Alaska: Flightseeing - Oh Hi, Mt McKinley.

One of the major reasons people stop in Talkeetna - besides to sample the local brewery and reindeer - is because of its relative proximity to Denali. The airport is a myriad of flightseeing (a good, but not great pun) tour operators and for no apparent reason, I sign up to K2 Aviation's offering. As always, I'm winging it (also not a great pun).

Not totally trusting myself with an 8:30am departure, opting for the 10:30am flight exiting Talkeetna is a good move. The lady at the front desk informs me that some cloud earlier has cleared up and it is looking like one of the better days of the summer. The pilot - Patrick Carter (google him, his job and some of the projects he is working on are awesome) - is clearly impassioned by what he does and takes us through a safety briefing light heartedly, "if for some reason we need to land and I can't get to them, there is a tent and some food in the front, but don't worry, these guys in with the red planes around us will be out with the pizzas and beers pretty quickly."

Black humour remains the best kind.

Our route takes in a collection of glaciers, peaks, circumnavigates Denali and for the majority of the flight the weather is completely amenable to showing us a good time.

A cauldron of cloud!

Patrick is a pretty great narrator, he covers the natural history, ecology and cultural history of the area in between alerting us to various points of interest. This is all momentarily abandoned when he sees me playing with lego. He and I briefly bond over Junior and then a Snowtrooper. Somewhere in the flight he begins an observation with, "now I'm no geologist but..."

It's jarring to hear. It sounds a little like those clowns who preface racism with, "I'm not a racist but...". Patrick's observation of weathering patterns on the Alaska Range is reasonably sound. Perhaps he is a geologist in denial, much like those other guys with that different prefix.

Glacier carved valley with Denali in the background.

The flight itself is incredible. It seems every time out there has been one or two experiences that are very much, "do this and don't pay too much attention to the price" sort of activities. Shark diving. The Serengeti. Petra. Jiuzhaigao. Abu Simbel.

Flying over Denali National Park is it. Just do it.

Mt McKinley/Denali/The Great One. Whatever you call it, it's impressive.