August 9, 2018

We were fortunate enough to see Denali Mtn. by air and actually SEE Denali. The weather here is cloudy much of the time and the Alaska Range makes it’s own weather which is frequently cloudy. We called at noon with clear skies to fly that afternoon, by 3pm the clouds had started to form around the mountains. Of course, the pilot prepped us for maybe not seeing Denali, getting to the north side or landing on a glacier ( side story- we did not care about doing this, and the company did not have a another flight going up that was not landing, so we got the landing on the glacier for free – $100/person!)
We lucked out- there were clouds, however we flew over them and more than halfway around Denali at 12,000-14,000 ft. Denali is the second tallest mountain in the world just behind Everest.

We landed (and took off 🙂 from a glacier which had recent snowfall. Clare sat in the cockpit on the way out and I did on the way back (there were 8 other passengers). We flew within 1/4 mile of the cliffs and were up almost 2 hours.
Side note- a flight-seeing plane with 4 passengers and pilot crashed last Saturday, killing all on board, although at least some survived the initial crash, as the pilot made two calls out for help. The weather closed in and the plane was precariously perched on the side of Thunder Mtn. On Monday, Park Service people lowered a man from a helicopter and while tied to the chopper got inside the plane and found 4 dead and could not locate the 5th. Very sad for all concerned. The safety record here is long and deep and at this time it has not been determined what happened to cause the crash. The passengers were from Poland and the pilot was from Michigan. Another attempt and they did find the 5th body and have decided that they can not remover the bodies or the plane.
As is often with nature, there are no words to describe what we saw or felt up there. Here are some of the photos- check out our photo gallery tab (give me a week to get them up, as we are heading deeper into Denali and will not have internet for 5 days) for more if you are interested.

Denali is surrounded by glaciers, and other mountains.

This is the glacier that we landed on.