"North to Alaska" a Alaska Travel Page by OiKnow

Alaska is amazing. Mountains, water, trees, wild and wildlife are just around every corner. My stay was very short, only 2 1/2 days with one day of that being work, but the trip was well worth the nearly 10,000 miles of travel to get there and back.

Denali National Park and Mt McKinley are located about 100 miles north of Anchorage. Because I was tight on time I took a sight-seeing flight out of Anchorage to see as much as I could in a few short hours. The mountain range is visible soon after take off, but you don’t appreciate the scale of it for about 45 minutes (at nearly 100 miles per hour.) At over 20,000 feet McKinley is the highest peak in North America. We flew up the valley of the Ruth Glacier and landed on a remote lake fed by runoff on the back side of the glacier. Flying up the valley the sheer rock faces soared above the wind tips as the pilot expertly guided the plane through the valley. Words fail me in being able to describe the experience.

I grew up in small planes, my father was an amateur pilot and I have flown in about every little single engine plane imaginable over the years. But before going to Alaska, I had never been in a float plane. The world’s larges float plane base is at Lake Hood across the street (literally) from Anchorage International Airport. I used Rust’s Flying service on the recommendation of someone at the University of Alaska. The taxi and take off were unremarkable; the De Havilland Beaver has tons of power and climbed out easily. We flew north, up the valley of the Ruth Glacier and landed on a remote lake. The pilot quipped “sorry for the rough landing” and looked over at me and said “I saw you looking down to see if we were on the water.” It was that smooth. We taxied to the far end of the lake and the pilot tied the plane off so that we could get out and walk around. He said that this lake had only filled to the level that they were comfortable landing on it late last season and this was only about the 10th time that anyone had ever landed on this lake. The weather was perfect and the water was perfect, or he would have gone to another lake to land. It was truly amazing standing in a place that so few people have ever been. In three short hours from Anchorage, you can visit truly wild places and return to the comfort of you hotel