Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

Pristine landscapes that are wild

and beautiful, still exist.

Like Denali National Park in Alaska.

For former US president, Barack Obama,

the park is a monument to nature.

It is spectacular.

And we want to make sure that our grandkids can see this.

This park at the end of the world

has a message for the earth.

We spent a year here with rangers, adventurers

and researchers.

These valley walls were once all supported by glacier ice.

Where we were standing,

10 years ago would be in the center of ice right now.

The wilderness around North America's

highest mountain is a place of yearning.

(speaking foreign language)

It's the great wide open,

the landscape that's Alaska in winter,

and that's why I live here.

(dramatic music)

Winter in Alaska.

This morning at a temperature of 35 below,

Denny Capps has secured the fastest dog sled.

The Denali National Park's geologist

has to go to a measuring station on the Savage river,

in the middle of the park.

Denny Capps grew up in Louisiana,

but even as a small boy he had his heart set on Alaska.

As a geology student, he visited the far North

time and again.

He applied for a job with the national park

and was accepted.

It was the fulfillment of a dream.

But what Denny has experienced in nature since then

concerns him,

because of global warming, the park is changing rapidly.

Above all because the permafrost layer is thawing.

We have amazing geological processes going on here.

Landslides, debris flows, instability in so many places,

and so that's really why we're out today,

is to collect data to understand how this landscape

is changing through time

and how that impacts our infrastructure.

The changes are visible everywhere.

Even the habitats of the park's wild animals are affected.

The timber line is rising.

As a result, bears in particular

are being driven out of their traditional low vegetation

tundra areas and forced to cover larger and larger distances

to find enough food.

This is also a matter of concern for biologist,

Patricia Owen.

Originally from Pennsylvania,

she came to the Denali National Park in 1987 as a student.

(dramatic music)

Here on the park's Northern border,

Patricia is looking for traces of bears.

Most of the park's bears are still hibernating

but some are already out and about again.

Scratching trees indicate the routes they take.

Yeah, that is definitely a grizzly bear fur.

Here, it seems bears have moved

outside the park's boundary.

Unfortunately bears don't care about political boundaries.

They don't know where the protection of the park ends

and other land begins.

It really doesn't make any difference to them,

as long as the habitat is continuous.

And so when they leave the park boundary

they might be vulnerable to hunting and trapping

and that might have an impact on the population overall.

Up to now just how many bears

crossed the park's boundary

and where they do so has remained a mystery.

The park covers a huge area of 24,000 square kilometers.

Three years ago, 15 grizzlies were fitted with GPS collars.

At the end of the year,

Patricia Owen wants to collect the transmitters

and evaluate their data.

Denali National Park lies in the far North of United States.

Only 300 kilometers from the Arctic circle.

Every year, it attracts around 400,000 visitors.

They come mainly to see Denali.

At 6,190 meters, it is the highest mountain

in North America.

When the park was founded in 1917,

both it and the mountain were called McKinley.

After the 25th president of the United States.

In 1980, the nature reserve was renamed

The Denali National Park.

And in 2015 former US president Barack Obama

also restored the mountain's original name,

Denali, means "the high one".

In snowy Alaska, dogsleds are often the only way

of getting from place to place.

And for people like Anja Radano,

who emigrated to Alaska from Munich in 2007,

they are also a philosophy of life.

(soft music)

Winter is definitely Anja's favorite time of year.

(speaking foreign language)

On beautiful days like today

when the sun is shining,

you feel like you're flying.

You glide through the snow.

There is nobody around, it's just you and the dogs.

All you hear is the hiss of the sleds runners on the snow

and maybe the panting of the dogs.

Otherwise there's silence all around,

and when everything is going well,

it's the best feeling in the world.

Anja has 25 dogs.

All of them, Alaskan Huskies.

These dogs are bred, not for their physical appearance,

but for their endurance and their eagerness to run and work.

Huskies won't show you straight away

if they're not in good shape,

often you really have to dig deep to find out.

They always want to run and run and run.

They know full well if they showed me

that something was wrong with them,

I wouldn't take them along.

They'd have to stay at home.

So sometimes you need to have a keen eye

to spot exactly how a dog is feeling.

Anja recently had her best bitch mated.

The pups will be born at the kennels

of one of Alaska's most famous husky breeders.

The litter will be a welcome addition

to Anja's own successful husky breeding business.

In late April, Denali National Park awakens.

With 750 species of plant, nearly 40 species of animal,

and over 140 bird species.

This is one of the largest protected ecosystems on earth.

