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We awake early again and are ready to board the train long before it is ready for us. The day dawns dreary and damp once again. I'm worried we won't be able to see the Mountain, or much else for that matter. From our room at the Hilton we watch a freight train head towards Fairbanks as our train is being made up. A locomotive backs several passenger cars down the track to connect them to four HAL cars, which will then be attached to Princess Cruise cars and others to head for Denali National Park.

At 6:45 AM we present ourselves to the HAL office and are loaded onto buses for the brief ride down the hill to the Alaska Railroad tracks. After a few minutes the train appears around a bend and a little later we board. Our luggage is whisked up the stairs to the observation car, a surprisingly comfortable car with tables between facing seats or banquettes. The windows curve around toward the roof, providing plenty of viewing area while not being open to the sky. Each car has a dining room and kitchen downstairs as well as bathrooms for men and women. A staff of a car manager, a bartender, cook, dining manager and a waiter complete the staff for our car.

Dave Shoul is the car manager and host for our car. He is a trim man wearing a colorful vest and a well-developed moustache. He looks a little like a nineteenth century dancehall gambler with none of the threat or danger. As we pull out of the station and head into the interior, Dave begins an interesting, informative, and amusing patter that will continue for the next eight hours with only brief breaks. As we pass through the small towns and past the remote houses, Dave has stories to tell about the history and culture of each place. He seems to have met most of the people living near the tracks and to have visited and studied each community along the way. He tells stories that help us develop a picture of life in contemporary Alaska.

We pass through jagged mountain passes, travel along an arm of Cook Inlet, run beside and across fast running, milky colored water, ideal for paddling and salmon fishing. We pass pretty little lakes and isolated cottages set in the woods and accessible only by rail. A special car comes through regularly, delivering mail and supplies, and providing access to the outside for people living along the rail line. Dave tells stories about bear, moose, and caribou. He describes the Iditarod sled-dog race and the Talkeetna moose dropping festival. He explains why Mt. McKinley and Denali are the same mountain, but Denali is the National Park. He introduces us to the native peoples of Alaska and explains the difference between Indians and Eskimos. Time passes easily and we enjoy the trip. We take lunch in the dining car below, enjoying sandwiches on sourdough bread and return to our seats.

Early on, Scott, a sales rep for HAL, drops by to interest us in optional excursions to take while staying at the McKinley Chalet

Resort. After some discussion, we sign up for Irene and Mom to take a jet boat trip on the Nenana River while I finally bite the bullet and sign up to take a flight seeing trip to Mt. McKinley. I've been resisting this for weeks, but we decide the $209.00 charge will be worthwhile if the mountain comes out. As we ride along, the chances of this happening seem increasingly remote, although occasionally the sun breaks through and patches of blue show up. Mountains frame many of the views and we learn about glaciation, moraines, erosion, glacial silt, and more. Dave makes what could be a long and tedious journey into one of education and humor.

We rise to 2600 feet as we approach the Park. We see beaver dams and lodges and a couple of moose coming out of a fast flowing river. Some people claim to have seen a bear. We miss it. The train tracks travel along rivers colored a milky, slate grey from the glacial silt they contain. Settlements are few and far between. It is clear that life out here is rugged and demanding. We pull into the Denali National Park depot where buses are lined up to take us to our hotel, the McKinley Chalet Resort, owned by HAL. Our bus pulls into a complex of log buildings and drops down a steep incline to a series of log chalets one of which contains our rooms. We climb the outside steps and walk along a balcony overlooking the river with high, jagged mountains looming over the other side, to room 452. We find a comfortable two-room suite with a small living room and a bedroom containing a queen size and a single bed. Mom and Irene add some warmer clothes and rush off for their jet boat trip. I read for a few moments and head up to the lodge to eat a small supper, visit the gift shop, and prepare for my flight seeing trip.

