Preserving a Light Touch on the Land: Fifty Years of Commitment
Camp Denali and North Face Lodge epitomize geotourism, not because of a single innovation, but because they represent a 50-year-old testimony to promoting wilderness preservation through education and walking the talk of environmental sustainability.
These destinations inside Alaska’s Denali National Park, provide learning adventures for active travelers. Situated a mile apart, they command unparalleled views of Mount McKinley. Neither features luxurious accommodations, TV, a bar, front desk, or even unlimited electricity. Instead, simple, innovative, sustainable living practices translate into carefully cared for lodgings, hand-crafted artisan food, and multi-day stays that create in-depth, personal, and insightful national park experiences.
From its inception in 1952, Camp Denali’s founders valued wilderness and sought to maintain “a light touch on the land”. Thirty years ahead of the responsible tourism concept, they modeled a business, not on the revenue that could be generated, but the carrying capacity of a fragile piece of tundra at 63 degrees north latitude. The Cole Family acquired Camp Denali in the mid-70s and North Face Lodge ten years later. As the second generation of stewards now passes the torch to a third, the vision and initiatives of these visitor destinations epitomize what may be geotourism’s most long-standing success story.
Your idea
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Street Address
Mile 89 Denali National Park Road
City
Denali National Park
State/Province
Alaska
Postal/Zip Code
99755
Country
United States
Year innovation began
1952
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourism management and impact on the destination
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Geographic location
Rural, Mountain.
Plot your innovation within the Mosaic of Solutions
Main insight addressed
Education through hands-on experience
Name Your Project
Preserving a Light Touch on the Land: Fifty Years of Commitment
Describe Your Idea
Camp Denali and North Face Lodge epitomize geotourism, not because of a single innovation, but because they represent a 50-year-old testimony to promoting wilderness preservation through education and walking the talk of environmental sustainability.
These destinations inside Alaska’s Denali National Park, provide learning adventures for active travelers. Situated a mile apart, they command unparalleled views of Mount McKinley. Neither features luxurious accommodations, TV, a bar, front desk, or even unlimited electricity. Instead, simple, innovative, sustainable living practices translate into carefully cared for lodgings, hand-crafted artisan food, and multi-day stays that create in-depth, personal, and insightful national park experiences.
From its inception in 1952, Camp Denali’s founders valued wilderness and sought to maintain “a light touch on the land”. Thirty years ahead of the responsible tourism concept, they modeled a business, not on the revenue that could be generated, but the carrying capacity of a fragile piece of tundra at 63 degrees north latitude. The Cole Family acquired Camp Denali in the mid-70s and North Face Lodge ten years later. As the second generation of stewards now passes the torch to a third, the vision and initiatives of these visitor destinations epitomize what may be geotourism’s most long-standing success story.
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation?
To be a quality, fiscally sound, environmentally sustainable business that inspires others to be responsible stewards of the natural world.
How does your approach support or embody geotourism?
Our approach embodies geotourism because it is our heritage. Founded in 1917 as the first U.S. national park set aside solely for wildlife values, wilderness preservation has been fundamental to the management of Denali National Park, Alaska. When Camp Denali’s founders created a tourism business just outside the park boundary in 1952, their goals were thirty years ahead of the times. They sought to maintain “a light touch on the land” and to use “carrying capacity” to guide their development of this mountainous, sub-arctic landscape. When the Cole Family, assumed ownership in 1976, they embraced the founders’ vision and broadened the concept to nearby North Face Lodge when they acquired it in the 1980s. By then the park had been enlarged to create a more complete ecosystem, and encompassed tracts of privately held land in its new core, including both lodges. Today, these two active learning vacation centers epitomize geotourism, not because of a single innovation, but because they are a testimony to the concept: a half-century of innovatively promoting wilderness preservation through education and walking the talk of environmental sustainability.
Describe your approach in detail. How is it innovative?
Our approach is significant because it was seminal. At least thirty years before responsible tourism was a prevalent concept, Camp Denali and North Face Lodge, had been developed to advance tourism that sustains/enhances the surrounding geographical character by:
1. Having created both for-profit and non-profit multi-day, experiential learning vacations that teach Alaska’s visitors and residents about the natural and cultural heritage of the circumpolar north in order to inspire a greater sense of stewardship for the natural and cultural resources of this part of the world.
