The 3,910-foot dome sticks out like a sore thumb as you drive down the Richardson Highway about 20 miles south of Delta Junction, an ant hill shadowed by the distant Alaska Range.
But climbing Donnelly Dome is an annual tradition in our family and I’m glad to report we made it to the top once again this year.
Granted, getting to the top of Donnelly Dome isn’t the same as reaching the summit of Denali, but it’s still an accomplishment to be proud of and the panoramic view of the Alaska Range will take your breath away, if the climb up doesn’t.
If you’ve never climbed Donnelly Dome, it’s worth the drive and effort it takes to get there, especially at this time of year when the fall colors begin to paint the landscape red and yellow.
We drove down to Delta two weekends ago for our annual pilgrimmage up the dome. While the weather was beautiful when we left Fairbanks, it didn’t necessarily look that way when we pulled off the Richardson Highway at 248 Mile and drove 2 1/2 miles up a dirt military and pipeline access road that leads to a trail at the base of the dome.
There were menacing, black rain clouds hovering over the mountains to the south and east, making us wonder if we had picked the wrong day to climb the dome.
We needn’t have worried. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a climb up the dome. It wasn’t too hot or too cold. There was just enough wind to keep any bugs at bay but not so much that you got blown off your feet.
There are essentially two ways up Donnelly Dome. You can drive up the same road we did to access a trail that climbs up north side of the dome or you can pull off the Richardson Highway and hike straight up the face of the dome. Either way you go, it’s going to be steep. In the steepest sections, you’ll be forced to scramble up on all fours.
The trail that we followed on the north side of dome took us through alders for the first half of the climb, which we used to pull ourselves up particularly steep sections. Once we got above treeline, we followed the ridge line, climbing over and through rock formations that required careful attention so as not to slip and fall.
Having hiked up the trail on the north side of the dome and the trail leading up the face of the dome, I prefer going up the face. It’s a little steeper in some spots, but you don’t have the alders to contend with and the views are better in that you don’t find yourself staring down at the trans-Alaska pipeline every time you turn around.
It took our group of three adults, three children and two dogs about an hour and a half to reach the top of the dome, stopping occasionally to catch our breath, sip some water, enjoy the views and bribe the younger hikers with Starburst that I had stashed in my fanny pack.
Not that the kids needed much bribing. My 11-year-old son, Logan, and his 12-year-old buddy, Liam, scrambled over the boulders and up the ridge like a pair of billie goats, silhouetted against the sky on the ridge line. They reached the top long before the rest of us did.
We saw a pair of sharp-shinned hawks flying around above treeline and watched them chasing after a pair of hooligan magpies that insisted on pestering them.
We reached the top of the dome to find two other couples enjoying the views. It was relatively calm on top, unlike most times I’ve been there. We took some pictures next to a rock cairn that someone has constructed and that Logan and Liam added to. Kristan and Ann each celebrated with a beer as we drank up the panoramic views.
The pipeline snaked across the countryside on the north and west side of the dome for miles, a shiny ribbon of silver on a green landscape dotted with small, shimmering ponds. On the east side of the dome, the Richardson Highway stretched north and south. Vehicles traveling the road looked like Matchbox cars.
Though clouds obscured much of the Alaska Range to the west, the outline of the mountains could be seen as they rose up into the sky. The view was clearer to the east, where the craggy Granite Mountains loomed in the distance.
There’s something about standing on top of a mountain in Alaska, even if it’s an ant hill like Donnelly Dome, that makes you appreciate living here and makes you realize just how big this place really is.
We split up on the way down. I took the dogs and headed down the trail we came up while everyone else opted to zig-zag their way down the face of the dome, which I was told proved to be an exercise in bushwhacking at times to avoid particularly steep parts of the trail. The toughest part for me was making my way down the steep trail through the alders, which I grabbed from time to time to help slow my descent.
It took me about a half hour to reach the bottom and another 15 minutes to reach the car and drive down the road to meet the rest of the group, who were still making their way down the mountain.
As always, we stopped at the Buffalo Center Drive-In for cheeseburgers and milkshakes on our way back through Delta, a just reward for reaching the top of the dome. We also made a side trip to Frank Borman’s dig-your-own potato farm and had enough energy left to unearth more than 600 pounds of potatoes between three families.
It was one of those perfect Alaska days that don’t come around often enough.
Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.
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