Alaska exerts a tremendous pool.

Back in 1887, author Jack London wrote in his diary.

"Yes, I had let career go hang

"and was on the adventure path again

"in quest of fortune.

Like Frank Stelges from Essen in Germany.

Frank is a globe trotter,

together with his dog, Nuka,

he has chosen to live according to the laws of nature.

Like Jack London,

he's not looking for gold and riches in Alaska,

the solitude of nature has a magical appeal to him.

The freedom of the wilderness means far more to him

than just a place for adventures.

(speaking foreign language)

A few unpleasant things have happened

in my life.

My best friend was killed in an avalanche.

He was only 25 and it made me so sad to think

of all the many things he could have done

if he'd have lived.

My father also died at an early age, from a brain tumor.

He'd worked all his life

and had always said that later he was going to do this.

and going to do that, but he never did.

When you experience things like that when you're young,

it really makes you think about life.

Frank sold his father's farm.

He likes to travel,

and Alaska is a special destination for him.

Partly because nowhere else does he feel the peace

he feels here.

(soft music)

Denali National Park is a magnificent sanctuary

which challenges its scientists anew every day.

Rob Burroughs is a glaciologist,

today he is going to fly to the Yanet glacier.

He's accompanied by Sam Herreid,

who is carrying out research into the ice age

at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

(helicopter rotors whirring)

In 2015, Burroughs and Herreid

published a scientific study on glaciers.

The two men want to check on the state of the Yanet glacier.

How has it survived the winter?

Even from the air, the scientists notice new changes.

Hey, you see that ahead of us is this lake basin

that keeps filling up and draining,

I can see some water

and it looks like it's filling up again, right?

So just another indicator of shrinking glaciers.

(helicopter engine rumbling)

Hidden beneath the snow are deep crevasses.

So landing here is always a risky business.

(helicopter rotors whirring)

The two men are well-prepared.

They've brought an emergency tent, provisions,

a satellite phone and research equipment.

The last time they were up here the weather changed suddenly

and the helicopter couldn't pick them up.

They had to spend the night on the glacier.

Nevertheless, they wanted to come back as soon as possible.

In the ice, they find answers to pressing questions

put by politicians and strategists worldwide.

Their starting point is an aluminum pole

they rammed into the glacial ice last autumn.

They are relieved to see it is still here.

This is a mass balance stick

and the idea is to measure snow accumulation against it.

So during the winter, snow will accumulate on it

and we'll come back in the spring

and hopefully a little bit will be sticking out

so we can find the stick in the spring.

And then we measure the snow depth here and the density.

So we find out how much massive snow

has accumulated on the glacier at this point.

And then we also measure its position with a GPS

to track glacier flow, glacier velocity.

So it's like a little climate station right here.

The most difficult part is still to come,

digging a hole down into the old glacial ice.

(dramatic music)

When the weather is clear,

the ice masses and peaks of Denali National Park

can be seen from far off.

So can question Lake in the South of the park,

this is where Anja Radano lives.

She came to Alaska for the first time in 2003

and immediately fell in love with its rugged beauty

and its sled dogs.

She and her husband, Pete,

live in a small wooden house they built themselves.

Everyday life in the wilderness challenges Anja

in a totally different way from life in Bavaria.

(speaking foreign language)

In Alaska a lot of things are more expensive

but you get by with less.

Our house is probably much smaller

than a house you'd find in Germany.

We grow a lot of the food we need to get through the winter.

In the summer in the salmon season

we go angling and fill the freezer with fish.

That way, you can save a lot of money

and you've also got more time on your hands

because you don't have to work so much to earn money.

(upbeat music)

It's a freedom Anja also uses

to build up her dog breeding business.

Her favorite bitch recently gave birth.

Anja has given the pups to famous dog sled champion,

Jeff King, to be trained.

Hey Jeff.

Welcome.

Thank you.

How's it going? Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Go get 'em.

Go get 'em. Hi little guys.

Hi little guys.

Anja only has eyes for her six puppies.

They will be reared together with many other young dogs here

until they are six months old.

(speaking foreign language)

It's this great mix

You've not only got a canine friend,

but you've also got a working dog.

You live together and sleep and eat together.

You do everything together.

Basically the dogs are your only link with civilization

because without them, you'd never get back.

Out here, Huskies

are something of a life insurance.

Anyone running in the wheel yet?

All of them are running.

They are?

Yeah.

Special training, Jeff King style.

My goodness.

By giving them the opportunity to run together

and be in a team, work together, have fun.

