Flight and landing on a glacier
Trip Start
May 05, 2009
1
21
48
Trip End
Sep 20, 2009
Healy,
Alaska,
United States
Saturday, July 4, 2009
On our last day off for the next 7 days Dave and Val decide to try to get on a glacier landing flight. Carol and Larry Hensel went on one, and they just loved it. Dave and Val are able to fly stand-by and only have to pay the gratuity which is a very good deal. Val went into Human Resources to arrange for the flight; Vanessa called the airline and they were all booked for today, but they said if they get anymore bookings they would be adding a plane and in that case Dave and Val could go. It is a beautiful day, and as luck would have it they have to add another flight and it's a go for my favorite couple. Of course beagles are not allowed, and I have to remain back at the trailer, but I will try to be a sport about it.
When they get back from their flight they are on cloud 9
Mt. McKinley
. (Did you like the pun?) Anyway, Val says that she loved this flight as much or maybe even more than the summit flight they did last year. They flew to the Ruth glacier which falls from Mt. McKinley. So you get a great close up view of Mt. McKinley, you land on a glacier, you get out of the plane and walk around on the glacier, you get to see the Sheldon house, you get the crap scared out of you on landing and takeoff from the glacier…When you land on Ruth glacier you get a view of the house, and the outhouse, that Don Sheldon built. Don Sheldon was an air-taxi driver out of Talkeetna, Alaska. He was pretty well known in the interior for his flying prowess. So when homesteads were offered he decided to homestead on Ruth glacier of all places. He built a house and an outhouse on top of a peak of mountain on Ruth glacier. After some years had gone by the government decided that they didn’t really mean that someone could homestead on a glacier, and tried to get the property back. They took the Sheldon family to court, but in this case the government lost and the Sheldon family still owns their property on the glacier. They rent out the cabin by the week, and it is booked way into the future. You fly in with all of the gear and food you will need for a week, and fly out with everything – including your waste material (the outhouse is off limits). The pilot said that he flew a couple to the glacier to get married, and then they spent their honeymoon in the cabin
Glacier flight.
. Pretty cool. When you look up at the Sheldon house the south peak of Mt. McKinley is in the background. Way cool.The pilot tells Dave and Val that there is thousands of feet of ice beneath their feet and many feet of snow on top of the ice. Val dressed warm thinking that it would be cold at that altitude on a glacier, but she was too warm. The sunlight bouncing off of the snow made sunglasses a necessity. Some people got a hold of a plastic toboggan and took it down the glacier a ways. The half hour allowed on the glacier was soon over, and everyone had to board the little 9 passenger plane for the flight back to Healy. Val’s assigned seat was near the front of the plane, and Dave’s was in the very back. Dave had an anxious moment on the way back when the girl sitting next to him asked for the "Healy parachute" which is actually the “barf bag.” Yikes! Fortunately, she did not have to use it, but Dave is pretty squeamish about that sort of thing (he won’t even clean up my mishaps – Val has to do it) so he was very relieved when the plane landed at Healy without any vomit on board.
The one downside of the trip is that the Nikon did not work. There is a problem with the zoom lens, but Val could not get either lens to work while on the flight
It's beautiful from way up here.
. Fortunately, she had the Sony video camera which also will take still shots. Val is not proficient with the Sony, but she was able to get a lot of video, and some still shots so all was not lost. She even finally figured out how to download the video and still shots from the Sony to the computer thus there are some photos of the flight for your viewing pleasure. When they got back to the trailer Val took me for a nice walk, and being the able lynx locator that I am I found the lynx again. This time it was down by the big bathroom (The Taj), and of course Val did not have a camera with her. I was just sniffing along and there it was. This time I saw it as it was only a few feet off of the road. It saw me, and boy was it ever scared! It arched its back and was jumping around. It’s a good thing for that lynx that Val had me on a leash and was pulling me back because I would have gotten that rascal, and then who knows…
Lynx locator extraordinaire,
Remington Beagle
Comments
What is wrong with the Nikon?
Check the settings. Do you have it on manual focus instead of auto focus? Is your battery fully charged? Is the lens screwed on all the way? Do I need to drive up there? -Lisa
WOW!
WOW!
OMG
I'm really jealous. I realize you are living there for 4 months but we never saw McKinley that clear. So is the shit house that little thing sticking up on glacier - a huge gap away from the house? Yea, I'd be depositing my waste material in the house and bringing it home.