Teklanika Campground (Denali National Park)

Denali, AK – One of only three campgrounds inside the National Park where large RVs will fit, Teklanika River is the furthest one inside the park (mile 29), and also the furthest you can drive before taking a bus is required. The other campgrounds are Savage River (mile 12) and Riley Creek (mile 0). Getting to and staying at Teklanika is a bit of a challenge, which seems to foster a togetherness among fellow campers I’ve not experienced at other campgrounds. Here are the somewhat byzantine requirements to stay here:

Reserve far in advance (we reserved in December for July 23-27 of the following year)
A reservation only guarantees you a site out of the 53 sites available, but does not specify which site. This is important for us as most sites cannot accommodate a large motorhome. So it’s entirely possible if you arrive later in the day you are out of luck, even though you have a reservation.
Leave your tow car at the visitor center 29 miles away for the duration of your stay, in a parking lot that doesn’t seem to have video surveillance and may not be patrolled
Once at the campground you can only get around via foot, bike or bus and there are no services available (e.g., no food, no groceries, no fuel)
Once at the campground you can’t leave until your reservation says you can leave, and that includes not leaving via bus (e.g., you can go deeper into the park via bus, but you can’t go back to the entrance)
Each person needs to purchase a bus pass (Tek pass in Denali parlance) and specify the furthest in the park they wish to travel and, optionally, also confusingly, specify a reservation for a guaranteed seat for a particular bus at a certain time. The rules go on to say you can catch any bus you want at any time on any day, but then why offer a reservation system? The whole bus thing could be made more intuitive (IMHO) by scrapping the idea of reservations and charging a single price for the pass no matter the distance you travel.

Like most public campgrounds, the visual and auditory buffer between spaces here is large, mainly via mature spruce trees. The campground is split into two loops of roughly equal size, with each loop containing 4 nicely maintained vault toilets, a potable water spigot, numerous trash cans, and recycling for aluminum cans and #1 plastic bottles. One loop contains an open amphitheater with seating for 50 where nightly ranger talks were held on topics such as Animals: Hibernate, Tolerate or Migrate; How Climate Change is Affecting Denali; Bird Species that Migrate to/from Denali, and Climbing Denali Mountain.

View from the Teklanika Riverbed behind our campsite at 10:00pm in July

While staying here we took a bus tour to Wonder Lake; went hiking in the subalpine; and made a loop hike to the Teklanika River Bridge.

We really enjoyed our time here, and would heartily recommend it for motorhomes up to 40’. Note there is a 40’ limit on RVs here, and ours is 40’10” but we managed to fit. I would estimate out of 53 total sites at Teklanika, only 10 would easily accommodate a 40’ motorhome with all slides out, while another 10 could work if you’re willing to not put slides out and/or suffer some scratching from branches. My best advice is to arrive as close to the 11 am check-in time as possible, on the theory that the early bird gets the worm. It worked well for us. Note the 29 mile drive from the visitor center took us 1 hour and 15 minutes.