July 14, 2004
Flight-seeing on Denali
Photo by Jeannette Belliveau
Shown above: The icefall of the Ruth Glacier emerging from Denali, North America's highest peak. The glacier turns into a jumble as it crosses a rapidly descending slope.
On July 9 at 8:30 a.m., I took a flight-seeing tour with K2 Aviation in Talkeetna. I signed up for the cheapest, simplest tour, the "blue" McKinley experience tour, for $120 for a one-hour flight (normally $140, but I found a $20 off coupon on their flier picked up at the Visitor Information Center in Anchorage.
Three retirees from Pennsylvania and myself got ready to board our Piper Cherokee with pilot Rick Hortsmann, "pilot / musher," of Willow, who with his thick bush beard and Southern California manner of speaking seems like a cross between a mountain man and a latter version of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. "I was a Navy pilot for 27 years," he announced. Trying to set us at ease, he added, "I'm a cautious, old pilot."
"No barrel rolls, then," said a white-haired passenger, one of the retirees.
"No," Rick confirmed.
As did my missionary pilot, Emile Borne, in Borneo (described in An Amateur's Guide to the Planet), Rick showed us where the first aid kit and emergency transponder were located. I was as usual very nervous about going up in a small plane, but successfully kept my emotions in check so as to enjoy the experience. We loaded up, myself beside Rick in front, the retirees in the second and third rows of the Cherokee.
We took off and immediately found ourselves above a tangle of three wide, shallow rivers, the Talkeetna, meaning (according to Rick) "river of plenty," the Susitna, appropriately "river of islands," and the Chulitna, "river of sticks."
I had a brief moment of panic after takeoff. "I hate mountains," I thought to myself. They look dark and dangerous to a flat-lander such as myself, happier with hills and greenery than vertical granite. I said a quick prayer and then settled down.
Rick made a running commentary over his headset, and the passengers also wore headsets to listen and to ask questions. This worked well given the high level of engine noise.
"Talkeetna is a large airport by Alaska standards," Rick noted, as we left the airplane parking strip and turned into the top of a T junction, where the main runway lay. "Two Kilo Tango," he reported to the "tower," as we taxied into position for takeoff.
The Cherokee took off and slowly gained altitude. "We're 60 miles from the Summit, and 22 miles from the foothills," Rick said, and a dark brooding range appeared to our northwest. Below, we could see the Parks Highway, the road, two lanes in this stretch, linking Anchorage and Fairbanks. The jumble of rivers ran in swooping serpentines (just like in lowland Borneo), and lakes, some with a single home or lodge on the bank, dotted the landscape.
"It's 5,500 miles west, to [St.] Petersburg, Russia, until you hit the next road system to the Parks Highway," Rick said. "We're at 4,000 feet of altitude now. The glaciers that carved this valley were 4,000 feet deep," he added, inviting us to imagine the colossal depth of the rivers of ice that created much of our view.
We passed into the mountain range above the toe of the Ruth Glacier, 3-1/2 miles wide. "When I came up here, I expected to see a white, snowy glacier," Rick noted, as we gazed upon dirt and debris that makes the bottom of the glacier an ugly mess compared to the top.
The Ruth Glacier, he said, is 35 miles long, 1.2 to 3.5 miles wide, and moves 4 feet a day at the top. Rick stated that it had carved a gorge 9,000 feet deep out of "solid granite," creating the deepest land depression on the Earth's surface (although some ocean trenches are deeper).
In winter, the glacier lies under 30 to 40 feet of snow, according to the pilot. We moved along to the Backside Glacier.
Rick put "Tribute" by Yanni onto the airline CD player. "Anyone doesn't like the music?" he asked. Yuck, I thought silently. "I think it adds to the Imax theater effect," Rick added, to a resounding silence from our group. I thought about the frequent and trite observation, often derided by literary travel writers, that most anything dramatic or interesting "is like a movie," when obviously it is movies that should be imitating real life, not the other way around.
Underneath the dirty lower sections of a glacier, Rick said, is 500 feet of ice, with water (the beginnings of the rivers born of many a glacier) running underneath the ice. "It's the water running underneath that makes sinkholes," he said.
Sinkholes hundreds of feet deep appeared toward the very bottom of the sinkhole, and then a boil looking like Scylla churned mud dramatically skyward.
A cloud ceiling of 9,000 feet prevented us from taking the advertised route up the Ruth Glacier, through the Great Gorge and the Don Sheldon Amphitheater on the flanks of Denali, and back the Tokostina Glacier, so we turned from the Ruth Glacier back to Talkeenta.
Photo by Jeannette Belliveau
A view of the Tokosha Mountains, a small range arising from the foothills south of Denali.
On less sunny days, the flight-seeing trip is shorter, but still arguably worthwhile for the unique view even of part of the range. That is a debatable point, however, as the mountain is hidden two days out of three, making safe flying on the advertised routes not about to happen.
Rick told us flying back to the sirport that he had been in Alaska for 10 years and runs a company called Wings and Paws, offering flight-seeing and dogsled rides with his 22 furry "children." He has entered the famous Iditarod sled race.
How did he do? "I finished," he said, pausing for dramatic effect ... "alive."
