrives by small plane), writing orientation week training plans, and placing our annual bulk order. 50# sacks of flour, 25# sacks of dried beans, sugar, oats, nuts, dried fruit– ordering for trail mix alone is around half a ton of dry goods!

And all winter long the recipe testing goes on. I’m a passionate cook, it’s wired into me somewhere, it’s my skill, my trade, and my love language. The privilege of cooking and providing for our guests and my coworkers/community/summer family brings me such joy. We maintain very high standards in our kitchen, our goal being to nourish our guests and staff during their long and active days. Just about everything is made from scratch in our kitchen, from artisan dinner breads, to soup stocks, to kimchi. Our amazing bakers turn out what I believe to be among the best pastries out there.

When asked if we have a specialty at Camp Denali, I often find myself answering with “accommodation.” No matter the dietary restriction, we do our best to make sure everyone has an equally incredible meal. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, nut free, dairy free, pescatarian, etc, are all seamlessly managed in our kitchen and we truly enjoy going over the top to handle even trickier restrictions. I fondly remember a past guest who was gluten free and allergic to both cinnamon and vanilla– they were ecstatic that the bakers took the time to make them special cookies and desserts that varied every day and were on par with the regular fare.

We are so looking forward to sharing the beauty of Denali with you and cooking for you this summer!

Photos:

1) Samosa pasties! Much like the traditional Cornish Pastie, but filled with a warmly spiced mixture of potato, onions, peas, and curry spices. It all gets folded up in a short crust pastry shell with some tamarind chutney for a delightful on-the-go lunch. Our new fly-in model has greatly increased the amount of lunches we serve, so this is a solution to minimize sandwich production and to improve the workflow in the kitchen.

2) The first steps to making celery and black pepper stir fry. While I truly love this dish, it didn’t feel quite right for the dining room, but it will certainly be added to my staff meal rotation (as a staff we eat incredibly well).

3) Notes and a prep map for a mole recipe. Part of my winter recipe testing is to assess how feasibly any given recipe can be executed at our scale. *Recipe credit from Serious Eats*

All We Wanted was to See Wildlife

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

by Benjamin Alva Polley

“Do you think maybe we could head down the road to see more of the landscape?” asks my wife to nobody in particular in our group. My wife is not a birder, but Caitlin, the naturalist guide, and the two other people are birders. We spent over an hour watching loons, Greater White-fronted Geese, scaups, and some swans.

On our first full day at Camp Denali, my wife and I chose to do the mellower Naturalist Foray excursion, which included short walks, birding, botanizing, and looking for wildlife along a 23-mile stretch of the Denali Park Road. The opportunity to view wildlife unencumbered by traffic, noise, and dust is optimal right now with a multi-year road closure due to the Pretty Rocks Landslide at the road’s midpoint. The fact that the road was closed to most tourist traffic was monumental regarding wildlife. Animals still veered away from the road, but not like during the middle of the visitor season. We were tired and chose the foray instead of a more significant hike. We just spent the last eight days pack rafting solo in the Brooks Range on a remote river, where we didn’t see much wildlife or a single person. We saw tons of fresh tracks from caribou, grizzlies, moose, wolverine, and wolves, but we only saw one cow moose and two separate caribou. We hoped Denali might offer up more sightings.

Acquiescing to my wife, Caitlin drives the Sprinter van a few miles down the road and stops above the vast glacier-fed, multi-braided Thorofare River Valley. Two sleek, milk-chocolate-brown caribou carouse a mile out, then canter and clop over ashen and tawny stones and fine gravels before disappearing like ghosts from view. We felt relief to see larger mammals within a few minutes of heading down the road.

Caitlin drives on. Until our fellow guest George Bumann, a writer and artist who is this session’s guest speaker at Camp Denali, says, “Can you stop the van?” Bumann glues his binos to his brow as he directs his gaze near a draw. We all pull up our binos to glass where he’s looking.

“I think I see some wooden stumps, but they seem out of place,” he says. There are no large trees where he has us looking. Then he exclaims, “Oh, I think I see moose paddles!” It’s fitting; just moments before, Caitlin told us this area was called Upper Moose Creek.

