Landing on a Glacier

I’m afraid I’ll run out of superlatives trying to describe this flight. The pictures do not begin to convey the actual experience. It was, well, awesome, for sure. Let’s get to it!

Kim, acting as travel agent and tour director (she’s really good at it!) booked us a flight with Talkeetna Air Taxi. We would fly up to Denali National Park, circle Mt McKinley, and land on a glacier! How cool is that?!  http://www.talkeetnaair.com/about-us/ 

We met at the airport in Talkeetna and had to get our glacier booties on before we boarded the plane. I guess it’s bad PR to have tourists sliding off the glacier on their behinds.

We board our DeHavilland Turbine Otter aircraft and are soon airborne.

  

  

The day is clearing nicely! There are still some clouds around the mountains ahead, but conditions are improving, so it looks like we will be landing on the glacier, and may also get a visual on elusive Mt. McKinley. From the air, you can see how much water there is in Alaska. Rivers and lakes are everywhere.

  

  

Check out these views! Awesome!

  

We start to get closer to some of the many glaciers, and the patterns and shapes are hard to believe.

  

Here, two glaciers meet, and flow together. The dark bands are caused by the earth and debris that the glaciers have scrubbed away from the land. “Spectacular” hardly seems adequate to describe what I’m seeing.

  

That’s a lot of ice! Some of these glaciers are several thousand feet thick.

  

  

We fly over the Denali base camp, where climbers set up to begin their ascent of the mountain. They fly in to the camp on a glacier, and attack the mountain from there. The average time to get to the summit and back is about 3 weeks, but recently, someone actually managed to summit the mountain and return to base camp in just under 12 hours. HOURS! http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web14s/newswire-update-jornet-denali-speed-record

  

Some scenes from the flight. OMG What can I say. It is absolutely breathtaking.

  

  

  

There is our landing site! A plane has landed successfully, so I guess we go next! Fasten your seat belts.

  

We begin our descent through a canyon. I shot a video of our descent and landing, check it out below!

Scenes from the glacier. I can’t stop grinning! This is sooo cool!

  

  

Hey, look over there: it’s McKinley! The mountain puts in a personal appearance just for us. It is there for a few minutes, then disappears again.

  

  

Busy place, this glacier! Here comes another plane!

  

Scenes from the glacier, part 2:

  

  

All too soon, it’s time to leave. The takeoff is so smooth, it’s hard to tell when we stop skiing and start flying. Our return trip takes us along the length of the Ruth Glacier (I think…) and the textures and shapes are just astounding.

  

  

As we get closer to the end of the glacier, many feet of the ice surface has melted away and the sediment has been left behind. There is still a lot of ice here, though, several hundred feet thick!

  

What looks like soil is actually the layer of sediment that is on top of the ice. If you look closely, you can see the ice in pockets and depressions. Lots of boulders!

  

We leave the icy beauty behind, and trade it for the green and blue of the lower altitudes.

  

On the way back to Talkeetna, Kim gets an amazing shot of two moose (meece?) swimming in a lake.

What a day! Hope you enjoyed the show. If you ever get a chance to experience a flight to Denali, DO IT! This will be one of the major highlights of my visit to Alaska, for sure!