The photo above is of the moon over Denali, aka Mount McKinley, taken on the summer solstice of a previous year (as you probably know, the 2012 summer solstice happens tomorrow!) Wow. This week's Bike Overnight concerns a ride in the national park encompassing Denali; a ride made during the light of the night in the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Kate Batten, a contributing author writes, "I have done this solstice ride for the past four years and can think of no better way to stay up and enjoy the 'longest day' in this beautiful part of the world. There's perhaps no better time to ride the Denali National Park Road than on solstice night -- when the buses stop running for the evening, you have the road to yourself ... well, there will probably be other riders and some wildlife!
Kate, with a Denali backdrop, at around 10 p.m.
"We take the last bus of the day in to Wonder Lake, mile 85, and ride through the night back out to the park entrance. We start riding at about 9 p.m. and watch the sun set -- and then watch it rise again just three hours later, with dusky light illuminating the ride in between. In the past few years while doing this ride we have seen grizzlies, wolves, moose, caribou, Dall sheep, and numerous bird species."
The view from the saddle.
According to the national park's website, "Denali, the 'High One,' is the name that the Athabascan native people gave the massive peak that crowns the 600-mile-long Alaska Range. ... More than 650 species of flowering plants as well as many species of mosses, lichens, fungi, algae, and other flora grace the slopes and valleys of Denali. Only plants adapted to long, cold winters and short growing seasons can survive in this subarctic wilderness. Permafrost ground underlies many areas of the park, where only a thin layer of topsoil is available to support life."
Sounds to us like a bucket-list place to ride. To do so vicariously, read the rest of Kate's tale of the far north at BikeOvernights.org, then do it for real next year!
Our current Photo of the Week, shown below, comes from the May 14, 2012, post Bikepacking on Santa Catalina Island, by Errin Vasquez.
Top 3 photos by Kate Batten.
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BIKE OVERNIGHTS is posted every Monday by Michael McCoy, Adventure Cycling?s media specialist, and highlights content from BikeOvernights.org. Previously, from March 2009 through January 2012, Mac posted weekly at Biking Without Borders. He also compiles the organization's twice-monthly e-newsletter Bike Bits, which goes free-of-charge to 45,000 readers worldwide.
Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2012/06/alaska-night-ride-in-light-of-midnight.html
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