Taking a cue from Mark Wahlberg’s 'Flight Risk': An Alaskan expedition
While it’s tense onboard the plane in Flight Risk, the surrounding Alaskan landscape is simply serene.
Ed Grenby - 21 January 2025
I was nervous enough even without Mark Wahlberg trying to kill me. In his new film, Flight Risk, the actor plays the pilot of a tiny light aircraft plying the routes above Alaska’s icy, mountainous wilderness; and I was about to board an identical six-seat Cessna for the 30-minute hop over the snowy state’s towering Wrangell Mountains.
In the movie, it’s no spoiler to say passenger safety is not Walhberg’s first priority – he’s carrying a criminal about to testify against his mobster boss – so I’m a little unnerved to find my pilot, Oren, could be his twin brother: identically handsome, laconic, baseball-capped and casual as the small plane is buffeted by winds whipping off the glaciers and fogs as thick as the forests on their lower slopes.
A few mid-flight lurches aside, I survive unscathed and am free to continue my road- (and air- and ship-) trip around the southern, more accessible reaches of Alaska. I’d started in Anchorage, after taking a cruise up from Vancouver, then headed east out on Alaska Highway 1. That may sound like a six-lane super-highway, but it dwindles into a looping strip of narrow blacktop that unspools between milky-blue glacial lakes, glimmering-white peaks and Christmas-tree-green forests. The settlements it links are tiny, frontier towns – at Butte, for instance, there are pretty much just two businesses: the Git N’ Go liquor store and Mountain Taxidermy (this is huntin’ country).
CAPTAIN MARK: Mark Wahlberg plays a fearless pilot in Flight Risk
I shoot a bear myself, in fact, but only get its bottom – I’m just not quick enough with my camera phone. So the grizzly ambles off into the forest, and I amble off to bed at Alaska Glacier Lodge (akglacierlodge.com). It’s a “heli-lodge”, which means its log cabins come with nine choppers sitting on the lawn out front. On my visit, the weather’s too bad for their usual heli-hiking, heli-fishing or flightseeing trips (and this is in August! Welcome to the Alaskan summer!), so I roll back out onto Highway 1 and east towards Chitina, where I’m meeting Oren from Wrangell Mountain Air (wrangellmountainair.com) – half-fearing, half-hoping that the little bush plane won’t be able to fly, either.
The population of Chitina is 71, so I wasn’t expecting Heathrow, but I’m still surprised that the “airport” is just a gravel strip marked out with traffic cones. I park my hire car next to Oren’s plane, chuck my bag in the back and the propeller starts.
From 5,000 feet in the air, I can see for half a million years: there’s still a vast glacier covering much of the Wrangells, but the valleys and mountains carved out in the last Ice Age or two are easy to discern from up here. As we descend, I can make out the looming remains of Kennecott, a long-abandoned copper mine – and my home for the next couple of nights. Once a thriving community, it shut down when the minerals ran out and is now a ghost town. Kennicott Glacier Lodge (kennicottlodge.com) is a peaceful base for hiking, rafting, ice-climbing, glacier-walking and exploring the mining complex itself, but I can only stay two nights. To make my week-long route a loop rather than driving back the way I came, I need to catch a government ferry across Prince William Sound – and its boats only sail once or twice a week (dot.alaska.gov/amhs).
Anyway, it would be a crime to rush the drive from Chitina down to the ferry port at Valdez. Parts of it are stretches of dramatically empty open highway; other parts wind between high-sided canyons punctuated by icemelt waterfalls. Valdez itself is worth a day or two, as well: I kayak among calved-off chunks of glacier and eat an orca’s allowance of fresh local fish, before eventually boarding the MV Aurora for the six-hour crossing to Whittier.
