National Park Feature: Denali
The artists, researchers, writers, photographers, and creative directors behind the poster art of Anderson Design Group make a conscious effort to travel to the many places we create art of. Since a prominent theme of many of ADG’s award-winning art collections and vintage-styled poster designs is travel and exploration, it only makes sense to physically visit these places so we can better depict them in our original art.
Recently, collaborating artist and friend Kenneth Crane and staff writer and researcher Ren Brabenec traveled to Denali National Park in Alaska, one of the most famous of the 63 flagship National Parks.
Pictured below: Ken and Ren pose with ADG products at the iconic Denali National Park sign.
Read on for fun facts and essential travel details, but first, enjoy this highlight reel of Ken and Ren’s trip!
Fun Facts About Denali
Check out some of the lesser-known details of America's 12th national park (and the first ever established in Alaska).
- In 1917, Denali became the first national park in Alaska, a state that’s now home to 60% of the total land area protected by the National Park Service. Alaska is called America’s Last Frontier because it was the last wilderness region explored by Euro-American settlers. Over a century later, the preservation of massive tracts of undeveloped land in the state has kept the nostalgic ethos of wilderness exploration alive. In summary, preserving Denali in the early 20th century helped set a bar for land preservation in the U.S., a trend that numerous other countries have now adopted.
- Many people love the national parks for their diversity, and Denali National Park stands out in this category. For example, the lowest point in the U.S. is 282 feet below sea level, in Death Valley National Park’s Badwater Basin. But what about the highest? The highest point is 20,310 feet above sea level at the summit of Denali/Mount McKinley in Denali National Park.
- Despite it being the tallest mountain on the continent, about 1,200 people attempt to summit Denali every year, but only half of them succeed. With permanent snow cover, slippery glaciers, jagged peaks, and frequent storms raging across its steep slopes, Denali is arguably the most challenging mountain to climb in North America. So tall its summit is often hidden in cloud cover and storms; Denali was not officially summited until Walter Harper, an indigenous Alaskan, reached the peak with three others in 1913.
- The national parks don’t just exist to protect land; they also exist to protect plant and animal life, and Denali was the first national park created for the express purpose of protecting wildlife. More than a century after the park was created, 39 mammal species and 169 bird species live at peace in America’s first dedicated wilderness area.
- Speaking of wildlife, between 300 and 350 grizzly bears call Denali home. The National Park Service closely monitors the population and has created systems to help people and bears coexist safely. The bears can often be seen out and about in the landscape as one drives, bicycles, or takes a shuttle bus or ranger-guided tour bus along the Denali Park Road.
- Always on the move, Denali’s glaciers are rivers of ice, moving very, very slowly. The park is home to at least 40 named glaciers, located anywhere from 800 to 19,000 feet above sea level. The Kahiltna Glacier spans 44 miles, the longest glacier in the park and the longest in the entire Alaska Range.
- Despite everything else feeling larger than life, the trees in Denali are super small! Visitors may think the black spruce in Denali are young trees, as they are small compared to spruce trees in the lower 48. Their stature is due to permafrost stunting their growth.
Want to read these fun facts in their entirety, learn more facts about Denali National Park, and learn similar facts about all the other national parks on the 63-park roster? Check out Wilderness & Wonder: An Illustrated Guide to the National Parks. Not only is this book informative and helpful, it looks great on your coffee table, and it makes for a great gift!
A Day in Denali: How to Hike Denali’s Longest Trail in One Day
Denali National Park and Preserve is a huge national park, spanning over six million acres total, with just the park portion of the protected area spanning 4.7 million acres. (The preserve portion of the park is part of the protected area; it just has different rules governing its use as compared to the park portion of the protected area).
An assortment of photos from Ken and Ren's day hike are featured below:
The park is very large, and the vast majority is untouched wilderness, with the more remote sections of the park having no trail systems or roads. That’s why the longest trail in Denali is still just 9.5 miles, and it’s accessible from the visitor center!
Ken and Ren only had one day in the park, so they had to be expert planners in how they managed their day, so they could:
- Go for a long, 9.5-mile hike
- Visit the visitor center to stamp their National Park Adventure Guides
- Drive the Denali Park Road to the Mile 15 Marker
- See wildlife and stop to take lots of photos!
That’s a tall order for one day, especially during autumn in Alaska when the sunlight is limited, so here’s the big secret on how to hike Denali’s 9.5-mile trail in one day:
The trail we’re referring to is the Triple Lakes Trail, a stretch of trail 9.5 miles long that boasts about 1,500 feet of elevation gain, lots of ridge-line views, and plenty of lake and river views. The trailhead is located just outside the park’s visitor center, and the trail ends at the edge of the park’s boundary, right next to a bridge on Highway 3 (Parks Hwy) that goes over the Nenana River. Just over that bridge is a small community of hotels and restaurants that provide accommodations and meals to park visitors.
