This morning’s weather looks good for our scheduled Mount McKinley glacier landing so Janice and Debbie are back in worry mode and trying to talk their way out of it. We check out of the lodge, arraigned for our luggage to train station and catch the 7:00 shuttle to Talkeetna. We eat breakfast at the roadhouse café, sourdough pancake with berries and rhubarb, blueberry and rhubarb scones, you get the picture, everything had rhubarb in it…… along with reindeer sausage. When we get to K2 Aviation the weather looks even better and the pilot decides we have a good chance to make the landing so we load up and take off. After we are in the air, everyone forgets about being scared and we are all overwhelmed with the beauty of the views. The mountains look almost unreal to begin with, and then we get our first view of McKinley through the clouds and realize just how large it is. We fly up glacier valleys to the base and slowly circle up to the summit. We can see climbers at base camp and also attempting to summit the mountain. Our guide tells us that over 1500 will attempt the summit but only about 20% will make it. There have been 5 deaths so far this spring making the attempt. As we get to the north wall it feels as if we can reach out and touch the rocks, we now know how the eagles of Denali feel. After about an hour in the air we touch down on Ruth Glacier and exit the plane into another world. Even though we are standing on ice over 4000 feet thick it is very bright and the air is warm, our pilot Al has on a short sleeve shirt. We spend over 30 minutes on the glacier, taking photos, throwing snowballs and just admiring the beauty of it all. On our approach to the glacier from the landing, I looked over at Debbie and she was in tears, she was that aw struck with the whole experience. After our takeoff from the glacier, Al explained that if the ice on the Glacier was deeper than two Grand Canyons and over 31 miles long. We landed back in Talkeetna and all agreed that this was definitely the high point of our trip. If you get to Talkeetna, Alaska and want to take an air tour, go to K2 Aviation, and ask for Al if he is available, you won’t be disappointed. The people at K2 know their business and you can tell the enjoy it. Al was a great pilot/guide and shared his knowledge of flying and of the mountain. K2 is not charging enough money for the experience that you get. Debbie and Janice have earned their snow wings and would do it again. We could leave Alaska today and be satisfied with the entire trip, but we still have 14 more days to go. I’m not sure that we can top today but we will give it a good try. We board the train for the 3 hour trip back to Anchorage and dinner at the Moose Tooth pizza restaurant that was recommended to use by a lodge employee. The pizza was as good as he said even at 11:00 at night in broad daylight. We realized that we had not seen darkness in eight days, which takes some getting used to. Tomorrow we head for Homer Alaska and the coast for some halibut and hopefully some whale sightings. More from Alaska to follow….
Princess McKinley Lodge - A+
Roadhouse Café - A
K2 Aviation and Al our pilot - Completely off the scale
West Rib (lunch) - A
Moose Tooth Pizza - A+
