Glacier Landing

Glacier Landing

If you want a dramatic end to an incredible Denali experience, you have to go back down to Talkeetna and do a flyover with glacier landing.  Due to constantly changing weather conditions on the mountain, pilots stay on standby waiting for a break to take folks on this adventure.  We contacted Talkeetna Air Taxi on the way out of Denali to check.  Although skies were good over Denali at this time of the morning, skies between Denali and Talkeetna were bad.  They thought weather may be clearing so we were placed on a standby list for 12:30.  When we checked back in about 11:30 they said it would be a go, so we beelined it to the airport.

We put on our “glacier shoes”, which were waterproof overboots,  to keep our shoes dry and hoped that the weather would be clear enough for a landing on the snow.  The planes have flat metal sleds that surrounds the wheel and allows the plane to slide in for the landing without digging in and flipping.  The plane we flew in was a bright red turboprop plane with a full load of 11, including the pilot.  They make you weigh in on a scale when you register so they can adjust the load (with a small sign that read “only the person behind the counter can see your weight”) and then you have to give them a phone number of your next of kin.  After this confidence building event, we headed for the plane, got seated, and put on earmuffs that allowed us to hear the pilots talking to the control towers and to each other.  One other cool feature was that each seat had a window with no one having to look over another to see the scenery below.

On the flight out we followed Ruth Glacier up toward Denali, with the pilot educating us on glacial features like crevasses and moraines.  These crevasses are basically cracks in the ice that can extend down hundreds of feet into the glacier, many hidden under just a thin layer of snow and identifiable from a slight linear depression over them (I’ll come back to this later).  We were flying in and out of clouds and you could hear the pilots checking with each other on positions.  It was a little unnerving when you flew into a cloudbank and wondered how close you were to either another plane of a rock face.  At the head of the glacier is a large bowl of rock and the plane has to do a 180 to get out to head back down the mountain (trust me that will make you pucker).

Our first potential landing site was partially fogged in.  The pilot said that we could probably land, but with the moving fog bank we may not be able to take off.  The plane carries survival gear just for this possibility, but our pilot said he had places to go that night and didn’t want to take a chance.  We flew to a second location which had not had a landing on it this year and was able to land. 





Stepping out of the plane you entered the brightest, quietest place I had ever encountered.  Kevin and I were the last ones on, so the first ones off.  I backed up away from the plane to get a picture when Tyler (our pilot) said that I might should step closer to the plane since I was standing right over a crevasse.  I swear I was looking, and from my angle could not tell that I was on one.  I think I heard Tyler say something under his breath like “dang tourist”.  I’m just kidding about that, Tyler was one of the nicest persons I have met on this trip.  He was an excellent pilot and on the glacier took all the time we needed to get photos and he was constantly shooting pictures of us, and did not give me a hard time about nearly plummeting to my death during his watch.

After this flight, we headed into Talkeetna for wash day and eating supper.  I think I mentioned the Roadhouse in a previous blog, but if you go here, you need to stop by this place.  It is old Alaska.  We ate reindeer chili and salmon pastie with blackberry pie.  Oh mercy.

Glacial Water/Crevasses

From here it was a road trip of 200 miles through the blight that is Wasilla, Palmer, and then onto the Glenn Highway toward Tok.  Moose were everywhere.  Saw them on the side of the road, along streams, and in lakes.  We stopped to take a picture of the one by the road and it got ticked off.  Moose are angry critters, like one thousand pounds of meat on a hoof with a testosterone problem.  This rascal started bowing up and shaking his head at us like he wanted to charge.  I think our saving grace was that our camper was bigger than he was.  Anyway, we ended up pulling over on the side of the road about 10:30 for some sleep.