by The legendary mountain of Denali is located between Anchorage and Fairbanks in Alaska. At 20,310 feet, it’s the highest peak in North America – but it’s not even in the top 100 highest peaks worldwide! It dominates the landscape, and we’d repeatedly exclaim when it came into view during our travels in the state.
Apparently just 30% of visitors get to see it, as it is notoriously covered by clouds. We saw it thanks to completely clear skies for three days in a row, several times with the sun highlighting the peak like a spotlight had been put on it (such as in the cover photo, where you can also see the clouds threatening to move in!).
We did our best to experience it, visiting the National Park’s visitors center, driving 30 miles on the lone road (as far as was open), and doing a few short hikes.
We arrived just a bit too late in the year to ride the park’s official bus tour or to see any bears. We did see a caribou and a moose, along with a few birds, which is more than other people we talked to had seen.
Our big adventure was a plane ride around the mountain, with a glacier landing! It was also our most expensive two hours to date in our nomadic adventures, costing more than $1,100 (for both of us). However, it’s the only way we could get a close-up view, and it was impressive/terrifying. I can’t imagine wanting to try to summit that beast!
The glacier landing was also pretty neat, but anyone who knows me won’t be surprised to learn that in spite of precautionary measures taken by me, the little plane made me sick, so I spent a good portion of the experience with my eyes closed before finally losing my lunch with just minutes to go. I can only laugh about it now.
The nearly 9,500 square-mile park is purposely kept undeveloped, with just a few trails in place. Visitors are encouraged to make their own way. There is a campground and a few administrative buildings, but even these are well blended into the park. Though the area was designated a park in 1917, a road to the park was not even established until 1957! Visitors increased significantly after that.
The first verifiable summit of the peak was in 1913. At least 35,000 people have attempted to summit the mountain, with roughly 60% successful in any given year. It takes two to three weeks to summit from the base camp (at 7,200 feet), depending on the route and conditions. No thank you!
