Denali National Park bars visitors as wildfire burns near entrance

Denali National Park and Preserve has largely shut down operations because of a wildfire near the park entrance during the height of tourist season.

Park spokesperson Paul Ollig said the Riley Fire was reported early Sunday afternoon, directly across the Nenana River from the McKinley Chalet and Glitter Gulch.

“All of the public facilities in Denali’s front country are closed and will remain closed until further notice,” Ollig said.

Ollig said the fire burned quickly through black spruce.

“By about 6 in the evening we estimated it was about 350 to 400 acres,” he said.

The Riley Fire is being worked intensely by ground crews as well as helicopters and planes, according to Alaska Fire Service spokesperson Beth Ipsen.

“They were basically just doing runs, just going back and forth on this fire, dropping water, dropping retardant,” Ipsen said.

According to Ipsen, four hotshot crews arriving from the Lower 48 Monday will deploy on the Riley Fire. She said the goal is to herd the flames out of black spruce into higher terrain to the northwest — away from Alaska Railroad tracks, the Nenana River, the Parks Highway and the park entrance.

“There’s a lot of buildings, structures. There’s a lot of businesses,” Ipsen said.

The Park Service’s Ollig said the agency has taken precautions, including relocating approximately 150 employees from entrance-area housing, and evacuating the nearby Riley Creek Campground. No one is currently being allowed into the park, and the only transportation service is a shuttle to pick up hikers already in the backcountry.

“This is the busiest time of the year in the park, with the highest number of visitors, so the impacts are significant,” he said.

Ollig said visitors already at campgrounds west of the park entrance were allowed to stay Sunday, but that could change depending on fire activity.

He said the Riley Fire is suspected to be human caused, and the Alaska Fire Service says an investigator will work to determine exactly how it started.

He said that the cause of the Riley Fire has not been determined, and noted that its timing falls on a major wildfire anniversary.

“We are almost at one hundred years to the day that the 1924 fire swept through this area,” Ollig said.

Ollig said there had not been another significant wildfire in the park entrance area until now.