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April 2020
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
Figure 11. Blaine Horner (left) with
Rhett Foster, Udi Karriere and Tom
Heinrichs prior to flying to the Base
Camp at 7,000’ for their climb to GPS
survey Denali’s peak in 2015.
Figure 12. Kristen Schild (left) with hus-
band Seth Campbell, Patrick Saylor and
Blaine Horner at the Base Camp prior
to their climb to GPR survey the ice/
snow depth on Denali’s peak in 2016.
Figure 13. In 2016, Blaine Horner
installed and surveyed a USGS survey
marker atWindy Corner and then
rescued two badly injured European
climbers who had fallen.
My third joy is in finding that everything now fits when drap-
ing satellite imagery over IfSAR DTMs. See Figures 9 and 10.
My fourth joy is exhilaration received from Blaine Horner’s two
mountaineering expeditions to perform GPS and GPR surveys
to officially survey Denali’s elevation at 20,310 ft and the depth
of the ice/snow at 6.1 meters. Whereas many have died at-
tempting to climb Denali with no extra heavy burden to carry,
Blaine Horner’s two teams, shown in Figures 11 and 12, carried
over 700 pounds of car batteries, power tools and other heavy
equipment both years to the top. During his 2016 expedition,
Blaine even won NPS’ Mislow-Swanson Denali Pro Award for
saying the lives of two badly injured European climbers.
My fifth joy is knowing the 7.5-minute 1:25,000-scale US Topo
map series of Alaska, to include statewide orthoimagery, will
be completed in 2021 (Figures 14 and 15 courtesy of USGS).
With IfSAR completed in 2020, USGS will acquire commercial
satellite imagery in 2021 for orthorectification to the IfSAR.
The Dewberry team is proud of its accomplishments in provid-
ing the accurate topographic foundational layer to which other
layers now fit. (Figure 16).
Figure 10.The top image shows a
satellite image draped over the IfSAR
DTM of Denali’s peak.The lower im-
age shows a Denali fly-by photograph
taken by E-Terra.The similarity is
remarkable.
Figure 9.This is a satellite image draped over the IfSAR DTM of Mt. Hayes,
then viewed from a perspective selected by Dewberry. Compare this image
with Figure 1 to see the vast improvements.
Figure 14. US Topo of Juneau with shaded relief turned on.