On a “good day”, you can see humpbacks, killer whales and porpoises from the deck… but this isn’t a good day. Thick fog means all I see is a panning shot of endless green pines – but I dock at Whittier utterly relaxed. I’m not ready, then, for the bright lights of Anchorage (an hour’s drive up the fjord of Turnagain Arm), so I stop for two nights at Girdwood’s Alyeska Resort (alyeskaresort.com). The next day, it’s into Anchorage – and straight out again on an A330 home. I almost wish it was Wahlberg’s Cessna.
In the movie, it’s no spoiler to say passenger safety is not Walhberg’s first priority – he’s carrying a criminal about to testify against his mobster boss – so I’m a little unnerved to find my pilot, Oren, could be his twin brother: identically handsome, laconic, baseball-capped and casual as the small plane is buffeted by winds whipping off the glaciers and fogs as thick as the forests on their lower slopes.
A few mid-flight lurches aside, I survive unscathed and am free to continue my road- (and air- and ship-) trip around the southern, more accessible reaches of Alaska. I’d started in Anchorage, after taking a cruise up from Vancouver, then headed east out on Alaska Highway 1. That may sound like a six-lane super-highway, but it dwindles into a looping strip of narrow blacktop that unspools between milky-blue glacial lakes, glimmering-white peaks and Christmas-tree-green forests. The settlements it links are tiny, frontier towns – at Butte, for instance, there are pretty much just two businesses: the Git N’ Go liquor store and Mountain Taxidermy (this is huntin’ country).
CAPTAIN MARK: Mark Wahlberg plays a fearless pilot in Flight Risk
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I shoot a bear myself, in fact, but only get its bottom – I’m just not quick enough with my camera phone. So the grizzly ambles off into the forest, and I amble off to bed at Alaska Glacier Lodge (akglacierlodge.com). It’s a “heli-lodge”, which means its log cabins come with nine choppers sitting on the lawn out front. On my visit, the weather’s too bad for their usual heli-hiking, heli-fishing or flightseeing trips (and this is in August! Welcome to the Alaskan summer!), so I roll back out onto Highway 1 and east towards Chitina, where I’m meeting Oren from Wrangell Mountain Air (wrangellmountainair.com) – half-fearing, half-hoping that the little bush plane won’t be able to fly, either.
The population of Chitina is 71, so I wasn’t expecting Heathrow, but I’m still surprised that the “airport” is just a gravel strip marked out with traffic cones. I park my hire car next to Oren’s plane, chuck my bag in the back and the propeller starts.
From 5,000 feet in the air, I can see for half a million years: there’s still a vast glacier covering much of the Wrangells, but the valleys and mountains carved out in the last Ice Age or two are easy to discern from up here. As we descend, I can make out the looming remains of Kennecott, a long-abandoned copper mine – and my home for the next couple of nights. Once a thriving community, it shut down when the minerals ran out and is now a ghost town. Kennicott Glacier Lodge (kennicottlodge.com) is a peaceful base for hiking, rafting, ice-climbing, glacier-walking and exploring the mining complex itself, but I can only stay two nights. To make my week-long route a loop rather than driving back the way I came, I need to catch a government ferry across Prince William Sound – and its boats only sail once or twice a week (dot.alaska.gov/amhs).
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Anyway, it would be a crime to rush the drive from Chitina down to the ferry port at Valdez. Parts of it are stretches of dramatically empty open highway; other parts wind between high-sided canyons punctuated by icemelt waterfalls. Valdez itself is worth a day or two, as well: I kayak among calved-off chunks of glacier and eat an orca’s allowance of fresh local fish, before eventually boarding the MV Aurora for the six-hour crossing to Whittier.
On a “good day”, you can see humpbacks, killer whales and porpoises from the deck… but this isn’t a good day. Thick fog means all I see is a panning shot of endless green pines – but I dock at Whittier utterly relaxed. I’m not ready, then, for the bright lights of Anchorage (an hour’s drive up the fjord of Turnagain Arm), so I stop for two nights at Girdwood’s Alyeska Resort (alyeskaresort.com). The next day, it’s into Anchorage – and straight out again on an A330 home. I almost wish it was Wahlberg’s Cessna.