Soaring the Alaskan Range

Denali National Park, Alaska

After our overnight stay in Anchorage, we hopped on a bus for 3 hours to Mt McKinley Lodge. I was really looking forward to getting to the lodge because it looked like a nice day where we might have a chance to actually see Mt McKinley (the mountain is only visible 30% of the time). Even more exciting was that we had signed up for a Mt. McKinley Summit Flight that afternoon. We got to the lodge (yes, McKinley was visible), had lunch and hopped on a 45 minute bus ride to Talkeetna Airport (the lodge is pretty remote). On the way, my wife Carol muttered "I don't know why I agreed to do this" (she is not the best of flyers). When we got to the airport, we were assigned a small 10 seat airplane. She was assigned the co-pilot seat and was told not to touch anything (like she would have). I was alone in the second row and our friends were in the back row. To complicate things, it was raining and a fresh storm was approaching. Off we went anyway.

On the way to Mt McKinley, we soared above the Alaskan Range and this image was taken en-route to Mt McKinley. The majesty of this mountain range is something to see. It was pretty challenging to photograph from the plane. I kept getting the damn propeller in my shot and shooting through a small window at such high speed was a challenge. All-in-all, I do it again in a second but I'm pretty sure Carol won't.