People who live outside Alaska probably won't appreciate how incredible yesterday was. Clear days like yesterday do not happen often. Tour guides like to throw out the statistic that only 30% of the people who visit Alaska see Denali. Even on a clear day, Denali creates its own weather pattern and hides in the clouds. So yesterday when I could see Denali from the Fred Mayer parking lot in Eagle River 300 miles away, there was only one thing to do; grab Bandit, grab the camera, jump in the Jeep and head north.


Kashwitna Lake on the drive up.


Panoramic taken from the deck of McKinley View Lodge. Which if you're ever in the area has some of the best cinnamon rolls on the face of the planet!


Denali from the south overlook.


Glacier Gorge on Denali, they claim it's actually deeper than the Grand Canyon. All that stuff that looks like sand dunes at the bottom, that's actually part of the glacier. It's covered n dirt that it has displaced, dig down a few inches and it's ice below.


Denali from the north overlook. I have never seen it clear enough to see the peaks from here until yesterday.


From the north overlook, not sure what the formation is, but it looks cool.


Denali, Hunter and Foraker from the banks of the Susitna River in Talkeetna.


Bandit on the deck of McKinley View Lodge with Denali in the background.

Love it

Thanks for the rare views!

Nice photography.

Awesome, saved me $10K in travel expenses!

Has to be a great place to live

Gorgeous pics although Bandit doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm.

Thanks for the pics. Going to start planning on going up there.

Absolutely stunning pictures, thanks for posting them.

My younger brother worked as an electrician for many years. Several years ago he took up hiking and camping.

About two years ago he told our mother he wanted to some day sell everything and just travel around the country.

At one point my mother told him since he is not married, has no kids and owned his home to sell it move back in with her, save his money and when he was ready, to go travel around the country.

So that's what he did. He bought himself an adventure van and figured how much he needed to save to be able to travel for a year. So spring of last year he started his journey.

With that said he has been as far north as the artic circle and as far south as the Everglades.

The pictures of all the national parks he has posted have been stunning including the clear as day pictures of Denali on his way to the Artic Circle and then again on his way back south.

He has decided since he has been under budget to keep traveling around the country and planed on going back to Denali again this year.

Nice pics, thanks for posting.

Awesome pictures Frank!
I’ve been to Denali twice and have yet to see her.

That's awesome. I was fortunate enough to see it during my visit a few years ago.

Whoa...!
A clear, near cloudless shot of Denali is quite rare, and when she's visible, you gain a new appreciation of how insanely large the massif is.
It's been 25+ years since I was at Kahiltna base camp looking up at both Hunter and Foreaker before heading up the glacier to Denali. Such a beautiful place as Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song's lyrics:
We come from the land of ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow

hummed in my head

Bad mafk ass 2000. Looks incredible. Enjoy!

That is a fantastic series.
Back in the early ’70s my future wife and I rode the train that ran directly north from Anchorage to Fairbanks (only a somewhat indirect road existed at the time, not along that route). It was possible to get off pretty much anywhere in the wilderness and then be picked up later again when it came back through days later. Our first full day there we had a clear view of Denali* and even though I’d been stationed in Alaska earlier I didn’t appreciate how rare that was. I probably still have a few slides of the view someplace, but they weren’t anything like yours.

* I will never call it by the name of yet another obscure politician who doesn’t deserve to be remembered by having a magnificent feature like that named for him.

Spectacular!!

I spent 23 years there and never saw it that clearly.

A very uncommon treat.

Take it from a lifelong flatlander, those are really, really, beautiful and impressive photographs.

Amazing, thanks for sharing those.
You just threw down the gauntlet to Clubleaf!

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
Gorgeous pics although Bandit doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm.

No, he was more interested in getting a piece of cinnamon roll tossed to him.

Those are awesome, and I love the detail of the glacier gorge. The shot with the river in the foreground from Talkeetna is pretty amazing, too. We were right there where you took that, but we couldn't see anything that day, and I'd have never imagined it would be so big even from there.

We got lucky and got to see the mountain on our first trip, but mostly just from the window of the NPS bus. It was only for a little bit, nowhere near as clear as your pics, nor did we get the full panorama. It was clouded over the whole time on our trip last year.