2. Having committed to infrastructure and operations that minimize human impact on the wilderness character of the land we own and the national park we use through extensive green practices, and by sharing those with our guests, making them participants, and inspiring the practice of that ethic in their own backyards. Our practices include:
• Adhering to small group sizes and to “Leave No Trace” principles when hiking Denali’s backcountry
• Utilization of waste heat from domestic hot water
• Utilization of waste heat from generators
• Integrated photovoltaic power generation
• Integrated hydroelectric power generation
• Integrated battery bank, inverters and charge controller
• Integrated on-demand generators that supplement solar and hydro only when needed
• Alternative fuel blends used in diesel vehicles and generators
• Passive solar domestic hot water production
• Gravity-fed pressure for domestic water treatment/distribution
• Domestic hot water production available from waste incinerating boiler (packaging, scrap wood, etc...)
• Recycling of all materials currently accepted in Alaska
• Composting of suitable food and grounds waste for use in our organic greenhouse and grounds
• Suitable food waste donated to area dog mushers for high-nutrient dog food
• Environmentally safer cleaning products and guest amenities
• Locally grown and organic foods as available
• Staff and guests encouraged to walk or bicycle between facilities
• Bicycles provided free for guest and staff use
• Carpooling broadly utilized
• Almost complete conversion to florescent, compact florescent, and L.E.D. lighting
• Packaging minimized through bulk sourcing and no use of pre-packaged, pre-prepared foods
• Construction methods preserve innate insulation value of tundra, protecting permafrost
• Electricity conservation instilled in staff and guests; No outlets provided in guest cabins
• Root cellar naturally aids in cold-storage of perishable food
• Outdoor clotheslines for staff laundry
• Guest reuse of towels/sheets
• Hired "Alternative Energy" full time staff position
3. By working in partnership with the National Park Service to develop management plans for Denali’s backcountry that minimize expansion of social trails, protect wildlife, and retain a “leave no trace” wilderness environment, as well as to assist in the acquisition of land in the middle of the national park, through fee simple purchase or conservation easement, in order to preserve the park’s wilderness character.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
• Partnerships
1. Land management agencies seeking to develop compatible visitor
services
2. Enterprises - profit and non-profit - that seek to learn about our vision or implement a similar vision
3. New or newly inspired green entrepreneurs to provide locally grown, organic food, cleaning products, guest amenities, satisfy operational
needs
4. Travel/sustainable development authors who write for web and print media
• Professional Development:
1. Green practices conferences and trade shows in construction, alternative energy, cleaning products, recycling, guest amenities
2. Educational travel and learning center conferences
3. Small business travel/tourism outfitter organizations
Impact
In one sentence describe what kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Our approach provides a sustainable template for in-depth visitor experiences and associated facilities for places preserving natural and cultural heritage. (20)
Describe the degree of success of your approach to date. Clearly define how you measure quantitative and qualitative impact in terms of how your approach contributes to the sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How does your approach minimize negative impacts? 200 words or less
Degree of success of approach to date:
1. Average occupancy of greater than 90% over twenty years
2. 75% average retention of seasonal staff
3. 50+-year commitment to staying small in spite of business success that encouraged growth
4. Launch and subsequent success of an experiential education non-profit organization based on our for-profit model
5. Acquisition of three other parcels of land in the middle of Denali National Park preserved from large-scale commercial development, with less than 30% subject
to human impact from development
6. NPS acquisition of two parcels of land purchased with the help of our intervention.
7. Countless former staff whose choices of life work and/or volunteer involvement in conservation have been impacted by their tenure with our organization
8. 33% reduction of fuel consumed, noise production, and emissions in last 8 years
Measurement of quantitative and qualitative impact:
1. Guest comment cards
2. 75% word of mouth referrals relative to all other forms of marketing
3. National Park Service annual report card
4. Results of a 2002 qualitative study of the impacts of our educational program
5. Amount of guest support through personal loans in support of our vision to replicate Camp Denali model at North Face Lodge
5. Return rate of seasonal staff and their subsequent choices of life work and volunteer affiliations
6. Responses of former guests to our letter-writing campaigns for issues affecting national, state, and local public land management issues
Minimizing negative impacts:
1. Staff training
2. Attention to and sharing of “Leave No Trace” principles for backcountry travel
3. Small group sizes
4. See “Describe Your Approach in Detail” – “our practices”
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
1. Thorough hiring practices; well trained staff
2. Attention to detail; impeccably maintained facilities, rolling stock
3. Various activity levels to suit individual physical abilities and interests
4. Multi-day minimum stays promoting time for quiet reflection, independent
activities, as well as daily naturalist-guided and visiting specialist learning opportunities
6. Quick attention to problems with back-up supplies
7. Unexpected guest amenities: natural history exhibits; libraries; equipment to borrow
8. Placement of guest accommodations and public facilities with finest views 9. Treatment of travelers as “houseguests”, not “clients”
10. Guest/staff interaction at meals
11. See above minimization of negative impacts
Describe how your innovation helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area’s cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues. How do you motivate them to act responsibly in their future travel decisions?