We climb out of the van. We jaunt twenty yards higher above a slight rise of dry, spongey tundra that feels like walking on top of furry basketballs. Caitlin sets up the tripod of a spotting scope. We all gather around. Four bull moose sit out of sight, the only sign of their presence a line of five-foot-wide paddles rising above dwarf birch and willow shrubs, grasses, and sedges. Moose antlers are one of the fastest-growing tissues of mammals on the planet and can grow an inch per day. The hickory and umber velvet-lined paddles resemble thick, broken-branched stumps rising next to the edge of a willow-lined creek. All four bulls’ bodies are hidden from view as they sit, chewing their cud and relaxing. In another month, this same bachelor group will put aside their bromance and challenge each other in the fall mating ritual to see who will come out as the top patriarch to pass their genes to the next generation.

After twenty minutes of moose watching, we decide to see what other wonders we might be graced with. Not long after we start driving again, I say, “Hey, I think I see something. Can you stop?” A few hundred yards out, through my binoculars, I see the unmistakable hump of grizzly grazing on a swath of late-summer blueberries. We clamor out of the van again and take turns looking through the scope. A vast expanse lies in front of us, with waves of tundra rising and falling into green and brown ridges becoming foothills, and the snow-crested Alaska Range towers above, with glimpses between clouds of the “Great One,” Denali, lording above. Soon, someone else spots a smaller grizzly close to this one. This ursine is lighter in color. We watch the pair as they eat and weave over the landscape.

Further out in our viewshed, we spot another two grizzlies ambling in different directions over the tussocky ridge with erratic boulders and a few short, interspersed spruce. We all confirm the ursine sighting. Ten minutes later, we see yet another and then another. We can’t believe it. This place is crawling with grizzlies.

Driving further down the gravel road, we pass big, sunbaked, charred-plum-colored piles of bear and dusty hairy wolf scat. Someone on the van yells, “You won’t believe it. I think I see another grizzly bear.” We climb back out: it's a sow with cubs, the three of them also mawing on blueberries. Early August is prime time for blueberries.

On our way to Eielson Visitor Center, 23 miles from Camp Denali, we spot nine grizzlies, all through binos, before lunch. We pull into the Visitor Center parking lot as a rotund hoary marmot scurries off to hide under a large blue shipping container. Caitlin unloads bicycles from the van’s rack so we can cycle the winding and rolling road back to Camp for a new way to see the landscape. George and his wife decide to get a head start and begin biking. We ride further down the road with Caitlin to see a bit more. Upon our return to the visitor center, she left us to drive back.

Ten minutes later, the bears we saw this morning are now well below the road. We notice the sow tuning into something in her viewshed when a bull caribou unknowingly heads up the draw toward the bear family. The bull stops mid-stride before approaching too close and returns downhill. We stop one more time to watch three different bears. We are astonished by how many we saw. That day, I broke a personal record, sighting no less than 15 different grizzlies.

Wildlife viewing in Denali is about as good as it gets, but having Camp Denali dine, house, and guide you, showing you the sights and sounds, takes it to another level. The staff and food are world-class. I am still dumbfounded by it all. We spent a week in the remote Brooks Range in northern Alaska and hardly saw any wildlife, but here in this national park, there were wildlife opportunities around every bend. The key was to stop long enough and allow yourself to look for anything out of the ordinary in this extraordinary landscape.

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Benjamin Alva Polley is a freelance writer living in Montana. His stories have been published in Audubon, Earth Island Journal, Esquire, Field & Stream, Outside, Popular Science, Sierra, and here on his website.

Heart of Wilderness: Finding Peace in the Present

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout the summer, Camp Denali invites specialists to share their expertise with guests and staff, both in the field and through evening lectures. Professional photographer and acclaimed author, Amy Gulick, joined Camp Denali last August to share her insights on the remarkable ecological connection between salmon and forests in Southeast Alaska - based on her most recent book, The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind.

