Aurora in Healy, March 2023

Wolf

Site 53 at Teklanika Campground

While C continued working an 18 day stretch, my parents and I spent 3 nights at Teklanika Campground in Denali National Park. We saw all of the big 5!

Wolf on road in front of bus

While I hope to write a couple posts on our Teklanika stay, I will start with the wolf on our last day. With only 90ish wolves in 6 million acres, we were extremely lucky to see one. And we were able to watch him at close range!

Wolf Amidst Beautiful Scenery

We were near East Fork on a transit bus. The East Fork of the Toklat River is in the center of the above photo. The wolf was casually trotting down the road, on the prowl for a snack. He crouched, chased and pounced after an Arctic ground squirrel, but it made it to its tunnel.

Wolf snack

Later it swallowed this, maybe a pika? Hopefully a vole as pika are just too cute. After days of searching I had finally seen a pika just up the road from the wolf. Google a pika for a photo – this relative of a hare is adorable!

Photo by Elton Yordy

2 responses to “Wolf”

  1. too small for a pika – more likely a vole; the ground squirrel made it into its burrow, and a magpie flew out of a nearby bush, but something quite small made a snack for the wolf – what an amazing sighting for the day!

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    1. Thanks for the input! Hope you have more to add on the other posts describing our joint venture. 🙂

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