Sunrise at Wonder Lake

We stopped at Wonder Lake on our way out of the park to watch the sunrise on Denali.

And that's it for Alaska. I'll have to see where I'm going to revisit next.

Flashback: Leaving Denali

I was miserably sick with a cold the day we left Denali, and it was a long travel day, first by bus, then by train, to Talkeetna. So I am surprised I managed to take any pictures at all on that bus ride, but how could I resist these landscapes?

One last look at Wonder Lake

I'm done with Denali—the mountain anyway; I may find a few more pictures from the bus ride through the park. So here's Wonder Lake again; it was, without exaggeration, one of the most perfectly beautiful places I've ever been.

Between the mountains

Looking down on the spaces between Denali and the surrounding mountains.

Twin Peaks

Denali has two summits. The South Summit is the taller one.

And we're here!

 

Getting closer

And Denali comes into view.

Looking up the Alaska Range on Wikipedia reminded me that Denali, measured base to peak, is the tallest mountain in the world on land. Mount Everest gets half of its elevation from its location on the Tibetan plateau; the actual mountain is 12,000 to 15,000 feet, compared to Denali's 18,000 feet. (Mauna Kea is taller than either one, but it's mostly under water.)

Approaching Denali

After we left the airfield, we flew over tundra approaching the mountains. The Alaska Range is not part of the Rocky Mountains, though both are part of the American Cordillera; it stretches 600 miles across south-central Alaska into the Yukon.

And still more Denali details

Some really fun swoops and pillars of snow.

I think that streak of white in the upper right is a reflection. I was taking all of these pictures through an airplane window, and there was very little room to maneuver and I couldn't always avoid getting the window or parts of the plane in the picture. And, because the cabin wasn't pressurized, I was gasping for air when hoisting the camera around.

Anyway, so very worth it.

More Denali details

These icicles make me think that the mountain has grown teeth.

Denali details

It still amazes me that I actually got in a tiny plane and took a scenic flight around the mountain. And spectacular as it was, I would most likely never do it again. Probably. Well, really it depends.

But even if it was once in a lifetime, getting to see these mountains up close, with details like those whorls of snow or the woody texture of that rock, was incredible.

Denali

This mountain view is of course a little more dramatic.

I posted many pictures of Denali—then still officially Mount McKinley—at the time. But there were at least a hundred pictures from the scenic flight around the mountain that I never got to. Many duplicates and a few duds, but some definitely worth looking at as well.

Saturday reflections birthday do-over

Okay, this is much better.

This is Wonder Lake in Denali National Park in Alaska in 2014, with the namesake mountain there on the right. Alaska is the next stop on the flashback and it's been a lot of fun to go through those pictures. I've been able to visit so many beautiful places in my life, and I am grateful for every one of them.

Speaking of flying

Here's a flashback, a photo I never got around to posting: forest and tundra in Denali National Park, as seen from the sightseeing plane. Looking at this picture it's amazing to me that we got up so high in such an itty-bitty plane.

Now that it's officially Denali

The mountain formerly known as McKinley, as seen from the air a year ago.

Saturday reflections

Regular blogging is hereby resumed, although I will probably be mining the Alaska pictures for some time to come.

Here's another picture from my small plane adventure -- the mountain reflected in the wing of the plane.

Here comes civilization

The bus ride was fun, even though I was so sick, but I was still ready to get off. I was not, however, ready to leave Denali, so it was with mixed feelings that I saw we were heading back to paved road. This meant we were almost at the train station.

Another look

As we followed the same road leaving Denali as we had going in, a lot of the pictures I took ended up being very similar to the ones I'd taken a few days earlier. But the different time of day, different weather, and different light made some of the places we passed look completely different. The snow-capped mountains in the distance in this picture, for example, weren't visible at all on Thursday.

Mountain melodrama

Here are two shots of the Alaska Range mountains I took while we were stopped at the Eielson Center. The combination of early morning light and heavy clouds (and a photographer incapable of clear thought) produced mostly shaky, badly framed and seriously overexposed shots, but these two were worth saving. The digital processing turned not very good pictures into something that perfectly expresses how I felt at the moment.

Eielson Visitor Center

First bathroom stop. I like these handrails on the stairs -- they looked as tipsy as I felt.