Mount McKinley Up Close (Finally!)

We have been keeping one eye on the weather hoping for a good clear day to see Mt. McKinley.  It’s on our “must-see” list and we won’t be satisfied until we can check it off.  We woke up to sunny skies this morning and it seemed like today might be the day – we had fairly decent views all the way down the Parks Highway.

But we weren’t completely happy with the views from the highway, and our patience with “The Mountain” was wearing a little thin.  As the day wore on, the skies got clearer – except for the area around McKinley.  Seriously, by the afternoon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky except for all around the base of the mountain.  There was only one thing to do – drive ourselves to a little town called Talkeetna, about 60 miles south of Denali.  Most of the McKinley climbing expeditions take off from here, and when I say “take off” I mean that literally.

We booked ourselves on the 6:15 flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi.  They were having an internet special that offered a free glacier landing with each ticket.  I was hesitant about that part, but Kevin was psyched.  We climbed aboard a tiny 10-seater DeHavilland Otter and off we went.

Once we were above the clouds, we finally had an almost completely unobstructed view of Mt. McKinley.  There it was in all its glory – all 20,320 feet of it (well, except for the part that was blocked by that thin line of clouds, whatever…).  If you’re curious, Mount Hunter on the left is a mere 14,573 feet.

Our pilot went in for a closer – a much closer – look.  The plane snaked through the lesser peaks of the Alaska Range, twisting and turning as we made our way around the jagged mountains surrounded by glaciers.

Looking down, we could make out distinct features in all the ice below.  Bright blue meltpools looked so tiny from hundreds of feet up, but looks can be deceiving – we could see whole icebergs floating in them.  Monstrous icefalls appeared to cascade down the sheer cliffs like waterfalls.

I was enjoying the stunning scenery when without warning the pilot turned the plane and we began descending right down to the glacier surface below.  By the time I realized what was happening, we had already landed on the Ruth Glacier, a sheet of ice 3,800 feet thick.  Where we landed, the glacier was covered in about six feet of soft, powdery snow.  (Perfect for making snowballs, as Kevin demonstrated.)

The view from the glacier was mind-blowing.  The sheer scale of the nearby mountains made us feel very insignificant in comparison.

This is probably the closest we are ever going to come to the summit of Mt. McKinley in our lifetimes, so we soaked it up.  Our close-up photos are a little hazy, thanks to some wildfire in Siberia mucking up the air quality.  But we didn’t mind too much.

Kevin put together a little montage of the flight, including the takeoff from the glacier which was like the fastest scariest downhill skiing I’ve ever done…times a hundred.

Talkeetna Air Taxi flight

Once we were airborne, the plane tracked the Ruth Glacier down through the gorge.  Ruth moves quickly (for a glacier) at about 3.3 feet per day and it stretches out over 35 miles.  Even though it lacks the immediate “wow” factor of Mt. McKinley, it’s pretty impressive in its own right.

Watching the Alaska Range recede behind us and melt back into the clouds, we said goodbye to the Great One, and mentally checked it off of our “Alaska To-Do” list.  What’s next?