A packed bus with bicycles racked to its exterior began a two-and-a-half-hour drive up toward the Polychrome area, a waypoint on the Denali National Park road that’s known for its colorful volcanic rocks.
It’s a long, winding ascent, but hardly a dull one. Outside, the mountains burned with fall color — an inferno of scarlet mosses and gold birch leaves.
The bus driver, Will Moran, told passengers over the loudspeaker to watch for beavers and swans. He’s originally from El Salvador and said he really loves his job here — especially driving this section.
“You get to see all these beautiful people with smiles, and my job is just being a messenger,” Moran said. “I see the ‘Whoas,’ and ‘We got to see a caribou or a moose.’ It fulfills me.”
The general public hasn’t been able to travel far into the park since a persistent, creeping landslide, driven by thawing permafrost, made the road impassable in 2021. But this month, the opening of the new Pretty Rocks Bridge means hikers and cyclists can easily cross the landslide area.
Finally, visitors can travel over 40 more miles into the heart of the park, with access to places like the historic Kantishna mining district and iconic Wonder Lake.
An expensive, time-consuming engineering challenge
It all cost about $230 million, which paid for the 475-foot steel bridge as well as work to shore up the landslide area. That part was especially tricky and involved special technology called thermosyphons, which remove heat from the ground to keep the permafrost stable.
Denny Capps leads the National Park Service’s geohazards program. At a recent open house celebrating the Pretty Rocks Bridge, he said building permanent infrastructure atop shifting, thawing ground — and doing it right — takes time.
“Not only did we have this huge span to build across out in the middle of relative nowhere,” he said. “We also had to try to build that eastern abutment on an area that contained massive ice-rich permafrost that was quite warm and susceptible to freezing.”
Visitors are back — and business is picking up
Local residents are excited to reap the economic rewards. Chris Noel is the mayor of Healy, which sits just outside the park. He said he’s hearing from people working in the tourism industry that bookings spiked after the announcement.
“Everybody's interested to get out and see the west end of the park that's been basically very, very lightly attended over the last few years,” he said.
That includes visitors like Josh Testa and Taylor Peace, who cycled all the way to Wonder Lake. As they waited for their bus ride back to civilization, Testa said they were cold and exhausted but grateful for the chance to be among the few visitors to see that part of the park in several years.
“It was just something we've been looking forward to doing all summer,” he said. “The colors are wild. We didn't really mean to nail the fall colors — it seems right at peak, because it was reds and yellows and just very, very cool.”
Next summer, car and bus traffic will resume beyond the bridge, with the park developing a permit system to limit private vehicle access.