Riley Fire in Denali National Park forces evacuations, closures

When you turn west into the entrance of Denali National Park, the first designated location you come across is the Riley Creek Campground – before you even reach the park’s Visitor Center. The first of the six major campgrounds within the park, Riley Creek serves as a resting point for weary travelers who both went across the world to visit the tallest peak in the United States and also desire a bit more convenience near the park’s busiest amenities.

While it remains to be seen whether the campground’s proximity to the currently expanding Riley Creek Fire is due to anyone who’d been camping at there, the current reality is that the fire – estimated at some 350 acres by early Sunday evening after sparking earlier that day – sits perilously close to both the campground and the National Park’s entrance. Said proximity and the conditions surrounding the fire on the banks of the Nenana River prompted evacuations of several areas of the park, per the National Park Service, with the potential for more evacuations in the crosshairs.

As evident in the above map of Denali NP’s grounds, the Riley Creek Campground (and the fire beside it) sit at a choke point – there’s only one road within the park, so it’s one way in, one way out.

As of now, the safety of the individuals camped up to 85 miles up the road as it runs to the north side of Denali (20,310 feet) in the heart of the Alaska Range is not at risk. While there may be current difficulties in simply driving out of the park, there are no evacuations yet in place for those individuals at the Wonder Lake, Igloo Creek, Teklanika River, Sanctuary River, or Savage River Campgrounds. That said, all hikers in Bison Gulch and Antler Ridge as well as employees housed in the Denali NP Joint Venture Facility were ordered to evacuate last night, per Alaska Wildland Fire Information.

Per their release last night, campers at Riley Creek as well as employees at Denali NP Headquarters were on Yellow Alert for being evacuated, with conditions this morning dictating whether that will become urgent.

Smokejumpers and water-scooping aircraft have been deployed to help fight the fire, and there are currently flight restrictions in the area as those (and helicopters) help identify strategies to combat it.

The Riley Fire is one of some 160 currently burning wildfires within the state of Alaska, with over 388,000 acres having already burned within the state in 2024. There is an expectation that cooler, wetter weather is in store for the region in the coming days, which will hopefully help the hotshots in their attempts to contain the Riley Fire, and others, and reduce the number of evacuations needed.