Denali Backcountry Lodge — Hotel in Alaska

The Denali Backcountry Lodge experience, while the Park Road is closed, can't be beat! The accommodations are comfortable, with all the necessary amenities, plus Wifi. The rooms are large enough to comfortably accommodate up to 4 people. ||After the 35-minute helicopter ride over the park, with incredible mountain views, you are greeted by a staff member who immediately shows you to your room, which has a large hiking pack and 32-oz water bottle for each member of your party to use during your stay. As your luggage is taken to your room for you by staff, your staff greeter shows you where the main lodge is for lunch and you can meet them there after you freshen up for a couple of minutes in your room.||Lunch is a fixed menu of about 7 selections. There is also a different soup and side each day. After lunch on arrival day, your staff greeter takes you on a short tour of the property to share the amenities and how your days will be structured. Then you're led to the desk where you sign up for which hikes/activities you'd like to do that afternoon. All hikes/activities are optional. Only on arrival day, you pick your dinner from a menu of three items so that it can be prepared before you sit down for dinner. After arrival day, you choose your dinner during your breakfast each day. There's a meat option, a seafood option, and a vegetarian option for dinner, with a new kind of roll, flavored butter, and dessert each day. There's also a plentiful snack bar, coffee carafe, and espresso machine for in between meals. Breakfast is a fixed menu of about 5 items, with a fruit cup.||At dinner, you look over the hiking options for the following day. Each day there is a casual hike, a moderate hike, and a challenging hike to choose from. When the moderate hike we wanted to do was filled to capacity (due to NPS rules), we asked about arranging another time of the day that we could do the hike and the BCL readily accommodated us and made sure that we'd get to do the hike we wanted. Each day there are also multiple shuttle rides to Wonder Lake to see what wildlife may be out and about. At Wonder Lake, on a clear day, you have a beautiful view of Denali and the north side of the Alaska Range. ||We booked 3 nights at the lodge, so on our 2nd full day, I booked a massage for after our Tundra Trek. The spa is an adorable little building with a wood burning stove in the massage area. On a 45-degree day in July, the heat was heavenly! The massage was just what I needed after 2 weeks in Alaska. I had the deep-tissue massage and left feeling relaxed and like I had actually been worked on. ||While the star of our time back here should have been the park, the food gave the park a run for its money! The lodge has a chef, a baker, a sous chef, and other kitchen staff to make the most delicious meals. We cleaned our plates AND our dessert plates every night. Then, when you get back to your room for the evening, there's an extra dessert treat to tide you over until breakfast! You will not go hungry at the DBL! There's also a well-stocked bar (as in it has a good stock, not that it only has well drinks) on the upper floor of the lodge that "officially" opens around the time one of the staff members gives a nightly presentation on an element of the flora, fauna, geology, or adventure of Denali National Park, though the bar is always available during the day.||While it's difficult to get to, the experience of being at the Backcountry Lodge is well worth the time and the expense. The staff obviously love their jobs and love meeting people from all over the world. They make you feel comfortable asking for anything and everything you could think of to make your stay absolutely perfect. If you have any desire to live this experience, go now. Once the park road reopens, this experience will never be the same. The isolation and limited capacity back there is what really made the experience magical for us. The road is slated to be open again in 2027,...