Like what we do with them, feel confident with us.

This is training right now.

This is kindergarten.

It will be a while

before the pups win their first race.

Anja can hardly wait for next winter to come around.

Hi buddy, hi Lester.

(dogs barking)

The national park also wants

to protect something whose value is often forgotten,

the sound track of nature.

Davyd Betchkal is a biologist and a noise tinkerer.

For many years now,

he has been engaged in an unusual project

to enable people to experience the concert of nature

in a totally unadulterated way.

Indeed, the Denali parks website now has a sound map

called soundscapes.

It is very much like music.

Orchestral music,

has no words to it but yet it causes us to feel

and it connects back to a very deep awareness inside of us.

Davyd has divided the park into 60 sections

of equal size.

And in many years of work,

set up a fixed recording station in each section.

Today, however, he has to go out into the wilderness

with a mobile recorder.

Sometimes the sounds of nature

can only be captured personally.

Human made sounds that are quite powerful,

sounds of aircraft.

You can hear them for 10 to 15 kilometers.

Natural sounds are a lot less powerful.

You know, the sound of an insect,

you can't hear it very far

because there's not very much energy in that sound.

That's why we have to sometimes scale down

and zoom in on a very small section.

And so we can try to see how sound changes

on a much smaller scale.

Up on the Yanet glacier

at an altitude of nearly 1500 meters,

the weather is getting rougher.

Rob Burroughs and Sam Herride need to hurry

if they are to complete their measurements

while there is still enough light.

Using a balance, they measure the density of the snow

that has fallen since last winter.

This data will tell them whether the glacier

is renewing itself.

63.

Yep, cool.

Okay.

Then comes the strenuous part,

digging a hole down to the surface of the glacier.

The temperature might be around freezing

but it is sweaty work all the same.

Fortunately, the men only need to go down

one and a half meters.

There we go, glacier ice, and you can see actually

there's a whole lot of water down there.

So all the meltwater that's coming out of the snow

is percolating through the snow pack

and sitting on that ice.

And it's probably slowly flowing down slope too

and eventually down into the river below the glacier.

Very little snow from the winter has remained.

And even that is thawing very quickly.

The surface of this glacier as a whole

is just lowering

and if the climate trends are continued to accelerate

in their warming, then this glacier will slowly disappear.

The Yanet is one of the most striking examples

of the situation for all the glaciers

in the Denali National Park

and throughout the entire Alaska range.

Glaciers below 2,500 meters are particularly affected

by global warming.

Over the last 80 years,

some have retreated by almost 10 kilometers.

In some places, the thickness of the ice

has shrunk by up to 300 meters.

Today only 17% of the parks area

is still covered by glaciers.

Davyd Betchkal is back at his headquarters.

The big sound collection from all corners of the park

is still not quite complete,

(chirping bird sounds)

but he already has recordings

he would not have expected to make in central Alaska.

Davyd digitizes files and evaluates.

You kind of get a sense of how the loon there

has a much lower pitch sound.

This is a crank lower,

you can kind of see it laugh and call here,

(bird chirping sound)

up on top the songbird you're saying.

So this is a recording of some sort of insect

either a fly or a mosquito or something like that

in the wind screen.

(buzzing sound)

You can hear the swarm in the background there.

(buzzing sound)

Davyd also has recordings of times

when his stations were attacked by animals.

Usually by bears.

That's a sound that makes me very happy.

These instruments allow us to sort of step into a world

where we aren't there

and animals behave very differently when humans are around

and when they're not.

I feel like I get a lot of very interesting vocalizations

from say, Gray Jays or other types of birds

that you might never hear if you were there.

(dramatic music)

Summer in Alaska,

the days are long with 18 hours of sunshine.

Fireweed is in bloom everywhere.

The wild animals in Denali National Park

are extremely active and attract lots of visitors

and precisely that can cause problems.

During the night, an incident occurred by the Savage river.

Patricia Owen has to investigate.

So last night, a female bear killed a moose calf

over on the other side of the river, just over here.

And she subsequently drug that moose calf across the river

over to this East side and dropped it in the brush

very close to the trail here, and then moved off.

It's a dangerous situation

and Patricia has had the trail closed off.

And now she has to tell visitors why.

For the safety of our visitors,

we just figured it was prudent.

One to remove the carcass and two to close the trail.

We probably won't have the trail closed for more than a day

but just to give the scent a chance to dissipate

so that we don't have an attractant down there

because either the bear that did the initial kill

or any other bear in the area that smells that thing

will probably come in to investigate.