Here is Amy’s recent reflection on her week spent at Camp Denali last summer. She describes the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Camp Denali guests have to experience the heart of Denali National Park nearly all to themselves. With virtually no road traffic during the current closure of the Denali Park Road, our guests have a unique opportunity for intimate experiences with wildlife and Denali’s expansive, sub-arctic landscapes. Now is the time to visit the wilderness heart of Denali!

Heart of Wilderness: Finding Peace in the Present

Cushioned by spongy tundra ablaze in its fall hues of red, yellow, and orange, my feet lead the rest of my body up a mountain in Denali National Park, Alaska. Step by luxuriant step, breath by glorious breath. A golden eagle, wings aloft in a V, glides overhead in the silent sky. Far across the valley, a lone dark shape with the distinctive hump of a grizzly bear munches its way through swaths of blueberries. Small silhouettes of a half dozen ungulates graze below, their prominent curved antlers can only be those of caribou. Our group of humans—guide and guests of Camp Denali—pauses to shed a layer and sip some water. The only sounds are the zip of a jacket and the clip of a pack strap. The crisp air and the immensity of our surroundings bond us together better than words ever could. Continuing uphill, we notice we’re not the only ones on the move. The caribou, now clumped together, trot our way. We stop. They don’t. Their inquisitive golden eyes lock with ours as they come closer. Time slows. The big animals veer to our left and canter around us. The only sounds are the clicks of their legs and the pounding of our hearts. Corralled by caribou, time stops. So does my heart. The caribou dart right and race off, their sleek chocolate hides glistening as their bodies grow smaller and smaller in the distance.

A stunned silence pervades our group. Wide eyes, dropped jaws, still bodies. With what feels like one long coordinated exhale, the group reanimates. Broad grins, laughter, and one-word exclamations. We give ourselves a collective pinch to confirm our existence and then continue up the mountain. Step by step, breath by breath.

“Where will your travels take you next?” says the hiker behind me. The question disarms me. Not because I don’t have an answer, but because I’m forced to return to my own narrative. From the start of our hike, I was nowhere, and yet everywhere. In the tundra, the mountains, the eagle and bear. That’s what wilderness does. It helps us shed our identities and the stories we tell ourselves. “Lose yourself in nature and find peace,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s one thing to read those words, it’s another to heed them. And then to get out there and do it.

I used to think that I could only really be present in nature far away from the busyness of civilization. That it wasn’t possible once I returned home from a wilderness experience. The demands of daily living require that we spend a lot of time in the future. Too much time. And so for many years I just led a kind of dual existence: present during my wilderness travels, and back to the future upon my return home. A compromise between heart and mind. But the heart is much stronger than the mind, and also more patient. And sneaky. Over the years, the peace that I’ve felt in nature has seeped into my whole being. It doesn’t matter if I’m standing still surrounded by caribou or at a standstill in rush hour traffic, that feeling of peace is always there if my mind will simply step aside. It is in the mind that we tell ourselves false narratives, and separate ourselves from nature and what we are. Places like Denali National Park remind us that our true nature is found in the majesty of mountains, the song of streams, and the whisper of winds. Camp Denali is the conduit through which we can be present and notice the peace that is always within us, regardless of where we are.

Right now I can’t help but notice all the plump blueberries at my feet. We drop to our knees and stuff our mouths with the juicy fruit of the tundra. The pitchy aroma of the Labrador tea plant awakens our noses. We spy another bear in the distance doing the same thing we are. With fingers and tongues stained purple, we resume our trek. Step by step. Breath by breath.

“Where will your travels take you next?” says the hiker behind me

“To the top of this mountain,” I say.

Amy Gulick is a founding Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Her books include "Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska’s Tongass Rain Forest" and "The Salmon Way: An Alaska State of Mind", both winners of Nautilus and Independent Publisher Book Awards. Visit: www.amygulick.com.

