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Ruth Amphitheatre & Glacier Landing

You enter the Sheldon Amphitheatre, named after a bush pilot who built a viewing hut here on the glacier before it became a national park. You can stay here for $100 a night. It has a wood stove and bunks 6. If you opt for a glacier landing, this is where you’ll likely land. You’ll step out of the plane and onto an ice sheet nearly a mile thick. The scale of the Amphitheatre is hard to fathom. You’ll feel like you can reach and out touch the “nearby” peaks…until your pilot tells you they are in some cases ten miles away. Don’t forget to take some pictures, have a snowball fight, make snow angels…do whatever you want…you don’t get many chances in life to travel back into the last Ice Age!

Airborne in the Mountains

Talkeetna is only thirty minutes away by air, but flying into the Alaska Range, it's like going backward in time.

3500' Deep

It's difficult to imagine, but the ice in the Great Gorge has been measured by sonar to be over 3500' deep.

The Gateway

The glacier landing strip, is just around the corner. Touchdown will be at 5500 feet above sea level.

Turbine Otter

The Turbine Otter is a fantastic bush airplane. It's always thrilling to watch one land on and take off from a glacier.

Glacier Landing

Being on a glacier in this area is the experience of a lifetime.

Mt. Silverthrone

Distances can be decieving, the base of the snow capped mountain across from the landing strip is eight miles away.

Glaciers

As snow accumulates at higher elevations, it compresses to form ice. As the ice flows, cracks can form on the surface.

Inside-Glacier

As soon as snow falls on the glacier, the crystals transform into tiny spheres of ice, which over time become more and more compressed.

Big Wall Climbers

In Alaska, climbers go 'airplane camping' and set up base camps near their objectives. The Ruth area is popular with climbers.

Minus 148

The summit of the mountain reaches into the jet stream. The first winter ascent in 1967 estimated the wind chill they experienced to be 148 degrees below zero.

Don Sheldon Mt. House

Don Sheldon was the glacier pilot who pioneered landings in this area. He managed to stake off a few acres on the glacier before this area became a park. He built a viewing hut on that rock out cropping. All the materials were flown in.