Ever done any flightseeing on vacation?

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The National Park Service is ending efforts to recover the wreckage of a flightseeing plane near Denali and the bodies of five people inside, saying harrowing conditions at the crash site create too much risk for rescuers.

A park service helicopter reached the crash site Friday morning and a ranger spent an hour searching the aircraft while suspended by a fixed rope. The K2 Aviation de Havilland Beaver is perched on a hanging glacier on the north side of a 10,500-foot ridge about 14 miles from the summit of Denali.

Officials have now determined the steepness of the terrain, avalanche hazard and the condition of the aircraft "exceed an acceptable level of risk" for a recovery operation, National Park Service spokeswoman Katherine Belcher wrote in a statement Friday.

Five people — a pilot from Michigan and four passengers from Poland — were aboard when the flightseeing plane crashed Saturday on a remote mountain deep in the Alaska Range. It was the deadliest accident in recent history for an air taxi flying into Denali National Park and Preserve.

Bad weather persisted for days after the crash, allowing just a 5-minute window for a mountaineering ranger who dropped to the wreckage by rope Monday to confirm that four people were dead and a fifth was unaccounted for.

On Friday, better weather allowed a high-altitude helicopter to get a ranger to the wreckage before 10 a.m., Belcher said. The search of the wreckage lasted an hour.

The body of the fifth victim was found inside, Belcher said.

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