The Value of Nature Observation

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

by Robina Moyer (Program Manager at Camp Denali)

As I sit down to write, the northeast is being pummeled by a March nor’easter leading to inevitable reminiscing about past storms and how much worse winters used to be. Growing up in Upstate New York, I certainly recall winters being snowier, but after returning to the area after nearly a decade out west, I have found myself wondering if winters really were more intense or if childhood memories have grown slushy with time. While long term temperature trends and snowfall data are useful, I’ve become increasingly interested in phenology, “the study of annual events in nature that are influenced by seasonal changes such as climate and weather” (Aldo Leopold Foundation) as a way to document shifting patterns. Phenology appeals to me because it is rooted in the events that many of us, especially in northern latitudes, already notice – the first American Robin in the yard, the first pasqueflower, or a particular favorite at Camp Denali – the first Sandhill Cranes flying overhead.

Phenology can be used to analyze long-term datasets across a broad geographic region, but it can also be hyper-local and focus on your own backyard, making it a particularly accessible and meaningful tool for citizen scientists all over the world. Tracking the dates that certain birds return, flowers bloom, or insects appear can be a great way to encourage children to observe and document the natural world. In my experience, when spending time outside, children inevitably observe things that adults overlook. Beginning a phenology calendar is an excellent way for different generations to spend time together outside and learn from each other. These observations can also be a tangible starting point for someone who is otherwise adverse to having a conversation about climate change.

Keeping track of the phenology of multiple species can reveal important connections with potential ecosystem-wide impacts. For example, researchers in Glacier National Park have been examining the timing of huckleberry plant development and the emergence of the bee species which pollinate them. If the timing of these species’ annual development changes on a different schedule, a phenological mismatch may occur, leading to less productive huckleberry plants and a diminished food source for wildlife. One can easily imagine similar scenarios playing out in the Arctic and sub-Arctic as changing precipitation patterns have the potential to impact the life cycle of myriad plant and insect species.

For years, Camp Denali has kept notes on when the first wood frogs are heard in Nugget Pond and when the first Sandhill Cranes pass overhead. Over the coming season, we plan to compile those notes and be able to share long term trends, as well as start keeping track of the phenology of other species around Camp. Our hope is that this information can add another layer to the long tradition of land stewardship at Camp Denali. And maybe, keeping track of these seasonal events will also make it easier to have an informed conversation as to whether winter really did used to be longer, or just felt that way.

Three Lessons from a Micro Farm Inside Denali National Park

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

By Dakotah Fozzard, Greenhouse and Groundskeeping Manager, 2021-22

Suit up for a romp in Camp Denali’s greenhouse and gardens. You’ll find it comparable to getting ready for any hike in Denali National Park. You’ll need a hat and sunglasses; remember the sun barely sets. A baggy, light-weight shirt keeps most of the bugs at bay. Same goes for your impenetrably thick pants. Don’t be fooled by a warm summer day; you still need warm layers and a rain jacket. Consider a mosquito head net; don’t worry, uglier things are in style these days.

The greens, herbs, garnishes, flowers and more you see as you wander through the greenhouse and sporadic gardens are all grown organically for Camp Denali. For more than thirty years, this modest, micro farm has provided fresh produce for the kitchen to include into the guests’ dining experience.

Here are three lessons from Camp Denali’s micro-farm:

#1 Thank a sanitation worker. Start a compost.

Did you ever do a school project where you carry around all of the trash you produced on your person for a week? It’s utterly perturbing. Try it sometime. Camp Denali has done this since 1952. Packing it in and packing it out is no easy task when you have the food, supplies, and trash of 50-100 people to manage. Not to mention the challenges of storing odorous items until transport. One man’s trash is a grizzly bear’s tragic treasure.

Composting in a remote community without sanitation services is essential. It recycles kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells (dried so odorless), egg cartons, brown paper towels, leaves, grass, garden waste, sawdust, and more to feed vegetables and flowers. It reduces the amount of fertilizer needed. It’s exceptionally easy.

See the image of Camp Denali’s recipe for compost lasagna. Like real lasagna, it’s definitely not an exact science.

#2 Winter is coming. Be prepared.