Keys to learning and new environmental responsibility in travelers and staff are education, practicing what we preach, and maintaining communication. Inspiration for learning relies on a hands-on experience in this wilderness landscape. Inspiration to travel more responsibly and to be more environmentally aware in daily life is influenced by our real life example of consistency in the practice of what we preach. Equally important is maintaining connections to former staff and to former guests, who once inspired, can be counted on to respond to Alaska’s environmental issues through our annual newsletter and other targeted calls to action.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your innovation, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
The only “local” residents are our seasonal, live-on staff. Among our staff, we are successful in promoting the atmosphere of an extended, interdependent family, responsible for each other’s well-being and that of our guests whether on or off the job.
Our business is only an off-season resident of the park entrance community, 90 miles away from our remote summer location. Those residents have benefited through the offer of free or reduced rates on available space, through our philanthropic efforts including donation of retired equipment, through the purchase of locally-sourced organic produce, and through year-round and seasonal employment opportunities.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? What is the potential demand for your innovation?
Our initiatives are financially and organizationally sustainable. The model, however, requires diligent oversight due to our small size, short season, remote location, sub-arctic conditions, distance from our market niche, and dependence on supplies distant from interior Alaska combined with rising energy costs. We do not have the luxury of “testing” alternative technologies; they must be proven sustainable in sub-arctic conditions. We must work assiduously to find, hire, and retain the best possible staff, most of whom we can only employ seasonally.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
As the “baby boomer” generation begins to travel more, businesses such as ours may be in even greater demand.
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Our innovations and initiatives have always been financed through company cash reserves and, when needed, a line of credit from our bank.
Annual budget: $2,600,000, including “1% for the Planet”
Annual revenue: $2,900,000
Full-time staff: 6
Summer seasonal staff: 40
Volunteer staff: We are a for-profit business and, by law, cannot utilize volunteer staff. We do utilize paid interns paid according to Alaska labor standards.
What is your plan to expand your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
We will expand/enhance our approach by:
• Fundraising/constituency building for the non-profit educational organization we developed and fledged.
• Assisting Denali National Park in using the arts as a learning tool for natural and cultural history.
• Researching/implementing additional alternative technology projects.
• Pursuing conservation easements on our privately held land to be acquired by the National Park Service.
• Working on successful transition of the business to another generation.
• Consulting with others around the world about the pros and cons of operating a sustainable small-scale tourism model in a remote area with climactic extremes.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
The main barriers to managing, implementing and replicating our approach are:
1. Length of operating season (14 weeks).
2. Inaccessibility of our facilities for 8 months of the year due to seasonal road access and air access only in winter.
3. National Park Service limitations on numbers of vehicles that can we can use to access our facilities during our business season.
4. Cold winter temperatures (to -60 degrees F.) and buildings that go cold, which can limit the use of certain construction styles and products and damage or limit
the life span of some equipment.
5. Permanently frozen ground beneath the active soil layer and its effect on
construction techniques.
6. Working with a slow moving federal bureaucracy.
7. No credit cards – due to telephone communication limitations in season limits
our market niche.
8. Self imposed multi-day stays with fixed arrival and departure dates limits our market niche.
9. Remote location and high costs of transportation for supplies, people
10. Success of model is somewhat tied to location
Barriers to having a greater impact:
1. Self-imposed decision to stay small.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
An east coast transplant, I grew up between New York City and a small Rhode Island community. Inspired by swift water and snow-clad mountains since childhood, little did I know that standing atop 20, 320-foot Mount McKinley with a climbing buddy one day in ¬¬¬¬¬¬1997, I was looking down upon my future life in Denali National Park. Armed with east coast educations, my wife and I met at a biological field research station in the Sierras. Shared interests in wild places and a self-sufficient lifestyle, eventually drew us back to Alaska and her family’s business, for which we are assuming ownership. We are parents of a year-old daughter.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell your story.
