For any adventure minded adventurer, Denali is certainly on the bucket list. Denali National Park is just over 2 hours from Fairbanks. The drive is quite scenic and beautiful. The road condition this time of year is very good: everything is melting at a pretty quick pace. In the evenings I would be careful of ice on the roads.
This time lapse video shows the road trip from Fairbanks to Denali.
We first stopped into the visitors center and paid the entrance fee. The fee is $15 per adult and $45 for an annual pass. I do plan on coming here several times before I head back to Utah, so I opted for the annual pass.
Here is a map of the trail system of the park. It is amazing how we really didn’t see but a small sliver of the park. The park is absolutely colossal: just over 6 million acres. We stopped a few times along Park Road to take some pictures but ultimately stopped at a small car parking area before the first trail head.
The visitor center was certainly very helpful and also let us borrow snowshoes. This was my first experience with them (which was interesting). They don’t take much to get use to but can be a bit different to get use to. They were a valuable tool in making an off-trail adventure hike possible.
