The six-million-acre DENALI NATIONAL PARK, 240 miles north of Anchorage, is home to Mount McKinley, which is often shrouded in cloud. The mountain is far from the park’s only attraction, however. Shuttle buses offer a glimpse of a vast world of tundra and taiga, glaciers, huge mountains and abundant wildlife – the Park Service reports that 95 percent of visitors see bears, caribou and Dall sheep, 82 percent moose, and more than one-fifth wolves, along with porcupine, snowshoe hare, red foxes and more than 160 bird species. Visiting Alaska without trying to see Denali is unthinkable for most travellers, and therein lies a problem. In high summer, the visitor centre and service areas out on the Parks Highway are a stream of RVs, tour buses and the like. Things pick up in the park itself, and backcountry hiking, undertaken by only a tiny fraction of visitors, remains a wonderfully solitary experience.