Patricia decides to make another check.

A hungry she bear is not something to be fooled with

especially if she has just had her prey taken away from her.

That's interesting right here on the trail.

Let's say that one's probably a couple of days old.

But a bear has definitely been here.

(soft music)

Around 350 bears,

live within the boundaries of the park,

the grizzlies top the list of the park's big five.

Anyone who sees all five species on a visit to the park

can count themselves very lucky.

Moose are in evidence everywhere,

but here too caution is called for.

More people are attacked by enraged cow moose than by bears.

Wolves tend to be a rarer sight,

even though the park has a very stable population

of these shy predators.

Caribou rarely show an interest in people.

Sometimes large herds of them even block the roads.

Species number five is a very special animal,

doll sheep are only happy up in the mountains.

In 1917, protecting them was one of the main reasons

for establishing the park.

Park road, mile marker 53.

Last year, the only road through the park

was buried by a landslide,

completely paralyzing Denali's logistics.

Geologists, Denny Capps, and Andrew Collins

are still on the alert,

the steep slopes along the road just won't settle.

That upper left corner's definitely evolved.

That's a pretty big chunk that came out of the corner

up there.

Hopefully we'll better take some measurements

and see that today.

Maybe GPS a little bit around,

and see how much the scarp has changed through time.

Denny and Andrew first check the temperature

of the soil where the landslide came down.

Normally there should be permafrost everywhere here,

ground that is permanently frozen

but wherever the two take a reading

the temperature is always above freezing.

The slopes along the road are thawing relentlessly.

You can see just how unstable this material is.

So this is the exact material

that these four or five meter blocks of permafrost

slid down upon.

And originally this material was probably frozen,

but as permafrost, thawed and thinned,

it thinned through this layer of clay,

from the clay being frozen and to it becoming unfrozen.

More and more mountain slopes in the park

are moving.

When they hit the road, it causes chaos.

Denny and Andrew are now installing a camera

on the slope opposite the site of the landslide.

All right, put back on,

cards still got plenty of room and batteries are at 99%.

Looks good.

The geologists' ambitious vision

is to be able to predict a landslide as early as possible.

Alaska summary pleasantness is deceptive,

something Christopher McCandless

experienced a personal cost.

The film "Into the Wild" tells the story of a fateful trip.

In the early 90s McCandless, a young college graduate,

left his wealthy parents' home

and went into nature in search of himself.

He reached Alaska's wilderness incredibly under-prepared.

For 113 days, an old school bus offered him protection.

Then in August, 1992 hunters found his body.

McCandless became the idol of an entire generation.

Even today, countless imitators follow his tracks

and many come to the same tragic end.

For adventurers who are not as well-prepared

as Frank Stelges, the park has employed survival rangers

to patrol the wilderness.

(speaking foreign language) This is my

emergency box where I keep all my important things

like lots of bear spray,

enough first aid for every situation,

and also sensible things like painkillers

in case I break my arm or something

and have to get back home somehow,

and for when I'm really way out in the wilderness,

I also have a shotgun.

The slugs are fairly big lead cartridges,

if I had no alternative,

I could probably penetrate the skull of a grizzly with them.

(soft music)

Directly behind the park boundary

is a mysterious setup.

It's the permafrost field laboratory of Ted Schuur,

a professor at Northern Arizona University.

For geologists like him,

this region is something of an early warning system

for the earth.

How's it?

How's it going Denny?

Yeah, good to see you again.

Yeah.

Ted Schuur and his colleagues

simulate what will happen if the permafrost layer

continues to thaw,

releasing the carbon dioxide contained within.

What is so interesting about this place

is the amount of carbon that's frozen in the North

is so large that as we change from Tundra to forest,

and if we release carbon from the soil,

that actually goes into the atmosphere

and makes climate change happen faster yet.

Places in Alaska that are far from where people live

are changing quickly and have this potential

to impact the world in which we live.

The message from Denali

is that what happens in Alaska concerns all of us.

(dramatic music)

Autumn here comes quickly and intensively.

Mammals; bears and caribou find food in abundance.

The animals take every opportunity to build up fat reserves

for the forthcoming winter.

Accompanied by colleague Gabe Mitchell,

today Davyd Betchkal is going to dismantle

the last fixed sound station,

which has stood deep in the park for over a year.

Today's a fairly important day for me

because I've been working on this project now

for about seven years.

