Day 4b - Mt. McKinley Summit Flight

Our plane takes off from Talkeetna.
You can see all three rivers, Chulitna, Susitna & Talkeetna,
with the Alaska Range & Mt. McKinley in the background.

There are a only a few things in my life that have literally taken my breath away.  The sunrise over Mount Haleakala in Maui, a whale surfacing 20 feet away from me off the coast of San Francisco, and now our summit flight over Mt. McKinley.  We'd booked a flight in Ketchikan, so I intended to skip this expense, but my son was appalled.  He couldn't believe we would go all the way to Alaska, and not take a summit flight.  We booked one for the evening we arrived in Talkeetna.  That way if the weather was bad, we had the whole next day to reschedule.  Our evening was perfect, and the next day was overcast, so we got very lucky.  My son went on two flights to McKinley, and he said he'd never seen it as clear as we had it.  Last summer, only 5% of the people who came in June through August got to see the mountain.  They went 30 days in a row without seeing it in Talkeetna. We were incredibly lucky (or blessed).

Our pilot prepares for take off.  The person in front
of me moved to the co-pilot's seat, so I had an
unobstructed view out the wide window.

We had to really hurry from the train/shuttle drop off since the train was 45 minutes late, but we arrived right at 5:30. They weighed us and our gear, gave us glacier overboots, went through the emergency procedures and then we boarded. We flew in a De Havilland Otter and I believe it had room for 9 passengers. I took the third seat on the right, and it turned out to be a fabulous seat. TAT refits their planes with large convex picture windows, so the views are entirely different than looking out of a regular plane window.  You can stick your head out in the window and look straight down below, and since the windows are at least twice as wide as a regular window, it’s almost panoramic.  I quickly realized what a difference this made when we landed on the glacier and could see the windows on the other planes there. Some of them had wide windows without the convex shape, and some had the smaller windows with the convex shape. Ours was the only one with the large picture windows and the convex shape. Our pilot Will said they retrofit all of their planes that way for better viewing.

Our Talkeetna Air Taxi plane

The K2 plane

The Fly Denali plane

But enough about the plane.  The flight was fantastic.  Everything was so clear up there, we could see all three summits; Denali, Hunter and Foraker. We circled each summit, and went just above Denali.  We could see a group of climbers making their way down the mountain after summiting; they were all hooked up together in a line. It was so amazing to see all the glaciers from the air, to see the avalanches left in the snow, to see the crevasses and small glacier melt pools on the glaciers. 

The Three Summits - Hunter, Foraker & Mt. McKinley
with Kahiltna Glacier in the foreground

Looking over the Alaska Range from Mt. McKinley

Those aren't ants on the ridgeline, they're climbers.

Mt. McKinley - close up

Moose's Tooth, as we approach Sheldon's Amphitheater
and our landing spot.

It was pretty unbelievable.  And then we landed on a glacier – it was so incredible. The sky was so blue, the mountains so black and the snow so white. We could see Denali poking up above our little amphitheatre. We lost track of time, and were up there for quite a while. 

Us, with our plane in the background

Behind us is the runway, there is a little drop off
where the tracks end.

When I realized it was 7:45, the time we were supposed to be back in Talkeetna, I asked one of the employees who went up with us how long it would take to get back, since the last shuttle leaves for the lodge at 9:00. I didn’t really want to spend the night in Talkeetna when I’d already paid for a room at McKinley Princess. We quickly rounded everyone up and took off from the glacier.  In no time we were back in Talkeetna, and met our shuttle driver.  We had a few minutes to spare, so we quickly walked up and down the main street to get a feel for the layout of the town. We planned to come back the next day and have breakfast at the Roadhouse, the restaurant featured in Man vs. Food.

The drive from Talkeetna to the lodge is about 55 minutes, with the shuttle driver pointing out wildlife along the way (when there is some). It would be a lot shorter if the Talkeetnans would allow a bridge to be built between their town and Trapper Creek, cutting off about 17 miles each way, but you have to go all the way down to the bridge and circle back, making a huge u-turn.

The terrain around Mt. McKinley

At 15,000 feet we donned our oxygen masks.

Another side of Mt. McKinley

We arrived at the Lodge around 10:00p and went to the Grizzly Bar for dinner. Not much of a choice there for dinner, but at least it was something. The Lodge is entirely built around viewing Denali, and the sun was just setting as we had dinner. Everyone was out on deck watching the sunset. The percentage of people who actually get to see Denali is less than 30%, so we all took advantage of it for as long as we could.

Sunset over Mt. McKinley

Up next - a leisurely day in Talkeetna.