A Plane Ride up Mount McKinley and Landing at Base Camp. (Denali to those who live in Alaska)

If you live in Alaska, you call it Denali. That's the original name of the mountain given by the first natives in the area. It was good enough for hundreds of years so why change it to some old president?

Today's snowfall at our home has led me to share some beautiful snowy photos from our Alaskan Expedition. We were excited along with our friends from Australia to take a plane trip up to the Denali base camp. It was a beautiful day for it as usually clouds are blocking the view. In fact the view was so great that it really confused our minds. The mountains were so huge and the view so expansive that your mind can't take it all in. There was one point where we swore our pilot was going to scrape wings with the mountain, but then he pointed out that this tiny little red dot we saw between us and the mountain was another plane! Our minds could barley take in that it looked so close we could touch it but it was literally a mile a way.

Here's a short little video to give you a feel for the trip.

We thought we'd just fly by base camp and go back, but as there was several feet of fresh snow our pilot wanted to land the plane on the edge of the mountain at base camp to work on his runway! We were surprised enough about this, but then when he landed he asked us to get of the plane while he takes off and lands several times to pack down the snow on the landing area. We were very excited to get to watch all this until he told us not to move from the spot we were standing because there were huge holes in the ice that were hundreds of feet deep all around us and the new snow had covered up these crevasses so that we would never see them!

After 4 or 5 take offs and landings our pilot figured it was safe enough now to take off with all of us back on board. It was a concerning moment as we all held our breath as the plane finally lifted off the snow as it ran out of runway at the side of the mountain. It was an unforgettable experience.

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Hope you enjoyed this little trip with us. Until next time, Steem on.

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