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DENALI PARK -- "Oh my god, I can’t look,” exclaimed Cathy. “How can you watch? How can you take pictures?”

Our Denali National Park and Preserve camper bus had just come upon a large male grizzly bear apparently trying to kill a young 2- to 3-year-old grizzly. Everybody on our bus crowded to the front to watch, or not watch, depending on each person’s comfort level. Cathy shielded her eyes while I took photos and videos with my little point-and-shoot camera.

Again and again the large boar picked up the smaller bear and body slammed it to the ground. After several exciting and agonizing minutes, the young bear broke away from the large boar and backed up. His rear end hit the side of another bus that had stopped to watch. Slowly, he slid underneath the bus while one woman on our bus encouraged him on.

“That’s your only chance,” she said quietly.

The boar circled the bus a few times, trying to get at the smaller bear. The driver on the other bus, which was facing us, gestured a question. From her vantage point she couldn’t tell what was going on. We tried to gesture back that the little bear was under her bus.

After several minutes the large bear sauntered off and lay down on a snow patch several hundred feet below the road. Our bus moved closer to the other bus and the drivers conferred about what to do. Our bus driver thought this was the same bear that had killed and eaten a female bear several years earlier.

We couldn’t tell how badly the younger bear was hurt. For all we knew, he could be dying under the other bus, which couldn’t drive forward without hurting the bear even more. The park has a policy that humans should not interfere with nature, but the bear had interfered with us.

As the drivers were debating about whether to call a ranger, the young bear slowly made his way from under the bus. He looked exhausted. He was bleeding from his ears and one paw. His rear end was bloody and looked chewed up. He limped around looking for the big bear and then slowly wobbled off up the hill, the opposite direction from the one the big boar had taken. Finally, our bus driver started off toward Wonder Lake again. We wouldn’t know whether the injured bear survived.

What a wildlife experience. Our bus driver said she had never seen anything like it in her 10 years as a park bus driver. So started our Denali solstice bike adventure, and we hadn’t even gotten off the bus yet.

Devising a plan

Earlier in the spring I decided I wanted to bike the 85 miles of park road from Wonder Lake to the park entrance. Fifteen years ago, my husband and I biked from the Teklanika River Campground to Wonder Lake Campground one day and then returned the next. The trip was wonderful, but we had biked during the day and got covered with road dust from all the tour buses.

I had heard of people taking a later bus to Wonder Lake and then biking through the night to avoid traffic. It sounded like a great idea to me, especially since I still yearned to bike the whole distance from Wonder Lake to Riley Creek. My husband couldn’t go this time, as we now have two children, so I asked my friend, Cathy Weeg. Being an outdoor adventurer, an extremely strong biker and a glutton for punishment, she immediately said yes.

We drove down to Denali National Park and Preserve early on June 21 and set up camp at Riley Creek Campground. We left on the 11 a.m. camper bus, which arrives at Wonder Lake around 5 p.m. We were about four hours into the bus ride when we came upon the bear brawl.

A few minutes after that encounter we pulled into the new Eielson Visitor Center. Full of adrenaline, we and our bus companions got off the bus and immediately started telling everyone about our adventure.

As we left Eielson, Cathy and I discussed the weather. All day the clouds had been building and now it was pouring rain. We heard Wonder Lake had hail and lightning.

“Maybe we should just stay on the bus,” Cathy said, voicing what we were both thinking.

“No,” I said as I tried to convince us to continue on our quest. “It will probably clear up and if not we have rain gear.”

“Yeah,” replied Cathy. “And the bathrooms at Eielson are very nice. We could just camp out there all night.”

Dodging hares

Fortunately, the storm moved north and we pulled into Wonder Lake to good weather. However, the mosquitoes were pretty bad, so we quickly changed into our biking gear and got moving. As we started biking, the skies above us and around Mount McKinley began clearing. We couldn’t believe our luck.

About two hours later, we pedaled into Eielson ready for a break. Denali was almost entirely out by this time, the headwind was dying, and we had already seen caribou and beavers. We stopped to eat and take pictures.

Getting back on the road we thought about the bears we had seen on the way in. We passed the big boar about 30 minutes later, but he was up on a hillside eating grass. At least we thought he was eating grass and not another bear.

After that the trip consists of surmounting one pass after another. Forty minutes to grind up one side and 10 minutes to fly down the other. Snowshoe hares were everywhere. We actually had to dodge them on the downhills. At one point, we counted about 20 within a tenth of a mile. The rangers had told us that this was an extremely high hare year.