In Interior Alaska, the growing season is roughly 120 days, from early May until early September. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone is 3a, and killing frosts can take out the crops any month of the year. In summer 2022, flowers, basil, and tomatoes all took multiple hits in July!

The greenhouse and row cover use extend the season significantly and allow for warmer weather crops to be grown. The raised beds allow soil temperatures to rise more quickly in the spring, when frozen ground lingers below.

#3 Climate change is already here. Vote with your fork.

In 2021, a thawing permafrost (perennially frozen subsoil) landslide sloughed off 100 yards (90 meters) of the only road going to Kantishna. Unsurprisingly, the suspected culprit is climate change - more specifically warmer temperatures, longer summers and heavier rains. Kantishna community members faced the choice of shuttering their homes and businesses or transitioning to air-access. Camp Denali, fortunately, was able to transition.

Flying people, goods, and supplies into a remote community is no small cost fiscally nor environmentally. Minimizing both foodstuffs in and refuse out is crucial - for Camp Denali and for all of us. The produce from Camp Denali’s micro-farm travels just up the hill to the Camp Denali kitchen. Compostable food scraps are brought down the hill. The logistical complexities Camp Denali faces now as a fly-in lodge are one micro-example of the much larger complexities (and fragilities) of the globalized food system.

In 1905, Kantishna was a mining camp in the Alaskan gold rush. These days, a different rush looms large over Alaska: a land rush. The landscape is changing quickly with permafrost melting quickly and irregularly. Land previously un-tillable is suddenly arable. Alaska has more new farms than any other state, a dramatic exception to the established rule of decline since the 1930’s.

While more farms can offer local food to Alaskans, we must take care to support farmers in stewarding the land, as well as to prioritize these farmers’ local communities. You can help craft the community you want to live in by eating. As Teddy Roosevelt famously didn’t say, “tread lightly and carry a conscious fork!”

Sources:

NPS. “Wilderness.” https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/nature/wilderness.htm

NPS. “Melting Permafrost.” https://www.nps.gov/dena/getinvolved/dca_watson.htm

USDA. “USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.” https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

USDA Economic Research Service. “Farming and Farm Income.” https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/

CBS News. “Alaska gambles on turning boreal forest into farmland.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-farmland-climate-change-boreal-forest/

Photo Credits: Dakotah Fozzard, Ralph Clevenger

Turning Toward Summer

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

by Simon Hamm

As our good friend Kes Woodward often reminds us through his art, here in Interior Alaska the winter solstice takes on a special significance. At this latitude, it marks a palpable turning from the quiet depths of hibernation, to the promise and excitement of spring’s unfolding.

It feels quite fitting, therefore, to be sharing the exciting news that Camp Denali is officially moving ahead with fly-in operations for the 2022 summer.

Many of you have been exceedingly patient as we have spent the fall navigating what the closure of road access means for us. It’s no small proposition to convert from a drive-in to a fly-in lodge, and isn't something we wanted to rush into. Over the past few months, we have explored countless scenarios and iterations. While we work to update our website, we wanted to share the following key points right away:

Camp Denali WILL operate this coming summer. Our schedule remains consistent with previously-published dates for 2022. We will open on June 3, and will close on September 12, with three- and four-night stays beginning every Friday and Monday, respectively.
We have partnered with a locally-owned air taxi with over 70 years’ experience conducting scenic and charter flights in Denali and around the state. They will be the primary provider for all transportation to and from Camp Denali. Regular service will travel to and from the park entrance, with custom destinations available by request.
Strong natural history focus, Alaska-sourced, fresh, and tastefully-prepared cuisine, and active, in-depth visitor experiences remain unwavering cornerstones of our program. A reduced guest count ensures that our customer service and attention to detail will continue undiminished. The extent of road access eastward from Wonder Lake is subject to park management, and may not be known until closer to the summer; however, we anticipate having no shortage of diverse hiking options in the heart of the park, and having those nearly, perhaps entirely, to ourselves.
In light of the many revisions to our scale and logistics, we are compelled to increase 2022 rates, the single biggest factor being the need to fly everything in and out for the next couple years. In a stroke of extraordinarily good timing, last summer we completed a solar-power array capable of sustaining Camp Denali’s electrical needs. This not only fits our aim of sustainability, but saves the expense and challenge of flying several thousand gallons of generator fuel over the coming seasons. Similarly we managed, amidst the abrupt road closure in 2021, to stage vehicles, supplies, and other necessities onsite, thereby avoiding significant flight expense. All things considered, we are very pleased to announce a new rate of $1100 per-person nightly, in-line with many fly-in lodges around Alaska. This figure, plus tax, is all-inclusive of your time at Camp Denali. A separate charge of $500 per person covers your round-trip flight from the park entrance with Denali Air, and includes a “fly-by” scenic tour of the Alaska Range, weather permitting.

