Denali from 21000 feet!

Today's blog could also be titled, "A funny thing happened on the way to Denali". We tried calling a couple of the flightseeing groups last night and earlier this morning with no success. When we woke up this morning the sky was absolutely clear. We decided to leave the B&B and stop at the airport in Healy (we stayed about 5 miles away). We found the airport and stopped in to see if they had any open seats to see Denali. BTW, these flights are either pricey or very pricey. Well, the owner of the flight service flies in every day from about 3 hours away and he said today was the clearest he had seen Denali in his 25 years of flying. They were also offering $50 off each flight and finally, they had two open seats for the 11:00 a.m. flight so we signed up.

We took both cameras and the blog only has some of the 79 pictures we took. I'll try blog some of the video clips after we get home.

So here is some of our pictures from this flight:


This is the flight service we used.

Here is Bob waiting for the flight.

This is the plane we took; a Piper Navaho.

The guy on the left was our pilot, Trent. We had a nice conversation with him before the flight and he was nice enough to let me sit in the "right seat".

At the upper left of this picture you can see Mt. McKinley (Denali) at about 25 miles out.

What looks like a roadway in the upper left of the picture is actually a glacier.

Denali has a North and South Peak. This is the South Peak. We are at about 21,000 feet here and are wearing oxygen masks.

This is the North Peak. Climbing Denali from the north side is much harder than from the south side.

If you expand this picture you should be able to see six climbers as well as their base station at the bottom of the picture.

Another picture of the North Face.

I think this is the saddle between the North and South Face.

Just a nice picture of a river in the valley below. Rivers that are from glaciers are called "braided" since they contain many small intertwined streams.

There are not a lot of things a person can do in their life that you know you will never forget. This was one of them.

We are now back in Anchorage for the next two nights. We plan to wash and turn in the rental car tomorrow. The (Hawthorn) hotel has a shuttle so we won't need the car.

Again, Happy Birthday John.

Hope you are all doing well.

Bob & Sue