The Denali Backcountry Lodge experience, while the Park Road is closed, can't be beat! The accommodations are comfortable, with all the necessary amenities, plus Wifi. The rooms are large enough to comfortably accommodate up to 4 people. ||After the 35-minute helicopter ride over the park, with incredible mountain views, you are greeted by a staff member who immediately shows you to your room, which has a large hiking pack and 32-oz water bottle for each member of your party to use during your stay. As your luggage is taken to your room for you by staff, your staff greeter shows you where the main lodge is for lunch and you can meet them there after you freshen up for a couple of minutes in your room.||Lunch is a fixed menu of about 7 selections. There is also a different soup and side each day. After lunch on arrival day, your staff greeter takes you on a short tour of the property to share the amenities and how your days will be structured. Then you're led to the desk where you sign up for which hikes/activities you'd like to do that afternoon. All hikes/activities are optional. Only on arrival day, you pick your dinner from a menu of three items so that it can be prepared before you sit down for dinner. After arrival day, you choose your dinner during your breakfast each day. There's a meat option, a seafood option, and a vegetarian option for dinner, with a new kind of roll, flavored butter, and dessert each day. There's also a plentiful snack bar, coffee carafe, and espresso machine for in between meals. Breakfast is a fixed menu of about 5 items, with a fruit cup.||At dinner, you look over the hiking options for the following day. Each day there is a casual hike, a moderate hike, and a challenging hike to choose from. When the moderate hike we wanted to do was filled to capacity (due to NPS rules), we asked about arranging another time of the day that we could do the hike and the BCL readily accommodated us and made sure that we'd get to do the hike we wanted. Each day there are also multiple shuttle rides to Wonder Lake to see what wildlife may be out and about. At Wonder Lake, on a clear day, you have a beautiful view of Denali and the north side of the Alaska Range. ||We booked 3 nights at the lodge, so on our 2nd full day, I booked a massage for after our Tundra Trek. The spa is an adorable little building with a wood burning stove in the massage area. On a 45-degree day in July, the heat was heavenly! The massage was just what I needed after 2 weeks in Alaska. I had the deep-tissue massage and left feeling relaxed and like I had actually been worked on. ||While the star of our time back here should have been the park, the food gave the park a run for its money! The lodge has a chef, a baker, a sous chef, and other kitchen staff to make the most delicious meals. We cleaned our plates AND our dessert plates every night. Then, when you get back to your room for the evening, there's an extra dessert treat to tide you over until breakfast! You will not go hungry at the DBL! There's also a well-stocked bar (as in it has a good stock, not that it only has well drinks) on the upper floor of the lodge that "officially" opens around the time one of the staff members gives a nightly presentation on an element of the flora, fauna, geology, or adventure of Denali National Park, though the bar is always available during the day.||While it's difficult to get to, the experience of being at the Backcountry Lodge is well worth the time and the expense. The staff obviously love their jobs and love meeting people from all over the world. They make you feel comfortable asking for anything and everything you could think of to make your stay absolutely perfect. If you have any desire to live this experience, go now. Once the park road reopens, this experience will never be the same. The isolation and limited capacity back there is what really made the experience magical for us. The road is slated to be open again in 2027,...

Our family of four adults spent four nights here celebrating my husband’s milestone birthday. It is quite expensive, but very worth it. From the moment you helicopter in you realize you are in a remote and wonderful place. ||The meals are truly outstanding. Hats off to Chef Joan who made friendly appearances in the dining room and who accommodated my request for a small cake to celebrate my hubby. Truly first- rate. ||We had two cabins - a creekside king and a standard double queen. The standard room was actually part of a quadplex, and our sons did say they could hear other guests. If you want to avoid that, our creek side cabin was standalone and perfect. ||The main lodge has the dining room, an upstairs gathering spot where we played board games and attended the nightly nature talks on offer. There’s a bar there too. At the main lodge’s front desk you’ll sign up for activities in the mornings and afternoons and spa appointments. ||The activities were great. We did the guided Cloudberry hike. We took kayaks/SUPs out on Wonder Lake twice. We used the resort’s bikes for a ride out to the lake on our own. We also did a full day hike on our own out to the river on the McKinley Bar trail — which involves several significant creek crossings and is not for the inexperienced. A couple of us got spa treatments and we enjoyed the saunas and hot tub. And the nightly wildlife drives are a must. We saw a mama bear and her cubs, a huge bull moose, a porcupine, a beaver etc. ||The staff are friendly and professional. We loved everyone and everything in this special place. Go before the road...