We are genuinely excited to be moving ahead in this new direction, and hope that you are able to join us for a summer unlike we've had since the earliest days of Camp Denali.

At the time of writing, we are working towards finalizing additional logistical details and updating our system in order to accept new reservations. Please check back for updates, or give us a call for current information.

Thank you for your patience as we have worked through the planning process to switch to fly-in operations.

We extend warmest wishes at this turning of the seasons, and eagerly anticipate all the promise and amazement of an Alaskan return toward summer.

From the Cockpit

Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

by Simon Hamm (owner, Camp Denali & North Face Lodge)

Today is the day that our early crew was to have flown to Kantishna to begin taking down the shutters, undoing winter's mischief, and launching into facility improvements for the upcoming summer. It is typically a day of celebration, hard work, and excited anticipation of the season ahead. Instead, it has become the occasion to announce that Camp Denali and North Face Lodge will not operate during 2020- a first in our 69-year history.

A canceled opening notwithstanding, the pull of spring ritual remains strong, and so on Sunday I hopped in our small Cessna airplane and flew out for an annual fix of springtime in Denali. It was warm, calm, and “severe-clear”- a beautiful day for flying. Landing on the airstrip and hiking the four miles back to our lodges, untouched since September, I could almost imagine that we still live in a world without COVID-19. I could touch any doorknob without hesitation. I could scratch my nose when the season’s first mosquito came my way. As one of a handful of people in a six-million-acre park, I was less concerned with social distancing than maintaining distance from the grizzly whose fresh tracks I was following. While the time on the ground felt like a privileged cross between a time capsule and an escape pod, the in-flight time afforded a chance to reflect on a few sobering aviation truisms, and how they relate to the prospect of a 2020 operating season:

"The cockpit is no place for an optimist"

Thank you Lowell Thomas Jr. for instilling this when I was first taking to the air. Presented with challenges in our path, I cannot begin to count the times I have seen our staff accomplish the seemingly impossible with grit and aplomb. It becomes seductive to imagine that a robust, can-do attitude will see us through yet again. As the stakes go up, however, the can-do mentality becomes less an asset and more of a liability. A responsible wilderness lodge operator, like a good pilot, must constantly be asking, what is the worst that could happen? In normal seasons, we are comfortable with the answers, supported by our redundant systems and contingencies developed over seven decades. With COVID-19, there is no safety net that is in our control. There is no level of staffing that can adequately rise to the occasion. There is no Plan B for when it reaches our lodges. Another piece of hard-won wisdom posits that there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. A pandemic is no place for unfounded optimism.

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect"

Among the leading causes of aviation crashes is a phenomenon known as CFIT, or Controlled Flight Into Terrain. The idea is that the aircraft was mechanically sound, running normally and responding correctly to pilot inputs right up until it hit the side of the mountain. Seldom does CFIT occur in good flying conditions. It happens when you can’t adequately sense and assess the rapidly-changing landscape just beyond your wingtips, leaving insufficient time to react when rocks and trees emerge suddenly through the clouds. There are systems for safely threading this needle, but they require both experience and proficiency in order to have trust in them. Kantishna lacks adequate testing, quarantine, and appropriate medical recourse to permit a clear grasp of the rapidly shifting terrain around us. Succumbing to the temptation to fly thus impaired is known as scud-running, and it regularly accounts for accidents that are tragic in their preventability.

