August 6 - The Trip to the Top of Mt. McKinley

It's Saturday morning and we're ready for our "flightseeing" trip to the top of Mt. McKinley.  Considering the rainy weather we've had and that is forecast, and the fact that we're sure not going to climb it, this may be our only chance to see the mountain.  We can see blue sky to the south and the clouds are moving to the north, so looks like we'll have a pretty good flight.

We booked the 11:00 flight on a 10-seat plane with Talkeetna Aero Services.  Matt drew the copilot seat.  Roxane and I are right behind the pilot and him.

Flying towards the Alaska Range, it's pretty cloudy and we wonder if we're going to see much of anything except for the highest mountains peaking up through the clouds.

But then we can see that on the north side, everything opens up.  We get our first look at McKinley off the left wing.

..and the right wing.

The pilot took us back and forth along the north side of the 20,320 mountain, at about 18,000 feet.

We all have our oxygen masks on at this altitude.  Climbers don't use oxygen on McKinley, but they spend weeks on the mountain getting used to the thin air.

The top 1,000 or 2,000 feet are under the weather that McKinley creates for itself.

We flew over the Ruth Glacier and a couple of the others that flow off Mt. McKinley.  The view was spectacular!

Flying back around the south side, the pilot pointed out this favorite of rock climbers, the Moose's Tooth, poking up above the lower level of clouds.

Then we descended below the lower clouds to fly along the huge glaciers.

This blue pool of water really stood out.

About 20 minutes later we were coming in for a landing.

And thanking our pilot Dave, a retired 30 year commercial pilot, for a great flight.

We spent a while bumming around Talkeetna, another tourist town full of gift shops and restaurants, one of which served up some huge cinnamon rolls for our afternoon snack.

Then the rains came and we headed back to our camp at Trappers Creek, which is a typical, 2 or 3 store town in the middle of nowhere.  No Walmart, but they did have their own version of a mega-store: