July 10, Friday: Parks Highway to Talkeetna

 We woke to clear skies and got a bit of earlier start than usual, driving south on the Parks highway before the clouds build in the afternoon.  

Driving South on Parks Highway toward Anchorage

We stopped at Denali STATE Park with a southern view of Mt. McKinley and lucky us - the mountain summit did appear above the clouds long enough for some photos.  We had given up hope of seeing the mountain and we felt fortunate to be able to enjoy the view with other folks, all talking in hushed tones - The Mountain is that awe-inspiring.

The white blob on the right contains Mt. McKinley

See the brighter white among the clouds in center?  That is The Mountain

The tallest mountain is Denali, about 80 miles away and is twice the height of the mountains in the foreground

We continued south, then turned east and north to the funky little tourist town of Talkeetna.  Although a small village, it is important for its role as the primary staging area for Denali summit climbers and other adventuresome types that want to be 'on' the mountain for hiking, skiing, whatever.  The town is also where three rivers come together, all prime salmon fishing rivers.  The little downtown was packed with cars, RVs and tourists all wandering through the gift shops and small cafes.

Jack decided he wanted to do a flight-seeing tour of Denali with a glacier landing.  Checked out a few of the vendors and decided on a small family operation that actually had 5 acres of land smack in the middle of Denali National Park that is grandfathered.

We drove to a nice campground right on one of the rivers, got our campsite, and the woman from the air service picked us up and brought us over to their hanger.  After some confusion with some of the other passengers about the optional landing/not landing on the glacier, we finally took off about 5:30 with a couple from California in a dilapidated old plane.

Jack as co-pilot was told not to touch anything.....

The first 15 minutes was over the valley and braided rivers in the area before finally arriving near the base of the mountain and then flying up through a mile-deep canyon with a massive glacier below, feeling like our wings could touch either side.

Our shadow flying over the river

It feels like we can touch the canyon walls

Beautiful views of the surrounding mountains, glaciers and finally the summit of Mt. McKinley as the clouds opened up around the summit.

Mt. McKinley (or Denali) is almost 21,000 feet high and second only in the world to Mt. Everest, which is over 29,000 feet.  BUT, the base of Mt. Everest is much higher, so Mt. McKinley appears higher if they were put side by side.

Landing on the glacier

We landed on a glacier gliding uphill using the hydraulic skis that lower around the wheels.  There was about 5 inches of wet snow underfoot, and we were glad to have the giant overboots the air service provided.  The sun was bright, the skies were intensely blue with a few clouds that came and went around The Mountain.

All concepts of distance and space are lost here in the vastness and it feels like we are on another planet!  We were speechless - just taking in the views and experiencing the silence, beauty and other-worldliness of this sacred place.

Lots of photo taking before climbing back aboard and flying down through the canyon, following the path of the glacier from its origins high in the mountains, flowing down to the valley and ending with the rocky moraine and finally the glacier silt river.

The crevasses on the glacier below are hundreds of feet deep

The black line is where two glaciers are colliding further up in the mountain forming a central moraine.  Love the glacier blue pond

Back at our campsite, watching the river that was running from the glacier we had seen about 50 miles away, we tried to describe our experience to our RV neighbors from Australia, just as I am trying to do here.  It just is not possible to convey the sense of awe we felt on the mountain, so hope the photos do justice.  What an incredible day.

July 7 and 8, 2015: Fairbanks

Tuesday

Fairbanks Smoky Streets

Woke with a scratchy throat and burning eyes from thick, widespread smoke from forest fires. We drove down to the visitor center in downtown Fairbanks. In addition to tons of literature, they had a lot of interesting art and a great mini-museum highlighting native cultures, gold rush days and the boom created here when the Alaska Pipeline was being built.  

The smoke is way too intense for us to do anything outside, so decided to do housekeeping chores, including grocery shopping and laundry. Went to a local Mexican restaurant and spent the evening reading and playing cards.

Wednesday

Still smokey this morning and the forecast calls for smoke until Thursday night. It isn't as bad as yesterday, so we drove up to the University's botanical garden, hoping to see some of the giant veggies that Alaska's long days of sunshine produce. It was too early in the season for most things, but they did have some cabbages and some pretty flowers. 

The smoke is intensifying and we decided to try and drive south on the Parks Highway toward Denali where we are actually hoping to hit rain – rain is much better than feeling like you've been up all night chain-smoking....dry mouth, burning eyes, scratchy throat and headache.

The views from atop the summits of the road would have been beautiful on a clear day, but we could just make out huge valleys with wide, wandering rivers through the haze. We stopped in a little village called Nenana that had been a bustling port town for river barge traffic, but now it is pretty dilapidated. We stopped at a small log cabin rustic church to view the hand-hewn pews and beaded altar pieces. 

This town is most famous for its lottery for when the ice breaks up based on when a tripod with a flag on top hits the water. This is serious business and the last payout was over $300,000!!!!  

We stopped for a campsite on the river about an hour north of Denali. The smoke smell is still here, but nowhere near as bad as Fairbanks. We sat out enjoying the river for a while, dinner and played some cards.

Denali's weather forecast is for clouds and rain for at least a week, so we will not commit to the 3-night minimum to get a campsite deep into the park. Mt. McKinley is visible only 30% of the time and we were hoping to enjoy a few days inside the park, increasing our chances to see The Mountain. Weather forecasts can be wrong, but when I spoke to the campground reservations folks, they said it has been raining off and on and cloudy for a month and it is expected to continue for another month. Denali is so huge that if it does come “out” as the locals say, we will be able to see it from anywhere in the vicinity, so we will spend the day here and continue south.

Our drive on the Parks Highway (named after a former governor, not for Denali National Park) runs north/south between Fairbanks and Anchorage with Denali National Park about halfway between.  When the weather is clear, this highway affords multiple opportunities to see The Mountain, but it was overcast with some storm clouds, so we saw very little.  Mt. McKinley is so big that it makes its own weather and will often be covered in clouds even though everything else is clear and sunny.

Nenana River Canyon

The roiling clouds made some interesting photos as we drove through Nenana River Canyon and 15 miles into Denali Park on the only section of the road private vehicles are allowed. 

We spotted a couple of moose (mice?), but road was too narrow to stop for photos.  We did get a chance to get a pic of a caribou with majestic antlers. He was pretty far away, so even my new telephoto lens couldn't get a close-up. 

 It started raining, so we cancelled our planned Denali  hikes and headed an hour south to a campground for the night.