Photos

Mount McKinley or Denali and the talkeetna River after sunset, seen from Talkeetna, Alaska with a seaplane or flying boat just passing by.

I was very lucky to this as sharp as I did since the camera was set up on a tripod for relaxed landscape shooting (This is one of the results of that shoot). When the plane passed by I took the camera of the tripod increased the ISO to 320 and brought the aperture quickly down to 6.3, which is just one stop down from the maximum on the Canon 100-400 L IS. I only got a shutter speed of 1/60 sec but, oh wonder, it seemed to have been enough for the shot.

Mount McKinley or Denali ("The Great One") in Alaska is the highest mountain peak in the northern hemisphere at a height of approximately 20,320 feet (6,194 m). It is the centerpiece of Denali National Park.

Mount McKinley has a larger bulk and rise than Mount Everest. Even though the summit of Everest is about 9,000 feet (2,700 m) higher as measured from sea level, its base sits on the Tibetan Plateau at about 17,000 feet (5,200 m), giving it a real vertical rise of a little more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). The base of Mount McKinley is roughly a 2,000-foot plateau, giving it an actual rise of 18,000 feet (5,500 m).

The mountain is also characterized by extremely cold weather. A thermometer left exposed at an elevation of 15,000 feet (4,600 m) on Mount McKinley over 19 years recorded a temperature of −100 °F (−73.3 °C) at some point during its exposure. There is also an unusually severe risk of altitude illness for climbers, due to not only its high elevation but also its high latitude. At the equator, a mountain as high as Mount McKinley would have 47% as much oxygen available on its summit as there is at sea level, but because of its latitude, the pressure on the summit of McKinley is even lower (42%).