Five years ago today, I finally made it to the least visited national park unit in the country, Aniakchak National Monument, a collapsed volcanic caldera in the Aleutian Range in Alaska. I really need to blog about the whole story about this.

This park is very remote, requiring a bush flight to access, and the unpredictability of the weather means you might be waiting many days for even a short flight window. It took six days of nervous waiting for us to make it there, constantly checking the weather and in contact with the pilot every couple hours. Many folks get skunked; a fellow park quester had waited ten days just prior to our arrival and never got an opportunity. We got ours on the very last day we had committed to the endeavor. This might be the best text message I’ve ever received, sent by the pilot.

I’ll write and post more about this on rscottjones.com, but for now, here are some photos of our time there.

Visiting Aniakchak was the lynchpin for me completing my quest to visit all 400+ national park units, which happened a few days later in Glacier Bay National Park.