Denali!!!

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Ok, so this was one of the things I was most looking forward to. We booked a flight to the 20 320' summit of Denali (Mt. McKinley), only to find out the girl who booked us had made a mistake and there was actually NO summit flight that day. We were pretty disappointed but when they offered us an enormous discount we accepted it, we were already there so why not? It was incredible. We toured all of the mountains surrounding McKinley, saw the Ruth Glacier and Don Sheldon Amphitheatre and the Kahiltna base camp (a few tents, no climbers in sight). I won't try to explain more, I'll just post the pics and that should do it 😊
We hung out in Talkeetna, about 150 miles N of Anchorage and just before the entrance to Denali National Park, when we weren't in the plane. It's a crazy artsy hippie town that was originally a fishing site for Athabascan Indians (still great fishing) who refused to let Russian traders up the Susitna River. In the 1890s gold was discovered in Talkeetna and trading posts, prospectors and miners rolled in. By 1910 the town had become a riverboat steamer station and in 1915 it was designated as the site for the Alaska Engineering Commission which built the Alaska Railroad. It's pretty touristy now but still has a ton of history and some serious characters living there.

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Photos

Talkeetna Air Strip
This isn't where we took off from, thank god.

Nerves.
Drinkin' beer before the flight.

Our Pilot
He was a neat-o guy.

Takeoff
Mud flats just after takeoff

More mudflats
I realized about here that small planes and low lying cloud cover didn't agree with my stomach. But that could have been the beer.

Denali Park
We're at about 7000 ft here and heading towards the Ruth Glacier.

Clouds at 8000 ft
We're just about in sight of the Ruth glacier and heading towards Kahiltna Pass. You couldn't see the mountain from town but once we got above the clouds the view was incredible.

Ruth Glacier1
Passing the Ruth Glacier

Kahiltna Pass
Scary! But nothing compared to the rest of the flight :)

Kahiltna Glacier
Glaciers move alot of crap around, debris and whatnot called a moraine that looks mostly like dirt - it's usually silt and rocks and is left behind when a glaicer melts but can also be deposited by glacier movement, sometimes moraines still have glacial ice underneath them.

Movin' On Up
Getting above the cloudline. After we came through these clouds we were at about 13 500 ft.

Too close!
This picture isn't so bad but have a look at the next couple and notice the wing position relative to the horizon...

Closer...
I thought I was going to pee my pants - from the plane it looks like you're about twenty feet away from the mountain and you're weaving all over the place between peaks in this tiny little plane.

Aaaaahhhhh!
And then we turned....

South Face Denali
SO this is the first glimpse we caught of the mountain - in the background to the left. It might be difficult to tell from the photo but Mt. Hunter in the foreground is 14 573 ft high.

Denali Base Camp
I put a red arrow in to help you find it, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to see the dots of tents at the base camp when this website resizes it. Still, it's crazy small.

Denali Base Camp2
Better perspective here.

Comments

[Mindy]

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pretty rockin guys