The plane crashed into the south-facing slope of Mount Healy within a mile of the park headquarters and about 200 yards north of the only road into the park, about 180 miles north of Anchorage.
Mount Healy, 5,417 feet high, is about 60 miles northeast of the towering Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak at 20,320 feet.
Federal investigators headed to Alaska's Denali National Park today to probe a cargo plane crash that apparently killed three people and sparked a small wildfire., which was contained at approximately one acre.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are to arrive Monday.
Jeff Kowalczyk, an EMT hiking through the park with his wife, a nurse, told CNN he saw the plane almost upside down as it crashed a few hundreds yards away. The couple rushed toward the site but were kept back by the fire, he said.
"The whole experience was really surreal," Kowalczyk said.
Sunday's crash came days after a military cargo plane crash in Alaska killed four people on board. The crash Wednesday at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage killed four airmen training for an air show.
