Lou’s News #11 — The Lure of Alaska
Hi all! Here’s yet another of my occasional missives…
My wife Lisa had never visited Alaska. Such an egregious oversight in our marriage, all my fault, mediation required. To that end, we caught the usual redeye flight from Denver, hopped in a rental car, and drove to Talkeetna for our first stop on the tour: Flightseeing over Denali, a train ride, local guitar band’s muskeg rock at the Fairview. Then it was off to Girdwood for a few nights, a la Turnagain Pass in the rain.
After that, the crème de la crème: A few days of island peak skiing and fishing in the fjords of Prince William Sound, out of Whittier.
The perks were many: An afternoon at the Anchorage Museum checking out indigenous technology, a few hours at the Aviation Museum (the world’s greatest collection of landing gear skis), driving around looking at the views, and so much more.
Above, the Alaska Range viewed from Talkeetna, Susitna River, by some standards the 15th largest river in the United States. The spiky peak above Lisa’s head is Mount Huntington, while Denali is back there in the clouds where it likes to live.
Upper Muldrow Glacier under the Harper Icefall. Karstens Ridge Coxcomb is the sharp arete to the left of the icefall. Denali summit is the farthest snow. I was on this route in 1973 — it’s impossible to forget. To give you an idea of the scale, the head of the Muldrow is about a mile wide, elevation around 11,000 feet. Summit is 20,310 feet. You do the math.
Our Talkeetna Air Taxi flightsee was superbly choreographed. They aim to give you a sense of scale, and that they do. At one point, the pilot turned the plane so Denali’s Wickersham Wall filled the entire windshield, zero sky. Pilot: “I know it looks like we’re flying straight into the mountain folks, but it’s still four miles away, plenty of time to turn.” After that, we made the requisite glacier landing in the Ruth Gorge, then headed back to Talkeetna for an evening at the Fairview.
Flightseeing Denali under a bluebird sky, shrimp&ski on Prince William Sound. I’ll take either. With the help of boat owner Alex and our son Louie, we hit the island peaks shown above. Bite sized for Alaska, about 1,700 vertical feet with sea level O2.
Yours truly, up and up.
The boat action wasn’t just about skiing. We harvested a few gallons of shrimp, and Lisa hauled in this Alaskan chicken, otherwise known as a halibut. We bunked both nights in a USFS public cabin. Guess what we ate for dinner.
Thanks goes out to our Alaskan hosts: Alex, Margi and baby Nora!
