Flightseeing brings expanse of Alaskan wilderness into view

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of analogies to describe what it's like to look down at Alaska from the seat of a small airplane. One of the best heard lately comes from Peggy Bear at Bear Air on Lake Lucille.

"There's so many lakes in the Valley and around here, I've always said that it looks like God stepped out of the bath tub and shook off," Peggy said.

Peggy's husband, Bill Bear, is the sole pilot at Bear Air, one of the many commercial operators that sell flightseeing trips locally. The Bears are partial to float planes, in part because as a practical matter the lakes -- there are too many to count -- outnumber the runways and make it easy to land far from the hustle and bustle of our ordinary lives. Peggy said the experience is especially rewarding for visitors who may have never been in the wilderness before.

"Our Mount McKinley trip is really enhanced, because we have a stop. We land on a wilderness lake, and Bill turns off the engine so you can listen to the wilderness. It's real quiet and they get to see a lot of game, like swans and beavers. They also get to take pictures of the mountain from the lake," Peggy said.

Up in Talkeetna, there are several companies that put their passengers on the glaciers of Mount McKinley. It's a popular trip, according to Jeff McAbee of Talkeetna Air Taxi. But McAbee said the sheer size of the Alaskan wilderness often leaves the deepest impression.

"A lot of people come with the mindset that they want to see the top of McKinley and I respect that, but once you get west of the road you could cross over to Siberia before you'd see another one -- it's other-worldly for people who are from Kansas or Ohio," McAbee said.

Visitors might ask for Mount McKinley by name but most operators have multiple scenic trips to choose from. Peggy Bear said one of her favorites is a trip to Knik Glacier and Lake George. The area is often photographed by professionals -- it once stood in as an alien planet in the feature film "Star Trek IV, The Undiscovered Country" -- but Peggy said that Knik Glacier and Lake George are often overlooked by tourists and locals.

"We have the most beautiful glaciers right in our backyard, and people don't know about it because they're just not advertised as much," she said.

The trip goes upriver to the terminus of Knik Glacier and then continues up the glacier to Lake George, traveling over a deep gorge and river fork that lie between the glacier and Mount Palmer, just east of Pioneer Peak. The gorge itself is as astonishingly deep as the nearby peaks of the Chugach Range are high. During winter, Lake George is an excellent landing spot and during summer months Colony Glacier calves into the lake.

"And if you extend that trip a little farther, it drops into Prince William Sound and that's just a jewel," Peggy said.