Denali's Peaceful Waters

On our second full day camped at Denali State Park, July 23, 2019, we took advantage of a warm and mostly sunny day to paddle our kayaks on Byers Lake, which is in the park.  Named for a fisherman who was flown there many times by bush pilot Don Sheldon in the 1950's, it now prohibits motorized craft, which makes for a serene paddle.  While the lake originally boasted large lake trout, they have mainly been fished out.  But we weren't here for the trout fishing -- we wanted to snag some photos of Denali and trumpeter swans!  We were not disappointed.

We were fortunate that the lake has a campground with a convenient, simple boat ramp, which made launching our kayaks easy:

Much of the lake was still hidden from the sun in the shadow of Kesugi Ridge, which, together with the morning mists, gave the lake a mysterious, spiritual look:

The lake shore was graced with accessible banks leading up to wooded slopes filled with spruce, cottonwood and alder.  Unfortunately, with warming climate, the spruce in Alaska are being decimated by the Spruce Beetle, leaving innumerable dead spruce trees that are giving rise to a frightening risk of wildfire.  The lakebed itself, while occasionally containing large rocks or boulders under the surface, is mainly a fine, granular granite gravel over which a silty topsoil of about an inch or so lays.  This silty lakebed nurtures a variety of aquatic plants, including these very interesting long, thin blades of grass that, when they reach the surface, continue growing, flattening out, fanlike, across the surface of the water:

Here and there along the shore, old unoccupied cabins peer out over the water, making us imagine what a wonderful refuge this would have been prior to the formation of the park, when perhaps only bush planes could bring the residents in:

We paddled down to the south end of the lake, where Byers Creek empties it.  There, a pedestrian bridge for the lakeshore trail crossed the outlet on stone pilings:

Kathy couldn't resist exploring, to see how far down the creek she could paddle.  After only 50 yards or so, the creek shallowed out and made passage over the rocky rills impossible; so, back out she paddled:

Along the eastern shore, we finally reached a spot where we could see Denali itself.  There was still quite a bit of haze in the air -- whether from wildfire smoke or humidity off the Chulitna River, we weren't sure.  So The High One appears very shy in this selfy:

A little later in the day, with mists mostly evaporated, we got a better view of Denali, with large clouds threatening on either side of it to take away our precious view.  The cabin in this photo is the same one we had paddled past earlier in our trip:

Because Byers Lake is so close to our campground -- K'esugi Ken -- we got on the lake much earlier than usual: 9:30 am.  As a result, about 11:30 we were already famished.  We found a fine gravel beach to put out at, almost directly  across the lake from our launch site.  We planned a short stop to eat and stretch our legs:

But, this was not to be such a short break, because, as we sat munching our sandwiches, we looked up behind us to see that the lower hillside bordering the narrow lakeshore trail was completely covered in wild blueberry bushes -- and, somehow, the resident bear(s) had failed to find these!  Using our sandwich bags as convenient containers, we spent maybe a half hour eagerly picking enough blueberries to make another batch of blueberry pancakes and a blueberry glaze for our recently-caught Sockeye salmon.  We paused from our picking only long enough to enjoy the dramatic panorama across the lake:  Denali and its consorts in the Alaska Range, with Denali National Park hidden behind it:

Off we paddled again, working our way around the lake, and, almost immediately, we spotted a loon family.  We've never seen a female loon with two chicks, but here they were.  Dad was fishing nearby.

To get the loon photos, David had to approach cautiously and obliquely, with short, silent paddle strokes, getting the mother loon to let her guard down as she thought he had passed her.  Then, drifting along a pre-plotted course, he got to the position where Denali could look down on those crazy waterbirds:

The upper end of Byers Lake, with its inflow from a shallow, sandy creek, is graced with beautiful green grasses.  Kathy paused to appreciate the scene --

-- and to hop out to explore a small island that clearly is the nesting ground for a pair of trumpeter swans and their three young:

Interestingly, the island was also full of grizzly bear scat, which implied a few things:  first, Mr. or Ms. Bear can easily cross to the island from the nearby shoreline, and thus does so; second, the bear does this regularly; and, third, the bear probably does so to see if it can score a baby swan snack.  From the fact that the swan parents had three kids in tow, we guessed that the bear had not yet been successful this season.

The swans' island was also littered with feathers, which we assumed fell from moulting or grooming.  Kathy grabbed one of the larger ones and clipped it on her hat as a souvenir of our visit:

Having seen The Ancient One, and the loons, and the trumpeter swans, we felt our visit had been pretty successful.  We spent the remainder of the afternoon paddling slowly along the shoreline, enjoying the beautiful scenery.

When we arrived at the lake, there were two other groups of kayakers -- another couple who, as it turned out, were visiting from Southern California, and a larger group that had been shuttled over from the nearby Denali Princess Lodge for their hour or two of paddling.  During the middle of the day, the lake emptied out, but as we approached mid-afternoon, more boaters appeared on the lake.  Kathy snooped on them from time to time with her spyglass, and also tried to keep track of the comings and goings of the loon family:

Afternoon brought more mist.  Because the snow on the nearby mountains seemed to have a pinkish hue, we surmised that this was drifting smoke from the wildfires to the north, although we could not smell any smoke.  Nevertheless, it gave our last view of the lake a romantic look, with Kesugi Ridge in the background:

We were lucky to get this paddle and our previous day's hike up Curry Ridge, because these two were the only rainless days in the forecast for our five day stay at Denali State Park.

As we write this, we are taking shelter from a rainy Wednesday in the Talkeetna Public Library, during a day's visit to the touristy spot.  We visited the ranger station in charge of managing climbers who want to ascend Denali, and watched a fascinating video on climbing the mountain.  We also visited the Susitna Salmon Center and learned about the salmon that spawn in the Susitna and about the fight that was successfully waged by conservationists and fishermen to save the Susitna River watershed from the depradations that would have come with a large hydroelectric dam project on the upper reaches of the river.  We hope to end this visit with a late lunch at Denali Brewing Company (oh, and perhaps a little of their beer).

We hope to do a small hike tomorrow morning (weather permitting) and then we-know-not-what during the rain.  Stay tuned.