The founders of Camp Denali valued wilderness. When they homesteaded 67 acres in view of Mount McKinley just outside one of Alaska’s national parks over fifty years ago, they were inspired more by the Scandinavian system of mountain huts than by plush hotels. And they thought less about how much money they could generate than about the carrying capacity of a fragile piece of tundra at 63 degrees north latitude – the home of miniature plants surviving at the edge of existence, the habitat of grizzlies, caribou, moose, wolves, and mountain sheep. Well ahead of their time, they founded a business on principles of land stewardship.
In the mid-seventies the Cole Family became Camp Denali’s successors. Committed to the same ethic, they knew Camp Denali could also fulfill their desire for in-depth learning opportunities for national park visitors whose only option for learning about the Far North’s natural and cultural heritage was a narrated 8-hour bus tour. So the next phase saw development of naturalist-guided hikes and field trips into Denali’s backcountry, evening programs, and a Special Emphasis Series that incorporated leaders in the natural sciences, native culture, Alaska’s geopolitical history, environmental policy, and the arts. Most recently, the Coles expanded the Camp Denali education model to a broader audience through the establishment of a non-profit organization. It also included upgrading facilities from tent-frame cabins to permanent log/timber frame cabins and actions to minimize the use of fossil fuels for energy production.
Landmark legislation in 1980 created an expanded system of national parks in Alaska. Denali grew from two million to 6 million acres, and Camp Denali was enveloped into the core of this wildlife-inspired wilderness. So were other nearby parcels, some of them former mining lands. Along with new, easy highway access from Alaska’s major city, along with a fledgling cruise industry, park visitation grew dramatically. The remote center of the park saw its first land speculators, and development was poised to alter this remote place by industrial proportions.
The result was an expanded vision for maintaining the integrity of the wilderness core of Denali National Park. National Park Service management plans voiced it but had little leverage. The Coles purchased North Face Lodge and several other undeveloped private parcels that surrounded Camp Denali, and they and others silently assisted the Service in the acquisition of other land. Today, development challenges still exist, but the wild nature of the center of the park is still largely intact. Currently, the family is attempting to set a precedent for this national park with the sale/donation of conservation easements on their land.
Meanwhile, the next generation of stewards of Camp Denali and North Face Lodge is already forming its own footprint. What began as an energy-efficient greenhouse, trash recycling, a Pelton wheel, a small set of solar panels, and a limited battery bank has blossomed into forward-looking research and implementation of significant alternative energy production, new construction techniques, and cleaning products that embrace a five-decade-long goal to live simply with the land.
Please write an overview of your project. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the Google map located on the competition homepage.
Camp Denali and North Face Lodge epitomize geotourism, not because of a single innovation, but because they represent a 50-year-old testimony to promoting wilderness preservation through education and walking the talk of environmental sustainability.
These destinations inside Alaska’s Denali National Park, provide learning adventures for active travelers. Situated a mile apart, they command unparalleled views of Mount McKinley. Neither features luxurious accommodations, TV, a bar, front desk, or even unlimited electricity. Instead, simple, innovative, sustainable living practices translate into carefully cared for lodgings, hand-crafted artisan food, and multi-day stays that create in-depth, personal, and insightful national park experiences.
From its inception in 1952, Camp Denali’s founders valued wilderness and sought to maintain “a light touch on the land”. Thirty years ahead of the responsible tourism concept, they modeled a business, not on the revenue that could be generated, but the carrying capacity of a fragile piece of tundra at 63 degrees north latitude. The Cole Family acquired Camp Denali in the mid-70s and North Face Lodge ten years later. As the second generation of stewards now passes the torch to a third, the vision and initiatives of these visitor destinations epitomize what may be geotourism’s most long-standing success story.
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Comments
My wife, Charlotte Carter, and I have been fortunate enough to travel to many different countries and to stay at many different geotourism sites. Our favorite remains Camp Denali in the center of Denali National Park, Alaska. We have been back many times and have never tired of returning. The location is fabulous. The management and staff are courteous and very knowledgeable of the flora, fauna, geology, etc. If you have an opportunity to go to Denali National Park, you will not regret staying at Camp Denali.
Steve Bickerstaff
I've been coming to these facilities regularly now for almost 20 years. On several of those occasions I've been there teaching photography workshops. As background, I should point out that I've been to quite a few of the current entrants and a several that aren't currently nominated but probably should be. That includes many sites in Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America.
