Landing on a glacier
About a month ago I was lucky enough to hop on a little 10 passenger plane and take a flight seeing tour through the mountains and land on a glacier in the middle of them all. It was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing in my entire life. If you ever end up coming to Alaska, you must take this flight and see it for yourself. Sure, I took about a million pictures, but they are only the tiniest taste of what it’s like to see it with your own eyes.
This is Mount McKinley from Talkeetna (about 60 miles away), the town where climbers who are going to take on the mountain check in with the park rangers and catch a flight out to the mountain. I took this picture from the park at the end of town that is right on the Talkeetna river right before I hopped on the plane.
Here we are taking off. I chatted with the couple that was sitting in front of me for a while before we took off. They were from Australia and had been traveling around the world for the last 4 months with 2 more months to go before they headed home. I hope I have the time (and money) when I’m their age to be able to do that. Actually, I wish I had that at my age now, I don’t want to wait 30 more years to travel like that.
We first flew over a ton of rivers that meandered though the wilderness. There were little cabin strewn about here and there that are only accessible by boat or ATV.
In the background you can see how suddenly the lush green trees give way to snow covered mountains.
And then, bam, mountains and snow galore.
There’s McKinley through the window, much closer now.
This is one of my favorite pictures that I took from the plane. All these pictures are straight from the camera by the way, although I really need to see what I can do in Photoshop to make it even cooler.
A glacier cutting through the mountains with McKinley up at the top. 20,320 feet! Our plane couldn’t even fly that high because it wasn’t pressurized.
One of the base camps for climbers. I think this one was at 11,000 ft.
Next we landed on the Ruth Glacier. Notice the skis on the plane.
Here we are walking around on the glacier in the middle of the mountains. It was breathtaking.
The pilot was nice enough to take my picture. Since I was by myself. Although it looks freezing, it was actually like 60 some degrees up there.
But, as you might know, I have to do the self portrait everywhere I go.
Ok, time to get going.
Flying back to Talkeetna along the glacier.
This is just a taste of all the pictures I took. You can see all 111 of them on Flickr.
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