Photo Credit: K2 Aviation

Denali's glaciers are high in the mountains of The Alaska Range. Here are the most impressive, and the flight tours to see them!

Show Map

Glaciers in Denali National Park

Denali National Park Glacier Tours

Take a flightseeing tour from Anchorage, Denali and Talkeetna to view the glaciers of the park. Some even have options to land on a glacier!.
Season: May - September $259+ 1 to 5 hrs

Go flight­see­ing over Denali Nation­al Park in a very unique way: via heli­copter. Lift off on a 50-minute flight —land­ing the heli­copter on a glac­i­er, putting on spe­cial boots, and going for a walk on the frozen land­scape to get an up-close look at it. Or, vis­it Bus 142, made famous by adven­tur­er Christo­pher McCan­d­less. Flight­see­ing in a heli­copter is much dif­fer­ent from in a plane — learn all the ben­e­fits of this great way of check­ing out the  ...more

Call for rates 1.25 hrs

A lot of peo­ple swear to it: the best way to see Alas­ka is from an air­plane, and there may indeed be no bet­ter way to get close to the face of Denali. This one-of-a-kind flight­see­ing oper­a­tor makes it easy to see up close to the Great One with­out spend­ing a great deal of time.

$365+ 45 - 70 mins

Denali Air flights see the majes­tic moun­tain a whop­ping 90% of the time, thanks to the company’s high­ly expe­ri­enced pilots and its unique abil­i­ty to access both the south and north approach­es to Denali. Pas­sen­gers appre­ci­ate the pri­vate airstrip, the long­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion of Denali Air as the orig­i­nal flight com­pa­ny in Denali, and the fact that 99.9% of the tour is with­in Denali Nation­al Park boundaries. 

Season: Year Round $255+ 1 to 2 hrs

While you may nev­er join the ranks of climbers who have sum­mit­ed Denali, an up-close view of North Amer­i­ca’s tallest peak can still be yours. K2 Avi­a­tion offers once-in-a-life­time flight­see­ing tours among and above the Alas­ka Range. Add a glac­i­er land­ing to get a sense of how immense these peaks real­ly are.

Season: Year Round $270+

Local­ly known as The Glac­i­er Land­ing Com­pa­ny,” TAT has been fly­ing climbers and sight­seers to the Alas­ka Range and Denali since 1947. Tal­keet­na Air Taxi fea­tures a cus­tom-designed fleet of planes, a ded­i­cat­ed cus­tomer ser­vice team, and a vari­ety of tours for every budget.

Season: Year round - water landing approximately May 1st - October 5th $175+ .5 to 3 hrs

Explore Alas­ka from above with this fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny that oper­ates out of Anchor­age. Options include fly­ing above Denali, Knik and Colony Glac­i­er, the Chugach Moun­tains, and more!

Season: Year Round $175+ 30 min to 3 hrs

Enjoy a bird’s eye view of Alaska’s scenic high­lights on a flight­see­ing tour with Rust’s Fly­ing Ser­vice, where every pas­sen­ger gets a win­dow seat. Tour options include a short 30-minute Anchor­age Flight­see­ing Safari, a flight to Denali, Denali plus a glac­i­er land­ing, and more. Tours begin at Anchorage’s Lake Hood, the world’s busiest sea­plane airport.

Season: Year Round $215+ 1-5 hours

Trail Ridge Air offers an on-demand per­spec­tive of Alaska’s wilder­ness, with per­son­able and knowl­edge­able pilots. Watch for wildlife, check out mas­sive glac­i­ers, alpine lakes, Denali, or even Lake Clark Nation­al Park. Trail Ridge accom­mo­dates for the busiest of sched­ules, with flights rang­ing from one hour to a full day.

Denali National Park Glaciers

These are the park's most impressive glaciers

Fly­ing down the medi­al moraine of the Ruth Glac­i­er is mes­mer­iz­ing. This 25 – 50 foot high ridge of rock debris looks like an exca­va­tion pit that extends for miles down the cen­ter of the glac­i­er. Keep on the look­out for deep blue pools of ice melt. Look for lat­er­al moraines on the sides of the glac­i­er and the ter­mi­nal moraine at the toe of the glac­i­er… You’ll know the ter­mi­nus of the Ruth when you see it: the con­tor­tions of earth and ice resemble…  ...more

What you’re able to see of the Muldrow Glac­i­er from the park road is actu­al­ly just the tip of a 32 mile long riv­er of frozen ice. The Muldrow Glac­i­er is the park’s longest and it is a great exam­ple of the pow­er these behe­moth ice mass­es have on the land­scape. Much of the low­er reach­es of the ice are cov­ered in dirt and rocks that have been scoured off of the neigh­bor­ing moun­tains on the slow jour­ney from Denal­i’s (Mt. McKin­ley’s) flank.…  ...more

Cross the Tokosit­na Riv­er which marks the south­east cor­ner of Denali Nation­al Park. Look for tents or rafts next to the riv­er. While dif­fi­cult to access — even by bush plane — this area is a prime place for camp­ing, explor­ing, and to begin a raft trip down the Tokosit­na Riv­er to Tal­keet­na. Out the left win­dow, you can look south to the Peters & Dutch Hills, an active gold-min­ing area since the ear­ly 1900s. A win­ter wag­on road from Talkeetna…  ...more

You enter the Great Gorge of the Ruth Glac­i­er — the world’s deep­est. The ice is 3700 feet deep, some of it more than a thou­sand years old. The sur­round­ing walls soar 4000 – 5000 feet above. Were the ice to melt tomor­row, you would wit­ness a spec­ta­cle twice as awe­some as the Grand Canyon — a gorge a mile wide and near­ly two miles high. Watch for climb­ing camps…These may be the world’s most impres­sive gran­ite mono­liths. You’ll stare in dis­be­lief at…  ...more

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…  ...more

The Kahilt­na Glac­i­er is the longest in the Alas­ka Range — a 45-mile long riv­er of ice! You’ll cross it 35 miles up it, at an ele­va­tion of 5500 feet above sea lev­el. See any dark specs on the sur­face of the glac­i­er? Those are the climbers and tents of Denali (Mt. McKin­ley) base­camp! Most climb­ing expe­di­tions begin here. A base camp man­ag­er coor­di­nates com­mu­ni­ca­tions between climbers and air taxis. Dur­ing the busy climb­ing sea­son, there can be…  ...more