Delta Junction, Alaska ~ Visitor Information: What to Do: Air Tours

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An excellent way to gain an appreciation of the size and grandeur of the Delta Junction area is to view it from a small aircraft. From a few hundred feet in the air, the surrounding mountains become very prominent; the tamed, pastoral fields of the Clearwater area and the berm-rowed and much larger fields of the Delta Ag Project country stand out in stark contrast to the wilderness next door. North of here, above-ground portions of the trans Alaska Pipeline can be seen east of the Richardson Highway. The line crosses the highway several times south of Delta Junction.

Photo looking north from above the foot hills south of Delta
US Army photographer Michael Kingston took this picture from south of Donnelly Dome (visible in the upper left corner) on a fall day.

A few hundred feet higher and the confluence of the Tanana and Delta rivers is an impressive sight. Extending north from the massif that is known as Donnelly Dome, a series of pothole lakes announce the side moraine of the glacier that formed the Delta Valley; glancing to the east, however, reveals no such formation associated with the Tanana.

Even when hundreds of feet of ice were ranging through Iowa and Missouri during the Pleistocene Era; this valley in far north Interior Alaska enjoyed dry ground. It apparently takes more than 12 inches of precipitation a year for the formation of glaciers, and the Tanana Valley, while deceptively green in the summertime, has stayed below that limit for eons.

Glacier fans can observe several active ice rivers just a few miles south in the Alaska Range. A quick flight down the pass to Paxson will take one past Black Rapids Glacier, notorious as the 'Galloping Glacier' for its violent advance towards the Richardson Highway in the late 30s. As the canyon opens up at Summit Lake, to the left is the beautiful and many-faced Castner Glacier. Summit Lake, just below Isabel Pass, is noted for fishing; airstrips are near the lake and at Paxson.

Flying west from Delta toward Fairbanks, one crosses the Tanana Flats, a largely untouched river bottomland area traversed by both clear water and braided, silty, glacial streams. To the right, the rolling Tanana Hills are really sand dunes in disguise. They have been stable long enough to support climax vegetation in the form of old-growth spruce, but a sharp eye will catch the characteristic shape of aeolian (wind shaped) formation.

With a minimum of searching, wildlife fans can spot everything from bison and moose to porcupines, depending on how brave you or your pilot are. The flats to the east of the Clearwater farming area are prime moose spotting grounds, and the west bank of the Delta River is the summer range of the Delta herd of American bison.

Shown above is an aerial photo taken from a U2 in August 1980. Click for a larger view.


			Air Tour