Hi All. I haven't posted to the blog since July. Fortunately Eric has been updating you on our progress. My excuse is that we spent so much time on the road that by the time we pulled in to a motel at night, cleaned up and got dinner, it was too late and I was too tired to begin typing. Again, thanks to Eric for keeping you at least minimally updated. As he notes in his last post he will fill in more detail. I intend on doing the same thing so keep checking back for more updates.
The last time I posted I was sitting on the deck of a cabin we had rented for the evening on the banks of an overflow channel of the Talkeetna River in Talkeetna. The semi-fiasco with the license plates at the dealership in Anchorage was behind us and the plan was that the sales manager would overnight them to his buddy at the Fairbanks HD dealership where we would pick them up on Thursday, July 19. Lou called all over this morning (July 16) to see if we could charter a flight around Mt. McKinley. He was successful and the flight was incredible. We flew in bright sun approaching the mountain. The terrain below was quite flat and very wet. Ponds and peatlands pocked the landscape. The dense vegetation of the flats and river floodplains quickly gave way to the bare rock in Denali NP. We began to gain elevation and as we did so it began to rain. The dull gray/blue color of the clouds was beautiful and Jock, our pilot, steered us back into bright sun. We were high enough to see several glaciers occupying different vallies. This was a perspective that any glacial geologist would give a right arm for. Circques and arretes, tarns and morraines and ice embedded with rock; Jock twisted and turned the plane and gave us great views. Seeing this raw landscape either in the grip of the ice or very recently released provided insights on how our northeastern landscape has evolved since the glaciers left. Jock landed us on Pica Glacier very close to base camp, where climbing parties stage for the attempts on McKinley. The surface of t he glacier was very soft and the snow/ice was granular. It was apparent that there was much freeze/thaw/freeze going on. We were warned not to walke too far from the "landing strip" because of hidden crevasses. Several other planes had landed and it was quite surreal to be surrounded by huge silent rock and ice mountains, but have brightly colored planes flying in and out. We flew back to Talkeetna where the first of many coincidences occurred. During converstation Jock indicated his partner in the plane was from Saranac Lake. His partner is Mike Richter. I knew the name but had never met the guy.
I had tried to connect with Hilmar and Kurt Gruendling in Anchorage with no luck. At least we talked. He too was heading up to Talkeetna but our dates just didn't overlap. Another coincidence! It's been since 1991 that we had been in ALaska together and now after all that time, we appear in Anchorage in the same week.
More posting later.
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