Weather had thus far squashed this crazy idea on three separate occasions over the past two days, and we were tempted to take the hint, but on this day, it's ­gorgeous. There would be no pardon. While our pilot, Eric Denkewalter, finishes off his preflight checks, we chat with his wife, Geri, who does little to relieve our apprehension. It turns out she has just returned from having lunch on our destination, Ruth Glacier. (Things are done a little differently around here - the local deli simply won't do.) "There are lots of avalanches," she tells us. "You can hear them all around you." I feel the tears well up.

It turns out, however, that our fears are unfounded. The 45-minute flight over Denali National Park to Mount McKinley feels like a trip to heaven itself. The melt ponds of the glacial environment look like small pools of electric-blue popsicle juice scattered around the numerous glaciers that converge from nearly every direction. We fly as close as 500 feet (the closest we are legally allowed to get) to monstrous peaks, though it appears as if we are one sudden wind gust away from planting a big, wet kiss on them. Then we see the "airport."

The Don Sheldon Amphitheater, a part of the massive Ruth Glacier, looks just like it sounds. The towering peaks of the Alaska Range form a natural amphitheater on three sides, and somebody, at some point, was brave enough to test its surface as a landing strip. When the whole thing didn't cave in on itself or tumble down the nearby mountains in a roaring fit of snow and ice, the idea for one of the most spectacular tourism spectacles I have ever been privy to was put in motion.

The plane slightly jolts when Eric lowers the landing skis, and though it's a completely unnatural thing to do, touching down here suddenly seems quite obvious. We hit the snow at an elevation of 5,700 feet and bounce around a bit - much in the same way a beginning skier might depart a chairlift. Then all is quiet. We pop out onto the 1,000-foot sheet of ice like giddy schoolchildren.