Heading North

Heaps of stuff have been crammed into every nook and cranny, and it's time to go.  I have everything I can think of.  Kinda low on food though.  If I had ham I could have ham and eggs, if I had eggs.  I was planning to fly to Alaska on the Alaska Highway, but got talking with a friend Loni a couple days ago and learned he was headed up with his friend Mark, both in supercubs a couple days after I was planning to go.  So it was decided to be a caravan of three.  I met them in central WA at noon on Satuday.  High noon.

My new headquarters for the summer.

After clearing customs in Kelowna, British Columbia, and while enroute to Quesnel, we take a little time to land at a gravel bar.  Loni Habersetzer, in the middle, teaches off-airport flying.    Loni can make something impossible look graceful in his supercub.  He's a personable guy that's fun to hang out with.  Check out his webpage in my Links section.  Mark has the other supercub and Loni and he have been friends for years, and Mark has some good years of experience behind a supercub.  Good times all around-

Quesnel, British Columbia.  Campfire and a tent for the night.  Good sleepin'

Smithers, B.C.  Where the women are a kind of Lake Wobegon variety and the men are trying to hold their planes down from the wind.  This gal ran the gas truck.  It was only noon, and we were planning to make it to Whitehorse, Yukon by tonight.  Mother nature had other plans, and 60mph winds were just ahead of us on our route.  It was already bad enough, and we landed crosswise to the runway in the grass between the runway and the terminal because of the wind.  We stayed in Smithers for the night to wait for the wind to calm down, which it did the next morning.

Leaving Smithers, headed for Dease Lake, and then Whitehorse, Yukon.  The wind quit, but low clouds and rain/snow made things interesting.  A regional commuter couldn't land because cloud ceilings were about 300 feet off the ground.   We got a special VFR clearance and took off.

My $1.97 thermometer from Lowe's.  Hey, it works...

 

Mark taking off in his cub.

Northway, Alaska.  Back in the USA!  The weather between Whitehorse and Northway was dicey.  We started as a flight of 3, but Loni and I got separated from Mark in the mountains and poor visibility made it impossible to get re-connected.  We ended up taking different canyons, and Mark had to land on a gravel bar because the weather forced him down.  So we arrived a couple hours before him in Northway, and he made it in later.  Northway was out of fuel (not entirely uncommon in AK) but a supply truck arrived just before we left, so we didn't have to use our spare cans we carried.  The bus driver arrived while we were waiting.  He looked just like "Otto" from "The Simpsons."

The visibility through the pass goes down a bit

I landed in Merrill Field, Anchorage, Alaska and got out of the plane to find a rainbow in the background.  How cool is that?

Comments

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kick ass pic's

[Jimmy]

Thanks so much for sharing your most fantastic trip. I lived in Fairbanks for awhile but never got the opportunity to do something so significant as what you experienced. I sure hope that one of these days I could go with you to have such a gifted adventure like yours, seeing the heart of Alaska.
Bless you and may God continue to reveal to you his great creation.

Jimmy Stewart
Hong Kong

[robert]

Shawn, thanks for sharing such a fantastic trip. This is a trip I think every pilot father or grandfather would love to take with his siblings to help them understand there place in the world and the beatuy it has to offer. What a trip to be young and have one's health. A remarkable sight to behold. Thanks again and be safe on your journey thru life.

Bob