Dumb Stampede trail questions

[Vance in AK]

A friend got an Argo & wants to go play so we are going to head up Stampede Trail tomorrow (Sunday)afternoon from Kenai. Neither of us have ever been out that way. I picked up USGS topos & they show the trail cutting through a jog in the park.
1st question, does the trail actually cut through the park (and is that OK?)?
2nd question. I assume that if the trail does cut through it is a no hunting area?
Is any of the park boundary marked?

Any special help you can offer on the area (NOT asking for honey holes but if you want to give me one by PM I'm ok with that!)?

Thanks!

[stid2677]

A friend got an Argo & wants to go play so we are going to head up Stampede Trail tomorrow (Sunday)afternoon from Kenai. Neither of us have ever been out that way. I picked up USGS topos & they show the trail cutting through a jog in the park.
1st question, does the trail actually cut through the park (and is that OK?)?
2nd question. I assume that if the trail does cut through it is a no hunting area?
Is any of the park boundary marked?

Any special help you can offer on the area (NOT asking for honey holes but if you want to give me one by PM I'm ok with that!)?

Thanks!

That trail crosses two ATV eating rivers,, all rivers are running high around here so be very water conscious, even with the Argo the one crossing feeds into some nasty stuff quick. I have never hunted in there but saw lots of old camps.

Good Luck

[Vance in AK]

Thanks Steve. We will be careful (he hasn't made the 1st payment yet!).

We are both a little confused. In the past we have heard folks talk about going way back in there, (as far as the Toklat River?), but on the maps it looks like you hit the park boundary about 16 miles past 8 mile lake at the Sushana, & the corridor is only about 8 miles wide. Not much of an area.
Looking forward to your moose trip write up!

[AkHunter45]

Vance, I've been in there hunting several times, even killed a decent moose a few years back. You can go quite a ways before hitting the park boundary riding the trail. You'll have to cross 2 rivers, the

Savage and the Teklanika. Usually the Savage is quite doable but the Tek can be quite a bit harder to cross, especially if its been raining a lot.

Have not seen a lot of moose in there but there are some, just do a lot of glassing and be patient. If you follow the trail back far enough, you'll run into the old bus where Chris McCandless spent his last days. I always get the eeby gebbys when I visit that old bus.


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[Yeti]

It actually does go into the park on the northern boundary for a very short distance between the toklat and tek rivers. It should be marked and there is much better hunting further along. The main boundary to worry about is the Western boundary by the bus. There are several other trails through the area so just because someone has been there first doesn't make it legal. Bring a map and good luck. Gotta love the any bull areas

[toofewweekends]

FYI, the coordinates for the Denali National Park & Preserve boundary can be downloaded in various formats here: http://www.nps.gov/dena/parkmgmt/park-boundary-info.htm

Hunting information and ORV use info is here: http://www.nps.gov/dena/parkmgmt/hun...nformation.htm

[Trackrig]

Stampede Trail near Healy

I've been back on the Stampede many times starting in about 1968 before I even had a license for the Jeep I was driving. It was an old black model MB with a flathead four and dualed tires. At that time there was still a cabin at the Savage.

As a note of interest, about a 1/4 mile before the cabin off on the right / north side of the trail several hundred feet was an old military cache. During WWII in what was called the Lend Lease program where the US was supplying fighter aircraft to Russia, the planes were coming up through Canada to Ft Wainwright and then over to Russia. Along the route they had built caches and stocked them with a lot of survival gear for any of the pilots who ran into mechanical problems. In 1968 that one was still standing but the gear was long gone. And when I called them a cache, they were actually built on the ground like a cabin.

The Savage was almost always crossable by a Jeep, but it usually has a fast current. Be careful if you're trying it in an Argo.

The second river was a lot more interesting, in those days anyways. We never tried to cross right where the trail hit the Teklanika. What we had to do was turn to the left (up river) and go as far as we could which was only several hundred yards due to the large rocks. We'd enter the river there. You'd have to steer down river - not straight across. The water would get deep enough to drown out the Jeep engine - I'd be sitting in water inside of the Jeep.

Then, by going downriver with the current, because it was fast enough, you'd kick the dead Jeep into neutral, and steer down river with the current. The fast current would head you towards the trail on the other side. Usually the current would push you far enough to get the spark plugs out of the river so you could get the engine running again. This is where I learned to like electric winches. If the plugs weren't out of the water, you could wade to the far bank and winch the Jeep far enough to get the plugs out of the water. You didn't want to winch very far because you were doing it without the engine running and you still needed that battery to get the dead engine started.

Be very careful of the Tek in an Argo........

We always carried a case of oil back there and a couple cans of WD40. When we really got into deep water and sucked it into the engine, we had to change oil more than once. If the distributor got wet, pop it open and spray the inside of the cap and the roter with WD40 and the spark plug caps on both ends. WD stands for water displacement - it works.

We stayed in the old bus many times. For those of you that don't know the history of it, it didn't have an engine in it. When they built the trail in there, there was a tow bar at the bus because they towed it in behind one of the cats. I don't know why that's as far as they took it. We've been back around the corner of the park several times. A lot of the trail back there has long been washed out because it was right on the bank of the river.

We did get a few moose out of there, there weren't a lot of them, but the trip was always worth the scenery.

I'll save more stories about that trail for later.

Bill
[email protected]

[smthgfshy]

great story trackrig!! a true hidden gem tucked in these threads....