But how does one walk the entire trail in one day without having to turn around and walk back, thus making a 9.5-mile hike a 19-mile hike?
The key is to spend the previous evening at one of the lodges in Denali Park Village!
Here’s how it worked: Ken and Ren stayed at Denali Park Village the night before their hike. The next morning, they checked out of their lodging, but they left their rental car in the hotel’s parking lot.
Then, they took a hotel-provided shuttle bus up to the park's visitor center. The bus dropped them off, Ken and Ren hit the trail, hiked the 9.5 miles to the trail’s end, crossed the short bridge on Highway 3, and walked along the highway for barely more than a quarter-mile, ultimately arriving back at the hotel where they’d spent the previous night, their rental car awaiting them in the parking lot.
The travelers were able to do all of that before 2:00 p.m., leaving them the rest of the day to drive back up and into the park with their rental car, explore the visitor center and other park highlights, and drive the Denali Park Road to the Mile 15 marker and back.
Denali National Park Travel Advice
The park's rivers can flood, so our first bit of advice is to be ready to go barefoot when rivers surge over their banks and flood the hiking trails! See below:
Here are three quick bits of travel advice for those visiting Denali:
- Cloudy conditions often conceal Mount McKinley (formerly Mount Denali) from view. Visitors have a 30-40% chance of seeing the mountain, so visit the park on a sunny day and travel to at least Mile 9 on Denali Park Road.
- Visitors enjoy 24-hour daylight in Denali from April through August. Conversely, winter months can be entirely shrouded in darkness, the landscape framed by a night sky frequently interrupted by the Northern Lights.
- Edible blueberries and lingonberries are prevalent throughout Denali during summer. A tasty snack for the weary traveler!
More travel advice is available in Wilderness & Wonder and in another of ADG’s publications, 63 Illustrated National Parks: Updated Edition.
One of the views from the Triple Lakes Trail is pictured below:
The Wilderness and Wonder National Park Coffee Table Book, IN Denali National Park!
Our fearless adventurers were still more or less fearless after that 9.5-mile hike, but they were pretty exhausted. They settled into their rental car and traveled on the Denali Park Road all the way to Mile 15, which is the cut-off point for private vehicle traffic. The Denali Park Road is actually 92 miles long, but most of it is restricted to tour or shuttle bus travel, though some private vehicles are allowed through based on a lottery system.
Only the first 15 miles are paved, and the rest can get a little bumpy, so Ren and Ken got out at the 15-mile marker, stretched their legs, and took some photos of the Alaska Range. A significant, even sentimental moment was had when Ren pulled out his trusty copy of Wilderness and Wonder: An Illustrated Guide to the National Parks, and took Ken’s picture with the book, opened to the Denali chapter, IN Denali National Park!
Ken poses with Wilderness & Wonder below:
Ken, Ren, and ADG Founder, Owner, and Creative Director Joel Anderson collaborated on this coffee table book through much of 2023 and 2024, with Ken illustrating and photographing the parks for the book, Ren researching and writing about them, and Joel leading the project as Creative Director.
The Denali chapter opens with these words:
“Inspiring in every sense of the word, this National Park is named for its crown jewel, 20,310ft tall Denali. North America’s tallest mountain, the snowcapped behemoth is the focal point of the park’s six million acres of protected wilderness. With just one road winding through it, the park preserves taiga forest, alpine tundra, and snow-laden ridges and valleys, a breathtaking landscape where visitors come to see wildlife large and small living as they have for ages.”
For inspiration and travel planning in the national parks, be sure to check out ADG’s books and the free information contained in our website’s blog.
For inspiration on future trips or for souvenirs of completed ones, ADG’s 63 American National Parks poster art collection is a timeless depiction of the 63 national parks in a vintage poster art style that harkens back to the original artwork that first promoted the parks in the 20th century. It is the art of adventure, made by humans, for humans.
Last but not least, Anderson Design Group donates a portion of all annual profits to the National Park Foundation each year, meaning your purchase of national park art and national park books literally helps fund the protection and stewardship of these iconic places.
We hope you’re inspired, informed, and ready for the adventure of a lifetime. May you never be the same again!
-Ren Brabenec
Anderson Design Group Staff Writer
A landscape and a National Park Adventure Guide, shot at the 15 Mile Marker, are featured below:
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