"Better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, than to be flying, wishing you were on the ground."

We take tremendous delight and satisfaction in sharing Denali with visitors. At the core of our enterprise, our mission includes providing learning experiences, fostering stewardship of the natural world, and cultivating bonds of community. While we might thread the needle of COVID-19 this season, and safely execute the mechanical aspects of transportation, lodging, dining and hiking, we understand it would be a greatly diminished version of Camp Denali and North Face Lodge, robbed of the intangible offerings that make it an endeavor we truly believe in. The decision to wait on better flying weather in this instance is not without significant sacrifice. But that mustn’t cause us to lose perspective: it is supposed to be a pleasure flight, after all. It is not a get-there-at-any-cost mission. The decision to wait out the storm is simultaneously an expression of belief that in due course, the clouds will part and the sun will return.

Flying has been entwined with Camp Denali ever since its founders, two of them Women Airforce Service Pilots, first winged their way to Kantishna in 1951. From their cockpits I imagine Ginny Hill Wood and Celia Hunter would relate to how aviation has a certain way of casting actions and their possible outcomes into palpable relief. Fortunately for everyone and everything that they touched in their long lifetimes, they, and Morton Wood, and our friend Lowell Thomas Jr., possessed the wisdom and the patience to respect the weather. They serve as our model of how to survive to one day become old pilots.

In anticipation of the return of blue skies and tail winds,

Simon Hamm

Weathering the Storm: Lessons from a Beaver

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

by Jeff Anderson

With COVID-19 dominating the news cycle, and impacting our lives in unprecedented ways, it can be challenging to stay positive and think about anything beyond the scope and scale of this pandemic. Many of us are holed up at home with our families for the unforeseeable future, and doing all we can to keep our loved ones safe and sane. This is new territory, and although I'm not an epidemiologist or public health specialist, I humbly offer some tips from an iconic species of the subarctic - the North American Beaver.

Beavers use engineering, ingenuity, and hard work to change their surroundings more so than any other animal besides humans. Not only that, but beavers actually increase diversity by creating great habitats for amphibians, insects, and birds. Through the spring, summer, and fall, they work nights constructing dams and crafting lodges. They gather food and cache it for the winter in the deep, cold ponds created by their dams. It's a lot of work.

With the onset of winter, beaver families (up to 12 under one roof!) are mostly confined to their small lodges. There are two tiny "rooms" - one for drip-drying and eating, and one for sleeping. As the dark Alaskan winter begins in earnest, the lake ice freezes and effectively quarantines the beavers until spring. (Sound familiar?)

The Alaskan winter is long and full of terrors - plummeting temperatures, little food resources, and hungry predators such as wolverines and wolves that would love to catch a beaver outside of its ice, mud, and stick fortress. (Side note - beavers add mud to their lodge roofs in fall so when winter comes, the mud freezes and provides an impenetrable barrier to would-be marauders.)

Beavers have evolved to minimize the time they spend outside of their lodges during winter. Although they make routine runs to the "fridge" of stored sticks, for the most part, their winters are spent in the lodge - sleeping, eating, and biding their time until the vibrant days of spring return. Scroll to the the 7-minute mark of this video to get an amazing glimpse of life inside a beaver lodge...or treat yourself to a mini vacation from Coronavirus coverage, and luxuriate in all 9 minutes of David Attenborough waxing poetic about the life of beavers.

We can learn a lot from the beavers - their hardiness through the winter is inspiring; their foresight in planning for lean times is admirable; and their ability to live for months with their entire family cooped up in a big pile of sticks and mud is downright hard-to-believe. That being said, even the beaver knows when enough is enough. On sunny winter days, you can sometimes see a lone beaver away from the lodge, away from the ice...walking by themselves. (Maybe taking a little self-care time?)

Social distancing, self-quarantining...none of it's easy, and we don't know when it will end. All I know is that spring is on the horizon, the ice on Alaskan ponds will melt, and the beavers will emerge and enrich our lives while making their tiny piece of Earth a little better for all those that share it.