“Good chance we could see a lynx,” Cathy had noted. We kept our eyes peeled, but we didn’t see a lynx. However, we did see moose and more grizzly bears and caribou.

As we had hoped, traffic was light. Only three buses passed us, and after that we pretty much saw only occasional photographers, who can get permits to drive the road. Along the way, we passed four other bikers who were also biking to the park entrance. Otherwise, it was just us and the wildlife.

At one point, we stopped to watch a group of young Dall sheep rams cross a river. A park employee, who was living nearby at the Toklat River employee housing, was watching them and told us there was a wolf den nearby. He had biked to that point and was hoping to see some action from the wolves. We stayed for a bit, also hoping for a wolf sighting, but we didn’t see any sign of the wolves and moved on.

Wildlife encounters

At about 11:30 p.m., we crested Sable Pass.

“It’s pretty much downhill all the way to Teklanika Campground from here,” I told Cathy.

The next nine miles were easy, but we stopped a few miles before Igloo Creek Campground when we saw something walking up the road toward us. Was it a wolf? No, too small. As it got closer we realized it was a coyote. I had never seen one in the park, though I knew they lived in the area.

I told Cathy to stay quiet so it would come closer. I wanted to get a good picture. But our quiet caution wasn’t necessary. The coyote kept coming and finally started coming too close. He got within about 10 feet of us, and we had to start yelling at him and throwing rocks so he wouldn’t come closer. He would slink away with his tail between his legs but then come right back. He definitely wasn’t afraid of us. We didn’t want him to interact with us, so we finally biked past him. Looking back, we watched as he continued to follow us for about a half mile.

About 10 minutes later, we saw a snowshoe hare run across the road immediately followed by a loping wolf. Cathy and I looked at each other.

“Did you see that?” we exclaimed to each other. We were all grins as we kept riding. This trip was just getting better.

By about Mile 65 we weren’t smiling as much. We were both getting tired and sore. Climbing up from Sanctuary River, I looked at my bike computer.

“Cathy,” I said, “I hate to tell you this, but we could walk up this hill faster than we’re biking!”

“Just keep pedaling,” she grumbled.

We reminded each other that the last 10 miles would be downhill on pavement.

That last downhill was a welcome but chilly rest. We piled on what clothes we had left. By this time the temperature had dropped quite a bit, and we had burned a lot of calories.

About four miles from the Riley Creek Campground, we saw a baby great-horned owl on the ground by the side of the road. On the bus drive in, our driver had told us that one chick had been in the middle of the road the night before and a ranger had moved it. The chick had probably flown out of its nest. A little later we saw three great-horned owls flying off into the woods. We wondered if they were siblings.

We finally arrived at our tent at 3:15 a.m., 10 hours after leaving Wonder Lake. Exhausted, we climbed into our sleeping bags for a few hours of sleep before heading home.

As we drove out of the park the next morning, a moose with twin baby calves crossed the road right in front of us. Cathy and I just looked at each other and grinned again.

We couldn’t believe how incredible our bike ride had been. No rain, the mountain came out, and so many wildlife sightings. Granted we didn’t see a lynx or a wolverine, but we have to have something to look for the next time we come back.

Corrine Leistikow is a family physician at Tanana Valley Clinic and an avid mountain biker, hiker and cross-country skier.

If you go

You need to make a reservation for a bike pass on one of the camper buses ($29.95). Each camper bus can take only two bikes, so make your reservations early. Five camper buses leave the entrance each day, but only four go all the way to Wonder Lake.

You can make bus reservations on the Denali National Park Web site , although I wasn't able to reserve a bike pass for the bus. You will probably need to either call 1-800-622-7275 or get the bike pass in person.

Bring plenty of clothes and rain gear. The weather can change dramatically. We started in tank tops and shorts, but by 3 a.m. we were wearing long johns, pile jackets, raincoats, gloves and hats.

You can get water at Eielson Visitor Center -- the bathrooms have running water and are open all night -- and there is a pump at the Teklanika River Campground. We brought our own water filter, because Teklanika wasn't open yet due to extreme overflow ice left over from winter.

Cathy and I took 10 hours to complete the ride, including stops to rest, take photographs and watch wildlife. Be sure to bring plenty of food, as you will burn lots of calories.