At 7:00 PM the sun is still high in the sky, which has turned to a bright blue with not a cloud in it. I worry that there will be a fuss about my weight. The material on flight seeing excursion operators says that people weighing over 250 pounds must purchase two tickets. While I’ve consistently weighed in at 247 for the past two weeks, with my clothes and cameras I must top 260. A couple of other beefy guys add to my concerns. Chris picks us up in a Dodge van and drives us to the airstrip, about nine miles down the road, outside the park. We check in and give our weights again. Two planes sit on the runway. One is a smallish, yellow Cessna with a single engine, the other a two engine Apache that

oozes power. I hope for the Apache. A trim man in a leather flight jacket and bushy moustache comes out and calls my name along with four other people and marches us to the Cessna. He turns and asks who wants to sit in the co-pilot seat. I raise my hand, fast, and he calls on me. It helps that the other two men are with their wives and I'm the only single on board.

The pilot, Rick Heubner, orients us to the rules and tells us how to behave on his plane. He then runs through the pre-flight routine and heads down the gravel runway, turns, and guns the engine. We bounce along as we pick up speed and suddenly the ride smoothes out and we are airborne. The airport is at about 2000 feet and Mt. McKinley's north peak rises to over 20,000 feet. We head ESE along the northern edge of the Alaska Range. We look down on mountains worn down by glacial action. From above, it's easy to see that the mountains are all rock. Scarcely any vegetation shows at all. Braided rivers drain the glacier fields rising to our left. Shiny braids of thin, silt-filled water wash toward the Yukon. The

mountains are more snow-covered and glaciers grow down the valleys between them. Some are covered with silt and ground rock, others pure and white.

After about twenty minutes of flying, ascending slowly to about nine thousand feet, a few fluffy white clouds move and a huge, white, two-towered massif appears dead ahead. Mt. McKinley is out in all her glory. Below we are flying over a huge glacier flowing away from the mountain. To our left, other white mountain peaks, seeming dwarfed below the 20,300 feet of the north summit of McKinley, tower over the rest of the range. Rick points out there are twenty peaks which would also be the highest mountains in North America if it weren't for McKinley. Seventeen of them are in Alaska. From time to time Rick makes a 90 degree turn to the left, then turns 180 degrees to the right to allow people sitting at other windows to have a direct picture of the mountain. This enables me to get good pictures of the surrounding mountains while the other passengers can obtain an unobstructed view of the mountain for a few seconds

Rick continues to fly into the heart of McKinley. He tells of the traditional route up the northeast face, a grueling trip taking thirty days from the starting point at Horseshoe Lake. Today, climbers attack McKinley from the southwest where they are dropped at 7000 feet by ski-planes for the assaults on the summit. About 1200 people attempt expeditions on McKinley each climbing season, and annually about 300 make the summit. In vertical rise McKinley is a larger mountain than Everest. Although Everest is the tallest mountain in the world, its base is at about 14,000 feet and its rise to the summit about fifteen thousand. McKinley, while having a summit at just over 20,000 feet, rises from a base of around 2000, giving it a vertical elevation of nearly 18,000 feet. The largest mountain on earth.

We continue to fly towards the summit. We reach an elevation of 11,000 feet, about a thousand feet above the theoretical limit for our plane. Rick says we are about two miles below the summit and about five miles distant. McKinley, blue-white and majestic fills our vision. Too soon he turns around and heads back towards the airport. He takes a course slightly further north in order to avoid the bumpiness created by winds coming across the Alaska Range. The glaciers have greater meaning now that we've seen their source. The other peaks - Silverthorn, Mt. Brooks, Mt. Deception – are huge and impressive, but somewhat anti-climactic after the big mountain. We descend with Rick trying to spot Dall sheep along the summits. We get a good aerial view of the hotel village and head for the landing strip. We emerge from the plane exhilarated. Several people are a bit queasy, but no one has become sick. I have had an experience which will be hard to beat as the highlight of the trip.

I return to the hotel room, tired and happy. Irene and Mom are not back from their excursion. I work on pictures and getting all my batteries recharged for tomorrow. They return around 10:00 PM and we all go to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day. The sun is still shining.