Wings of Winter

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A winter’s morning walk through the boreal forests of Denali National Park is a quiet affair. The cacophony of summer’s bird song is replaced with an ethereal stillness that only hints at the harsh realities facing birds who winter in the far north.

While the allure for species to migrate to Alaska for the breeding season is simple (abundant food resources and nesting locations), the reasons to stay year-round in such an inhospitable environment are more nuanced. For a bird to survive year-round in the frigid subarctic, they must be able to excel at two critical tasks: maintaining their body temperature and procuring enough food to stay (somewhat) active and sustain their body heat. None of this is easy. In fact, it is so rare and difficult that most birds evolved to risk the daunting alternative of migrating/navigating thousands of miles to escape winter in the north. Consequently, there are only a handful of birds in Denali that are considered “residents”, with different bird groups using novel strategies for winter survival.

Due to their large size, Corvids such as ravens and magpies lose heat at a slower rate than other, smaller passerines. These are some of the more active birds you’ll see in the winter in Denali. Corvids are known for their high intelligence, which boosts their ability to create and remember the location of the many caches where they store food for future use. Additionally, ravens (and to a lesser extent, magpies) have evolved to take advantage of large carnivores by following wolves in the winter and feeding on fresh kills of moose or caribou. Ravens are more likely to share food resources in the winter, and their black coloring is conspicuous against a snowy white background, so once one raven has found a kill, more ravens will typically join the feast.

Surprisingly, other large resident birds like grouse and ptarmigan don’t have to worry about diminished food supplies in the winter- there are plentiful willow buds, catkins, and dwarf birch twigs to feed on. That being said, these Galliformes still need to maintain their body heat when temperatures plummet. One way they do this is by taking advantage of the insulating properties of the subnivean zone. The snow layer between the frozen ground and the air above can develop an ice “roof” that helps burrows and tunnels hold their structural integrity, which in turn provides shelters for birds and mammals toughing out the winter. This insulating blanket of snow suits the seasonal needs of small mammals and large birds because they can tunnel or break out if the freeze/thaw cycle creates a thick layer of ice on top of the snowpack. Small songbirds, however, cannot muscle through even the thinnest layers of ice and need to find other ways to stay warm.

Denali’s tiniest avian residents, including Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and Common Redpolls, have a myriad of strategies to survive the winter. Even in the lower 48 it is common for birds to fluff out their feathers in order to create warm, insulating air pockets. In the subarctic, songbirds do the same thing, but puff up so greatly that they appear to be twice as large as they appear in the summer months. Think of a small child wearing a thick sweater, snow pants, a vest and a puffy down jacket, and you’ll get the picture!

Another strategy small birds deploy is similar to one used by arctic animals worldwide- they keep their core much warmer than their extremities. If a Boreal Chickadee kept its feather-free legs the same temperature as its core, it would waste a lot of precious calories to heat the legs because they have no insulation and cool quite rapidly. To combat this, most birds keep their feet extremely cold (approx. 30° F) and employ a countercurrent heat exchange similar to the one caribou and whales use in their feet and fins, respectively. Essentially, the arteries (full of warm blood) are in close contact with the leg’s veins and transfer some of their heat to the cold venal blood that is traveling back to the bird’s core. By warming this inward-bound blood, the bird is able to decrease heat loss in its core.

In a few months, however, these winter residents will have plenty of rewards to show for their long dark journey through Denali’s winter. They’ll have first crack at prime habitat as the land awakens and brings forth a bounty of insects, berries, and buds!

While Denali’s wings of winter are impressive in one way, summer bird life in Denali is another special thing to behold as over 150 species of birds return from six different continents. This summer we’re excited to bring back ornithologist Scott Weidensaul whose research in Denali (and elsewhere) is helping scientists better understand the natural histories and migratory lives of birds. Please join us June 5-11 to hike and learn with Scott and Camp Denali’s bird-obsessed Naturalist Guides.