Looking down on the spaces between Denali and the surrounding mountains.
Monday, June 8, 2026
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.
Sunday, June 7, 2026
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.
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.
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.
View from the AWCC
I'm guessing I ignored this picture of the mountains behind the wildlife center because I'd already posted so many pictures of mountains, but it's still pretty.
Flashback: Alaska
Reindeer are not native to Alaska; as in South Georgia, they were originally imported as a food source. Alaska Native populations were starving because the whaling industry was disrupting their traditional food supplies, and arrangements were made to bring in reindeer from Russia to supplement the increasingly scarce caribou. Reindeer and caribou are the same species, but different subspecies, and since all of the reindeer in Alaska are semidomesticated, a century and a half of breeding has increased the visible differences between them.
There are fewer than 20,000 reindeer left in Alaska, and by law only Alaska Natives are allowed to keep them.
If I ever knew how these two ended up in the AWCC, I've long since forgotten it. Perhaps they needed rehab to learn to walk with those ridiculous antlers on their heads? They remind me of Max the dog in the original cartoon of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
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