Category Archive

This was on another visit to Denali, about a month after the chase that I wrote about yesterday.  The pups had left the den, and we could see them at a rendezvous site across the valley if we looked carefully with binoculars.  While we were watching, this very large grizzly wandered down the valley.  Three of the adult wolves walked to the top of the bank and watched very carefully – you can see two of them in this photo.  After a few minutes, the black yearling went down the bank presumably to run the bear off.  Unlike yesterday’s photo, this bear didn’t run.  In fact, he barely even looked up!  As you can see in this photo, he even has his back to the wolf as he feeds.  Read More

The den for the Grant Creek wolf pack has been in a closed area fairly near the Denali National Park road.  Because of this, this stretch of road can be very popular with the visitors and tour buses.  We were there one day when out of no where a grizzly came charging down the road running in and out of the buses.  Janine speculated that maybe the wolves were on to him for being too close to the den.  Sure enough, a minute later came three member of the pack charging down between the same buses.  They followed the grizzlies scent out to the riverbed where they caught up to the small adult bear and the chase was on!  Read More

In the summer of 2004, the alpha pair had a litter of six.  From what I have been told, that fall the pack made an extended trip outside its range, and when it returned to the area only two of the six remained.  This is one of the two from early summer of 2005.  Except for a little less grey in the face, this yearling looks a lot like his father and uncle.  The other yearling was light brown.  Both of them were beautiful healthy wolves that loved to play and run, and were fearless even around grizzlies as I will share tomorrow.

I have posted a couple of photos of a black wolf over the last week or so.  Actually, these photos were of one of two black wolves with the Toklat pack – I couldn’t tell them apart, but I have many photos with both in them, so I know there were two.  I first saw these two beautiful wolves in the spring of 2001, they must have arrived that winter.  A biologist told me the two were siblings.  They, along with their pack mates would soon become very popular with visitors and photographers as they were regularly seen along the Park road, and even in the Tek campground! 

Unfortunately that all changed a couple of winters ago.  That winter a number of pack members were trapped while wandering outside Denali National Park.  Later that same winter, one of the two black wolves was shot (legally) by a hunter when he too wandered outside the Park.  News reports said the black wolf had been wandering far and wide after losing his mate. 

I saw members of the pack a few times that following summer, and they were very far away and even then very skittish.  So what could be good about that?  The good is what happened to the second black wolf.  Read More

Up until now, I have only posted photos of the Toklat Pack in Denali National Park.  Beginning in 2002 I started seeing this female fairly regularly much further west in the Park in an area that is typically known as the range for the Grant Creek Pack.  Unfortunately she wore an ugly research collar which made many of my photos of her less desirable.  I was able to hide the collar in this photo by getting low enough for the vegetation to block it.  To make matters worse, her collar didn’t even work.  Read More

In my last post I shared the thrill of being next to a howling wild wolf.  Turns out, that wasn’t the end of the excitement. 

After a few minutes of howling by the black wolf, a little movement in the woods to my left caught my eye.  Sure enough, another Wolf had walked to the edge of the forest and was surveying the situation.  After about a minute this second wolf walked up and greeted the first one – that is the moment captured here. I was too close to even get them both entirely in the same frame! Read More

For Janine and I, this photo of a howling wolf was without a doubt one of our all time amazing experiences in nature.  Read More