And we've been inventorying the park

and I'm pretty excited because it's been a lot of work

and to take this one out of the field

means we're all done with the inventory.

And we can move on to monitoring

and going back and figuring out how to make the park better

and quieter.

(gently flowing water)

Davyd and Gabe hope the station

hasn't been wrecked by a bear

because this is grizzly territory.

(howling indistinctly)

Nothing is more dangerous than surprising a bear.

The station is right back in this direction here.

And we're almost there.

(soft music)

The measuring equipment

looks to be in perfect condition.

But the two biologists are mainly concerned

about the heart of the setup, the recorder,

which is hidden in a plastic case.

However, it seems that the men have got what they wanted.

They are relieved.

After a year, many other stations

were in a totally different state.

I don't blame them,

this thing sort of looks like an animal on a stick.

it's fury windscreen cover.

And they seem to like to bite and chew them,

they take the foam right out of here

and bite them and tear up the pieces

and spread them all over the place.

They might also bite the shroud, the environmental shroud.

We've got this special in here,

it's a little softer plastic

so they can get their teeth in it

but it won't crack or break

'cause there are a lot of bears in this particular area.

Luckily this one we'll get to keep all of its legs today.

We definitely have a few amputated tripods running around

when the bears knock them over and bend the legs.

And then the legs were all contorted over the place

and you can't put them back in together.

So when that happens, we just have to do a little field work

and take it right off so we can hike it out.

The voices of nature

in their splendor and uniqueness,

captured at the end of the world for eternity.

(soft music)

The weather is changing.

Winter is already sending its harbingers in September.

Patricia Owen is nervous.

She has spent three months

preparing to collect the transmitter collars,

with the operation costing around $20,000.

Her main problem has been finding the funds.

Now in autumn, the animals are satiated

and a bit more lethargic.

She needs to make a start.

Patricia will tranquilize her bears with a dart

containing a sedative, normally used for dogs.

When we mix it up for bears,

We concentrate it a lot more than what you use for dogs

because otherwise we would have to use triple the volume

and triple the volume of the drug

means that there's a higher potential for damage to the skin

or to the muscles.

Patricia wants to set off

before the weather gets any worse.

Finding bears in this vast territory is no easy task.

Shortly after take-off, she actually picks up a signal,

but something is wrong,

the signal isn't moving.

The skeleton of a moose

indicates that this is a feeding place,

but the signal doesn't change its position

even when the helicopter lands.

Then she discovers why,

the bear which had been collared has died and been eaten.

Patricia, can't tell why the bear died or what fed on it.

But the transmitter is undamaged.

She hopes it will provide information

on the fate of the dead grizzly.

At the national park's headquarters,

the geologists are analyzing the pictures taken

by the landslide monitoring camera.

There you can see new water paths emerging

even in the course of a couple of minutes.

Obviously what we're seeing here,

got that much of material now and then watch the slides.

Permafrost is critical for the park as we know it,

most of the park has been covered in permafrost in the past.

And we have over 6,000 meters of topographic relief

here in the park.

As that permafrost thaws,

we will see increased landslide activity in the park.

The forecasts are dramatic,

even in 1950, virtually the entire area covered by the park

was still frozen.

At present, temperatures are already fluctuating around zero

and the predictions for 2050 and beyond are alarming.

Temperatures almost everywhere will be above freezing.

(dramatic music)

Out on the Northern border of the park,

Patricia has darted a bear.

She and her pilot don't let the animal out of their sight.

After a few minutes, the tranquilizer begins to take effect.

Now Patricia has to move fast.

Our wildlife biologist

needs nothing more than a screwdriver.

It takes her five minutes to remove the bear's collar.

Then she gives the animal a quick check.

The best teeth, claws and breathing are all fine.

So Patricia can move on.

The weather seems to have driven the bears away.

The search is taking so long

that the helicopter has to land and refuel.

Going down, I have to go and shut that thing off.

Yeah, yeah, much.

So you said it's kind of turbulent under the stuff

at Toklat Springs?

Great.

Okay, Well, we'll talk to you when we're airborne.

Okay, we'll do that.

All right.

We'll talk to you in a bit.

Then Patricia picks up fresh signals

and completely dispels the myth of a cuddly teddy bear.

Grizzly bear fur is not soft

and smooth and silky like you would imagine it to be.

It's actually very coarse.

It's not very pleasant to the touch.

It's always interesting to get your hands on them

because their fur is thick

and some of them have very long fur,

it also depends on the time of the year.

Sometimes their fur is rather short

but it's always very coarse.

