Flightseeing

I went for flightseeing for free! Excellent excellent, because we got to go on a day when it was clear (cloud tends to obscure the peak of Mt McKinley very often, its so high that it creates its own weather). Since no one seems to know what flightseeing is, I shall elaborate.

Definition: the practice or business of transporting tourists to otherwise inaccessible wilderness areas by plane/helicopter, for viewing the areas by air or for organized hikes

Yeap. The tour that I went on usually costs about 300USD! Unfortunately there wasn't a glacier landing but its free so I shouldn't be picky. The horseback riding costs 100+ USD too. More free stuff that I haven't done: rafting and the husky tour (already went last year so no rush) and the ATV ride. Serious perks of the job!

Pictures as usual will do the talking. Obviously cannot capture the grandeur of the whole place. For that you'll have to see it for yourself. Doesn't help that the windows were kinda unclear and lotsa dead bugs were splattered on the windscreen. I did luck out and get to be the co-pilot though (my duties were to not touch anything), so good views abounded!

-Deluge of Pictures-

Glacially carved valleys tend to have braided rivers.

The Alaska Range

A lot of the park is turning green

Mt. McKinley (Denali is the Native name)

The bunch of small dots is the base camp for ascent to the peaks of Mt. McKinley. If you look carefully you can see the tiny trails heading upward from the camps.

Love the texture of the snowy mountains

Fascinating crevasses

Our pilot

That's Marlo right at the back, and Dan, her boyfriend

Beautiful ridge

I'm pretty sure this is the best thing I've done in my life (the other thing is probably UCSD). Meeting many new and interesting people, including an Irish guy who works for Greenpeace and has been to all the places I want to go. He spent February on an icebreaker cruise to the Antarctic to go after a whaling ship and now he's in Alaska after the International Whaling Commission in Anchorage. He met Hayden Panettiere from Heroes too! Amazingly he didn't think she was pretty.

A lecturer from UCSD came too! And on the day that I was wearing my Revelle shirt. Coincidence? FM, she said she teaches American Culture. Her name's Mikaela something. Heh.