olivermoss | Alaska Part 8: Denali

One of the nights I was in Kantishna, the mountain suddenly cleared up. My earlier posts had some large mountains, but those are just the foothills for the really giant mountain that is usually hidden by clouds. I think the mountain was only visible for about 5 or 6 hours of the whole time I was there.

They say only about 30% of park visitors see the really giant mountain that dwarfs all the mountains around it. That is partially due to clouds and partially due to the fact that it can only be seen from certain areas. Even giant mountains can hide surprisingly well amount foothills and ridges. It's not possible to see the mountain from Kantisha. So when the mountain started to become visible one night some people went to grab bikes or made plans to scramble up Quiggley Ridge. The pilots where near the end of this shifts. They could fly people up, but they had to have pilots in the air in under an hour. I decided to get caught up in the excitement.

The single gravel airstrip and the single engine planes of Kantishna Air Taxi:

Calls were put into to the other area resorts to round up people who were wanting to go up if there was a window. The manager knew that he couldn't fill all seats in time, so he offered me one at a discount. Also, seasonal workers at the area lodges can go up once per season for free if they are willing to fly stand by. A server from another lodge in Kantishna had her turn to go up that night. She was so excited, she'd only been in Alaska two weeks.

Denali from the air:

I wasn't nervous because I knew the pilots and a bit about the air taxi. The owner is serious about safety. They are currently down one pilot and there isn't much they can do about it because they have no candidates that meet their flight time requirements.

We set off after the mountain, but me being me I was a bit distracted by seeing just how vast the park is. It's hard to tell from the ground. Most of the park is inaccessible.

Flying in between ridges of rock:

The small planes they fly can get up between the ridges and fly in circles over the glaciers.

Brooks Glacier. See edge of window at the bottom of the picture and the tip of the wing at the top? I am look right at the ground by looking straight out the window during a turn:

The planes can't fly terribly high, though. Well, the planes can fly high but pilots can't go above a certain altitude in an unpressurized aircraft per FAA rules.

I hadn't planed to go up, but I am glad I got caught up in it all. Also, kind of silly to stay at an air taxi and never fly.

The day I left the park my plan was to just get on the bus and ride all the way out, no stops. Since I was leaving, I had all my gear in my pack and still several days of food. For most of my hiking I used my pack but left the stuff I didn't need in my room or somewhere. Tundra hiking with all my stuff didn't seem appealing. Also, every day in Alaska so far had been a long day. One day I'd done 1,500 feet of elevation change, another day I'd likely hiked 12 miles, another day I'd been on the train 6 hours and had also hiked that day. I was finally going to take a more restful day.

The mountain from the doors of the bus:

But I wasn't really ready to leave the western side of the park and that morning the mountain was out. So I hopped off at a stop and went off towards the McKinley River. I didn't do the whole trail. I just walked towards the mountain until it rather suddenly clouded up. It went from mostly clear to gone in about 20 minutes. I stopped when the mountain hid, had lunch and hiked back out. I did maybe 6 miles?

For one of the largest mountains on the planet, it hides really well: