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Home | Sitka| Anchorage | Fairbanks | Denali Nat'l Park | Talkeetna | Juneau | Chilkoot Trail | Dalton Highway |
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The park is divided into 43 units and only a designated number of hikers are allowed into each section at a time. Free permits are available, one day in advance, from the visitor center's Backcountry Desk (daily 7am-8pm), though high demand means you should be prepared to hike in the less popular areas. The Backcountry Desk will also teach you about avoiding run-ins with bears and issue you with bear-resistant containers for food storage. Special camper buses reserved for those with campground or backcountry permits cost $15. It's not a bad idea to reconnoiter the park on a full-day bus trip in order to choose where you might like to hike on subsequent days.
An alternative to going it alone is to join a narrated tour (phone 1-800/276-7234) along the park road: either the three-hour Natural History Tour ($37) or the full-day Tundra Wildlife Tour ($71), which penetrates as far as Mile 53, stopping frequently to observe wildlife.
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Prince
William Sound
Glacier Bay National Park
Juneau
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Alaska
South of Anchorage
Homer
Kodiak
Denali National
Park
Fairbanks
Talkeetna
Wrangell-St Elias National Park |
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Overnight backcountry
camping
Just
outside the park entrance, several rafting companies offer
two-hour trips down the Nenana River: all offer a gentle "scenic
float" and an eleven-mile "Canyon Run" through Class III and IV
rapids - they cost around $60 individually and $80 for a joint run.
Denali Outdoor Center (phone 907/683-1925 or 1-888/303-1925,)
charges a couple of dollars more than some of the others but offers
a quality experience and the luxury of dry-suits.