Alaska Day 2: Mountain Cathedral, Going Trail-less, and Abundant Wildlife?

Day 2, we woke up early and headed off for what we planned to be our one-long-hike day.  We first headed up Cathedral Mountain.  When we got off the bus, a visitor yelled out, "Can I have your tent if you don't come back?"  Another person asked, "Where are you going???"  Denali hiking is on trail-less terrain.  You get off the bus in the middle of nowhere and go wherever you want with the help of a topo map and a GPS.  (Julie and I observed that if Brady and Aaron got eaten by a bear, we would probably be goners, too, by virtue of the fact that we can't use either.)

The hike up Cathedral was steep, windy, and the last stretch was a little rough with gravel on slippery slopes.  Coming to the summit was breathtaking--both because of the wind and chill, and most especially because of the view.

Aaron and Julie commented that with the wilderness background and abundance of Marmot, Columbia, etc. brand names all over us, we looked like ads for REI.  From then on, every shot with our backs turned or looking into the distance was dubbed an "REI shot":

We all agreed that Cathedral Mountain was the best hike of the day.

Rainbow:

 Bear scat on the trail:

Our original plan was to hike down into the river beds below Cathedral Mountain, but a storm was coming that direction.  Instead, we hopped onto the bus again and headed over to Sable Mountain, where we did a whole lot more summit climbing in windy weather.  Aaron and Brady spent time with a park ranger before we went to our campsite, and got a feel for what this hike would involve.  It was a lot different than we expected from the discussion, and we were a little bummed to turn around after the summit and head back, rather than making it a long loop.  It was especially disappointing because the ranger said this is such a great hike for wildlife, and we hadn't seen anything yet.  ("Does a spider count?")

Aaron kept assuring us that seeing wildlife on hikes would be better than seeing it on the bus (although none of us wanted a grizzly encounter on a hike!), so we were all hoping to turn a corner or peek over a ridge and see something.

Hooray!  We finally saw some Dall Sheep on our 3rd hike of the day in Polychrome.  This was our least favorite hike of the day with the most wind.  We followed a riverbed up to a steep canyon overlook (and nearly got blown over by the gusts!).

On the drive back to the campsite, we went a little crazy hearing about all the wildlife the bus passengers encountered that day.  We all decided to ride into the park a little deeper the next day and see if we could catch a glimpse of Grizzly. Wouldn't you know it that while we were feeling sorry for ourselves, we caught a quick view of a huge, male Grizzly in the distance!

Totals for Day 2:
1.  Hiked: 10 miles of trail-less terrain, 5000 ft elevation gain (The hiking took us about a mile an hour, so we ended up believing the ranger who told us to take our distance expectations and divide them in half.)
2.  Wildlife:  1 Grizzly, 3 Dall Sheep, 4 caribou from bus; 2 Dall Sheep at Polychrome, lots of ground squirrels (and spiders)