For three years,

the transmitters have accompanied the bears

every step of the way.

What will the data they provide reveal

about the routes the bears have taken?

Frank Stelges has found a quiet spot near the park.

He's had a bit of a nap in a sleeping bag

on the back of his pickup.

Now he needs some coffee because the night could be long.

(speaking foreign language) In summer,

there's just too much light.

It's not until early September

that the nights are dark enough

to give you a chance of seeing the aurora borealis,

the Northern lights.

There aren't any other sources of light

that could interfere,

but I've still got a fantastic background.

So I hope that tonight we'll get a great view

of the Northern lights.

(dramatic music)

And indeed around midnight

the Northern lights appear over Alaska.

They are a result of collisions between gaseous particles

in the earth atmosphere and electrically charged particles

from the sun's atmosphere, blown towards the earth

by the solar wind.

It's a magical site.

The Northern lights

are a unique natural spectacle,

one that makes you feel very, very small.

Then you believe all the old tales told by Eskimos

about the spirits of the dead gliding across the sky.

(soft music)

It's early October and winter is turning Alaska

into the sort of world described in Jack London's novel,

"White Fang",

"a vast silence reigned over the land,

"the land itself was a desolation,

"lifeless, without movement.

"So lone and cold,

"that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.

"It was the wild, the Savage frozen hearted Northland wild.

(soft music)

The transmitter collars have done a good job.

Virtually all of them have functioned.

So Patricia can now reconstruct the routes

taken by the bears.

Each collar store the animals position every five hours.

So this line, the green line here is the park boundary.

This is our North boundary right here.

And you can see that this bear

had spent a fair amount of time inside the park,

traveling through the mountains, down in the valleys here,

and then made a foray out here to the North.

And I suspect was probably eating fish out there,

that's why there's a cluster of dots.

In the North,

it seems the feeding grounds were better.

Nearly all the bears roamed up to 150 kilometers

outside the park.

Patricia now has the precise data she needs

to negotiate with the National Hunting Authority.

She wants to see a large zone established

around the entire park in which hunting is banned.

One of the things that people come to Denali to see

are bears.

And so if more bears are hunted or trapped outside the park,

there's the possibility that that might mean

there's fewer bears available for people to see

when they come here.

So that would be a big change for the visitors here.

And there's also the possibility

that if enough bears were taken outside the park

that it might have an impact on the number of bears overall

and might actually decrease the population.

The Lake in front of Anja Radano's house

is frozen.

50 centimeters of new snow fell during the night.

Today she plans to test her young dogs for the first time.

You wanna go for a run?

You wanna go for a run?

Is that a good girl?

(speaking foreign language)

This is my first litter with six dogs.

They are now a year old,

so it's time that they were harnessed to a sled.

Then we will see whether they can come up to expectations,

so far though, they look good.

So I'm really happy.

(dramatic music)

(dogs barking)

(dramatic music)

The dogs are all excited.

Headed by an experienced bitch,

the newcomers can now show what they've learned

in the summer.

Let's go, guys, let's go.

Come on.

(speaking foreign language)

The youngsters are doing great.

I'm so happy with them.

They've lined up superbly

and they're all pulling straight ahead.

It's always a big advantage

when they're not all pulling in different directions.

They are working really well together.

Things couldn't be better.

(dramatic music)

(speaking foreign language)

My big dream for the future

is to compete with my dogs in the Iditarod race.

The Iditarod is the Wimbledon

of long distance dog sled racing.

It's a 1000 mile event.

If we can get the money together and the dogs are okay

and the training goes well, then one day we'll take part.

Denali National Park

is a region with an uncertain future.

It's animals need more protection.

The land has natural resources that are coveted.

Thus, along with the effects of global warming

the wilderness is changing more and more rapidly.

The people here are doing everything in their power

to preserve the park's uniqueness.

I believe that the biggest challenge in the upcoming years

in Denali is responding to change.

Alaska will become developed.

I mean, I know that to be true.

Climate change is happening.

And so we know that trees are heading up mountain slopes

and that habitats are changing.

So we have to think ahead and plan ahead.

(dogs barking)

We really see not only Alaska being important

for people to understand climate change,

but Denali in particular.

It's a bit of a Canary in a coal mine,

or an early indicator of what's likely going to be happening

in other places, like the lower 48 States

and other places in the world.

I am a firm believer that any area on the earth

that we are able to protect

to the extent that we protect a place like this

is important for us,

because there are fewer and fewer of them all the time.

And we need places like this.

(soft music)