The thing about Camp Denali/North Face Lodge that is unique is that they walk the talk, and always have. Every time I've been there I find new efforts on their part to reduce their impact while increasing their educational and first-hand experiences for visitors. I understand that this year they're experimenting with adding some solar collection, even though the extreme Northern location and finicky weather makes the payback equation very long term, at best. The point I'd make about that is that it shows their commitment to trying new approaches to reduce impact, even if there is little or no fiscal payback to the facility. Even though this is a for-profit organization, I've never known the Coles to put profit before doing the right thing. Indeed, it seems as if any profit they do make is put into making the facilities even more low impact and sustainable.
One little known fact is that North Face Lodge is actually a recycled building (well, at least the guest rooms). The guest rooms are actually worker trailers used in building of the Alaskan pipeline, brought into the park, placed together, and then a new roof and exterior paneling placed around them. You'd never know it from facilities: they look like a modern, regular building. But again, this just shows one of the many ways in which the Cole family has been thinking, and continues to think, creativity and with regard for keeping their overall impact low.
And don't dismiss those bikes they have available. A few years back I was teaching a photo workshop there and we decided to spend the day at a beaver pond a couple miles away. Normally, workshop leaders just ask for use of a vehicle to transport their group (which, by the way, Camp Denali and North Face Lodge generally DISCOURAGE--they try to keep the use of their vehicles minimized to keep both environmental and visual impacts down). But I had my group immediately grab the bikes (I, too, like to keep impacts down). And I have to tell you, we had more fun that day than I've had at any workshop, despite getting wet, muddy, and not getting very many pictures. Instead, we had a very close-to-nature and enjoyable experience that you often can't get at other so-called eco tourism lodges. Almost everything at these two facilities caters to just that: close-to-nature, educational, spiritually uplifting, and dedicated to keeping the experience personal and not the usual "Denali bus tour" most people experience at this park.
I wholeheartedly support this entrant, and I'll bet you that anyone else who's ever been there will, too.
Thom Hogan
writer/photographer
www.bythom.com
Support for the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge
I have visited this place the very first time in 1996 in the age of 39. In that time, after “velvet” revolution in the Central Europe after many years of dreaming and planning I was enabled visit and study conservation and sustainable tourism management in US and Canada.
I was lucky man because I was able to stay in the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge as a volunteer for all summer. That experience shocked and changed my whole life. In a very first time I was able to see and learn how wilderness protection and sustainable tourism can be merged and marriage.
My specific position in the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge [I was there a very first volunteer from former Eastern Europe] enable me to learn full picture about philosophy, vision and long-term goals of this place. Simultaneously with this strategic information I learned during day-by-day hand on work about implementation of this philosophy into everyday life. I have learned that philosophy is not only on paper but deeply etched in the mind of owner and systematically disseminated to the mind of staff and guests. Simply I started to learn that wilderness protection and sustainable tourism can become way of life.
The impact of that experience on my soul was so strong that I did everything possible to take my all family to that place next summer [including two daughters in the age of 13 and 15]. Now after more than 10 years it's very obvious that this experience completely re-shaped they way of life. Both daughters graduated at Faculty of Ecology… and until now recalling that experience.
Combination of wilderness ethic and responsible approach to sustainable tourism in this extremely fragile environment stayed never-ending inspiration for my work. Even today I use experience learnt during two summers in the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge in my daily work. Currently as PAN Parks Foundation Conservation Manager I implement that experience in the network of the best-managed wilderness protected areas in Europe where nature conservation is married with sustainable tourism.
All elements of the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge philosophy together with small details of everyday management e.g. composting of suitable food and grounds waste for use in organic greenhouse or environmentally safer cleaned products, etc was strong inspiration to formulate the overall the PAN Parks wilderness conservation and sustainable tourism concept and strategy.
Commitment and contribution of owner of the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge to the protection of Denali wilderness is frequently used example and argument to motivate and inspire the members of PAN Parks network in Europe.
Particularly strong inspiration is partnership of the Camp Denali and North Face Lodge with the National Park Service and active involvement in order to preserve the park wilderness character. This experience together with a strong advocacy of concept a “leave no trace” in wilderness environment becomes a baseline of PAN Parks concept developed and implemented in the last 10 years in Europe.
I fully support this entrant on the behalf of PAN Parks Foundation colleagues, members of the PAN Parks network and obviously on the behalf of my family - wife Eva and both daughters Lucia and Vika - and myself.
Vlado Vancura
vvancura@panparks.org
PAN Parks Conservation Manager
www.panparks.org
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