Hey, guess what? Its not raining! It is a totally clear day! Yeah!
John got us up at 5 AM today so that he could be ready to go on a guided fishing trip for King salmon. There was only one other guy plus the guide, they took a jet boat up the Talkeetna River to Clear Creek. John actually caught a 26" salmon but it was too small to keep. He saw several people hook huge king salmon (35+ pounds) but no such luck for him. While he was fishing I rode my bike into town to see if I could see Mt. McKinley but it is still concealed in clouds. So I ride 4 miles the other direction to a neat bakery to have a latte, a roll and got to read the Sunday paper. Then I rode back and now the Mt. McKinley peak is visible. Awesome!
What makes it even better is that at 7 PM this evening we climbed into a Cessna 185 with just the pilot and John and I and flew right up next to Mt. McKinley -- all 20,320 feet of her!! Two other peaks near there are Mt. Hunter at 14,573 feet and Mt. Foraker at 17,395 feet! There are glaciers coming out of these mountains that are 35 and 45 miles long and 3-5 miles wide. Ruth Glacier is the biggest. There are actually 3 arms that flow together to make one glacier. At that point the glacier is over 4,000 feet deep and runs between two peeks that are over 7,000 feet tall. This gorge could be deeper than the Grand Canyon. This glacier is moving at the incredible speed of 3 feet per day! At the bottom it is covered with dirt, grass, bushes and trees.
We are flying below the tops of the mountains, next to tall cliffs and over more glaciers. We see 'ice falls' and avalanche areas, glacial pools and crevices. Then we land on one arm of the Ruth Glacier! As we were preparing to land another plane took off and even though it was even with us, it was so far away that it looked like just a speck against the cliff wall and we were both flying between two peaks! From the air the landing area doesn't look that wide but once we are down, we see another airplane already there and room for a dozen or more. It is huge! And there were people camped on the glacier so they could go climbing and skiing in the mountain. Crazy! As we were standing on the glacier and looking northward toward some ridges, the pilot told us that those ridges were over 7 miles away!
This whole experience is so incredible that I cannot even begin to find words to describe it. And I'm not sure our pictures will do it justice, but just know that it was awesome, fantastic and unbelievable!!!
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