Journey to Alaska Episode 16
Join us in this episode, where we give you the surprise we promised in the last video and FLY Denali National Park. This is one EPIC adventure you won’t want to miss.
There’s a new adventure around every corner so don’t forget to join in on our Alaska Summer on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook! We appreciate you following along with us.
Journey to Alaska Episode 16 | Denali National Park | Glacier Flight
Denali National Park, Glacier Flight
We decided that we really wanted to see Denali up close and personal and since we are not mountain climbers we knew we had to take a once in a lifetime flight and land on Ruth Glacier.
What better way to do that was to visit K2 Aviation in Talkeetna, AK not far from Denali National Park. We booked one of their glacier flights and waited. The day came and we were excited to check this off our bucket list. I mean we were LANDING on a GLACIER of all places. We never thought we would be landing on, much less, stepping foot on the top of a mountain!
Did I mention this is the HIGHEST peak in North America at 20,310 feet above sea level? Ruth Glacier is a gorge a mile wide and nearly two miles high. If the ice were to melt tomorrow it could fill the Grand Canyon. The walls that surround Ruth Glacier are 4000-5000 feet above sea level.
As the Ruth Glacier flows down a steeper gradient, it tears and fractures into a treacherous and virtually impassable 10-square mile section known as the Ruth Ice Fall.
We were in awe and taking this glacier flight was just awesome! No words can really describe it and pictures do not do Denali justice. She is massive and part of the Alaska Mountain range and, of course, the center of attention in Denali National Park.
You can see some of the smoke from the Summer of 2019 wildfires in a few photos, but once we got above the smoke line the views were just spectacular!
Money-Saving Tip
These flights are not cheap so we saved up for this EPIC Alaskan adventure knowing this was one of the many bucket list adventures we hoped to do.
To save a little money we purchased the Alaska TourSaver Book online.
We recommend this book, and no we are not being paid to say this. This book is chalked full of BOGO offers that saved us a ton of $$ and allowed us to check off a few bucket list items during our visit to Alaska!
6 Random facts about Denali Mountian
- Great Gorge of the Ruth Glacier—the world’s deepest. The ice is 3700 feet deep, some of it more than a thousand years old.
- It is believed that Denali is a Koyukon word that means “high”, “tall” or even “great one.”
- Seeing the mountain can be difficult; Denali is so big it makes its own weather, and it’s completely shrouded by clouds roughly 1/3 of the time.
- On a clear day, you can even see it from Anchorage, 125 miles away
- Denali National Park is home to nearly 12,000 lakes. Glaciers cover around one-sixth of the park, which covers roughly one million acres.
- The weather on Denali’s peak can be a frigid -75 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -118 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Source: Google
Check out our photo gallery below for the rest of our photos of the Glacier Flight over Denali and our landing on Ruth Glacier below!
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