Well, I spent the lovely Labor Day in Denali National Park. Denali is pretty adament about keeping their land and animals as wild as possible and viewing humans simply as another animal in the park, not as someone to eat or be overly used to. So pretty much, if you move a rock, put it back where you found it. That's the extent they want you to go through. No problem in my mind, I've nothing but respect for the rules that'll protect nature in its most original state.

Well, the first day we got out there, all was well. We walked a ways, set up camp, hid the bear cans and went out for a walk without the packs to explore the area. We stop and take probably an hour nap or so on the soft tundra moss and wake up to a nasty looking sky and rain coming down the mountains at us. We hurry on back to our camp and hide in our tents until the rain passes and the sun comes out. One of my buddies takes a nap and me and another guy decide to go and eat.

We get out the stove and food and cook. No problem. I finish my food and stare out over the tundra admiring he view. Well, the other guy decides that he can't finish all of his food. So, instead of just waiting and eating it a little while later, he dumps the food out onto the ground! I immediately get on him about it asking him what he was thinking. We'd already seen a bear 300 yards away on the opposite hillside eating the blueberries that covered the valley. So, to hopefully cover up the smell as much as possible, we cut out a hole in the tundra, scraped the food into the hole, dumped some water onto it, and put the dirt and moss over the hole.

Luckily no bear bothered the area that night. This is not the end of this guys stupidity though. We had another area we were to sleep in that next night, so the next day we packed up and moved out. We were going to follow the river all day next to Muldrow glacier, but we had to cross the river at least once. Well, we got out to the river flat where the river then becomes braided and pretty much becomes a number of large streams. Now, Alaska has a nice habit of raining at least once or twice a day, keeping the area fairly cool with the occasional wind when clouds move in and out. Well, I crossed the river to find good route and made it across just fine. This guy decides he's going to run across, even though I warn him there's some sudden drop offs. No heed to my warnings at all. He runs across and falls into the river, immediately getting up and finsihing the crossing luckily. He's soaked with ice cold glacial melt water, the wind is blowing and clouds are moving in. He did fine, he's lucky he didn't get hypothermia. We had to stop early and set up camp to make sure he got warm in his sleeping bag.

Needless to say I won't camp with this guy again.