– David L.
Denali (Mt. McKinley) is one of the most spectacular alpine areas in the world. The view is great from the road look-out, but you have to fly into Denali to see the incredible alpine area surrounding the summit. Experience Alaska with N2 Alaska’s Denali Scenic flightseeing tours.
It takes 15 to 20 minutes of flying from Talkeetna just to get into the Alaska Range. The Ruth Amphitheater tour gets you deep into the mountains, and where this tour turns back toward Talkeetna, the Base camp tour continues on. Fifteen more minutes flying from this point is the base camp tour, this will take you past the knife edge ridge of Huntington, over the Tokositna Glacier to Hunter.
Dug in at the bottom of the North Face of Hunter is “Base Camp”, the South East Fork of the Kahiltna. This is where most of the Climbers start their climb up Denali. The average trip up and back to base camp is 28 days. If you’re flying over during peak climbing season (May and June) you will see an almost continuous line of climbers working their way up the Kahiltna glacier to the Summit or on their way back down. We’ll turn around over the Kahiltna between the Summits of Foraker and Denali and start our decent back to Talkeetna down the 50 mile long glacier. I like to take a short cut through the granite peaks of Little Switzerland, then over the gold rich valleys of the Dutch and Peters Hills. You have a good chance of seeing bears on the Mountain sides here, if the berries are out. The best place to see the Moose will be in the lush wet marsh areas along the wide braided glacier river valleys that we fly over returning to Talkeetna.
An Otherworldly Experience with a Skillful and Knowledgeable Pilot, David Hicks
Oh, my! Where to start! One of the best experiences of my long life! Alaskan pilot David Hicks is one of the best – experienced, skillful, careful, thorough, very knowledgeable of the geology, glaciology, weather, everything you see and have a question about. He communicates clearly and his calm, gentle and thorough explanations of what he was doing and why kept our one nervous flier very comfortable. His concern for his passengers and good judgment made us feel very secure with him. And what you see is overwhelming! I cannot put words to it. It is so much more than any of us imagined it to be. It was as if I were in an alternative universe, with all sense of time and proportion as I thought I knew it just blown away.
~ Genevieve L on TripAdvisor
