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.

A view from above

I love seeing mountains from the air, and the Andes always seem particularly photogenic. This was taken on the flight between Rio and Santiago.

Toronto

I took this picture as the plane came in for a landing this afternoon.

Friends warned me to expect snow, but I was expecting a little dusting, some slushy gutters, not a Norman Rockwell Christmas card. And downtown, where I'm staying, it is mostly slush. Still, I feel as though the calendar suddenly fast forwarded a couple of months. 

Gray Sunday in Vancouver

And here is evidence that it was completely gray and gloomy in Vancouver yesterday: two pictures taken in Coal Harbour.

The sun is peeking through today, and I hope to see some of the city this morning before meeting up with my tour group this afternoon.

Antarctica flashback

I've been processing old photos in fits and starts. Most of them aren't that interesting -- they're the ones that get passed over during the many rounds of sorting, usually because there are better pictures I'd rather work on.

But I love this one. This was taken at the Chilean Air Force base on King George Island while we were waiting for the plane back to Punta Arenas. Such brilliant light, and the day before the wind and snow had been so bad we couldn't leave the ship.

Why I'm in Germany rather than Belgium

This was my seat on the Singapore Airlines flight from New York. The picture doesn't really show you the scale but it was approximately the width of three economy seats on a U.S. carrier (if you look closely, you can see the seat belt coming out of the leather next to the pillow -- there was at least an extra twelve inches of room on either side of the seat belt, handy for stashing the throw pillows.)

I first started looking for flights to Brussels six months ago, and they were ridiculously expensive, even for August -- $1700 in coach, one way! I put off booking, hoping that prices would come down, and when they didn't, started looking for alternatives -- Amsterdam? London? Nothing was any cheaper once you factored in the cost of a second flight or train to get to Brussels.

When I found this flight on Singapore Airlines, I didn't notice at first that the price was for business class rather than coach. Even with the cost of a night in Frankfurt and a train to Brussels the following day added in, it still cost less than a direct flight in coach. (I realized later that it was such a bargain because the flight continued on to Singapore and they probably had empty seats on the first leg that they wanted to fill up.)

So I'm in Frankfurt. And the Singapore Airlines experience was even more luxe than expected -- instead of Economy-Business-First, this flight had Economy-Business-Suites. The bathroom was large enough to walk around in, with bins of toothbrushes, razors and toiletries instead of the usual amenities bag, and there was a makeup mirror at every seat. The suites probably had Jacuzzis.

I didn't really sleep, despite taking an Ambien, but at least I was lying awake in an actual bed complete with sheet and duvet.

More Patagonia

In, well, Above Patagonia

I was going through Santiago pictures, looking for more architecture, when I found the pictures I took on the flight to Punta Arenas.

I'm always disappointed with pictures from planes, but when the scenery is as spectacular as this was I end up taking them anyway.

But they came out much better than usual. I've wanted to see Patagonia ever since reading the Bruce Chatwin book many years ago; I hope someday to see those mountains from the ground.

Astronomy Tuesday

Last week's supermoon/lunar eclipse as seen from Arizona.

I saw it from the plane on my way back to Santiago. After all the drama of missing my original flight from Punta Arenas and having to scramble to rebook, I'd forgotten about the eclipse -- it had come up on the trip a few times, with all of us thinking it was too bad we wouldn't get to see it from Antarctica. I was seated next to the window on the plane, and a bright red light outside caught my eye. If I'd been looking west I would have assumed it was a spectacular sunset, but I was on the other side of the plane, and the mountains below were shrouded in mist and though I thought it was maybe some kind of reflection, I couldn't figure out how that was possible.

I heard a man in the seat behind me say, “What the hell is that?” and I thought, Okay, it's not just me -- that is really strange.

Within a couple of minutes it had risen above the clouds enough for me to recognize the full moon, and I remembered that there was going to be a lunar eclipse, so that was why it was so red. The man behind me remained mystified, however. “That can't be the moon.” He went on to explain how the moon is different in South America from North America, and since it had been almost full at home, it couldn't be full down here and that red thing must be something else.

He was still talking about it when we landed, still convinced that it couldn't possibly have been the moon.

Image Credit and Copyright: Fred Espenak (MrEclipse.com)

The Andes at dawn

I took this picture from the plane as we approached Santiago early this morning. First leg of the journey accomplished!

I'm leaving early tomorrow for a day trip into the mountains, so even though it's really only dinnertime by my body clock, I'm going to crawl into bed and read until I fall asleep.

In transit

This crappy picture, taken through the window of an airport lounge, is being posted just because I expect it's all most of us will ever see of Beirut. I'm here for four hours, waiting for my flight to Paris, eating the mini pizzas and overly sweet cookies that are the only snacks available and going through my Wadi Rum pictures.

I know large parts of the city are still scarred into ruins by years of war, but I didn't see any of that flying in -- just green hills running down to the sea, with a cradle of snow-capped mountains behind. We flew over wide boulevards full of weekday traffic, glass office towers, apartment buildings, slums -- a city, in other words, much like any other.

Even if I had time and a visa, I wouldn't be tempted to go outside. I had to go through security four times to get from my hotel in Amman to this lounge in Beirut, and I'm definitely tired of (though obviously grateful for) the intense security of Middle Eastern airports. For some reason, my zoom lens has been considered especially suspicious -- it's been pulled out and looked through at every checkpoint. No one seems to believe that it goes with my camera.

Jet lag

I got slammed.

I'm pretty good at minimizing jet lag -- watch the caffeine, try to get on the new time zone schedule as quickly as possible -- but sometimes your body has its own ideas about time zones and when it's appropriate to be awake and you just have to ride it out.

I slept for a few hours on the plane to Heathrow, and then deliberately stayed awake on the flight to Abu Dhabi since we'd be arriving around bedtime. I felt okay, though I would not have wanted to have to pass an IQ test upon arrival, and I had a complete brain freeze at the cash machine. (What was the exchange rate again? I could remember the ones for India and Jordan, but not the one I happened to need at the moment. 5000 dirhams was probably way too many, but would 1000 be enough? How much was the cab likely to be again? I compromised on 2000 dirhams, which turned out to be approximately 540 dollars, most of which will probably end up getting converted to rupees next week.) But all I had to do was get a cab (83 dirhams, as it turned out) and check myself into the hotel, and I had enough functioning neurons to manage that.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling pleasantly fuzzy but more or less in synch with my surroundings. I wandered through the hotel gardens (that's the private beach in the photo, because of course there's a private beach) where doves were singing hoo hoo-HOO in Arabic, and tiny birds I couldn't quite see were chittering away in the palm fronds. The breakfast buffet was lavish, and I had a Middle Eastern meal of hummus and feta and black olives so briny they brought tears to my eyes and woke me up more thoroughly than the three cups of coffee. (Also a waffle.)

I decided to take a walk along the Corniche, and maybe even get on a bus tour if I saw a bus and I felt like taking a tour. But it was hotter than I'd expected and by the time I turned back, the red towers of the Sheraton were like a mirage in the distance that didn't seem to get any closer, and I felt like my batteries had run down but I'd been plugged into the wrong charger: Crackle, crackle zzz! Crackle, crackle zzz!

I tried hard to stay awake but finally went to bed around six, when I was literally falling asleep sitting up with my book in my hands, and woke up a few hours later. And again, around midnight, when I was awake until three. And again, just before dawn when the call to prayer jerked me out of a nightmare about wandering through Istanbul trying to find my hotel.

So Day 2, and I'm ready to give Abu Dhabi another try. Wish me luck.