NORTH

Wonder Lake, a location favoured by photographer Ansel Adams, where placid water presents the perfect mirror image of the Alaska Range.

At 6190m (20,310 feet) and rising 0.5mm per year, Mount Denali (previously referred to as Mount McKinley, but now officially known by its native name) stands head and shoulders above neighbouring mountains, but characteristically, it’s covered in cloud.

“Don’t worry, we can cut through that,” says Greg LaHaie, pilot and owner of Kantishna Air Taxi.

Our 45-minute scenic flight takes us within a breath of the peak, above ant lines of brave climbers and the curving trails of glaciers.

Flying into the light, Greg loops rainbows into sugary doughnuts, reflected in a myriad of kettle ponds below. Glacial melt water drizzles through moraine in silvery threads, reaching into the vast, empty Alaskan interior, a realm of incomprehensible nothingness.

More ice – and more people – can be found farther south in the state’s most accessible national park, Kenai Fjords, a photogenic four-hour coastal train ride on the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage. On a fullday boat tour skirting the Harding icefield, mountains rise from rainforest and glaciers tumble into the sea. Salmon-feeding orcas prospect between islands numbed by petrified forests, while an attentionseeking humpback repeatedly breaches to a enraptured audience of tourists.

But I’m most charmed by the sea otter, a whiskered old man who paddles backstroke in the harbour and has a magpie instinct for collecting items and hoarding them in his pouch.

In summer 30,000 people descend on Kenai’s gateway town Seward – 10 times the actual population.

On a trip to Bear Creek Weir, where salmon are rumoured to be running and bald eagles glare from treetops, I meet Nicholas, a 14-yearold native Athabascan who prefers to steer clear of outsiders.

After striking up conversation, he deems I’m “OK” for a tourist and enthusiastically tells me about the Inuit Games he hopes to compete in this year. Eskimo One Kick is his favourite discipline, although he also likes Seal Hop, where competitors rest on their knuckles in a press up position and race by bouncing forward. Given his ancestry and local experience, I imagine he has the perfect escape tactic for dealing with bears. But when I ask, he shrugs his shoulders and replies: “I hope for the best.” Wise words indeed.