I have never done this on the blog, but I decided to give it a try. Part of the reason I chose today was because it was totally normal. I did not want to choose a psycho day, and I did not want to choose a boring day. We all have normal days at work, and we all do things that might seem totally odd to other people. You may think a bush pilot’s life consists merely of strong coffee, flannel shirts, dangerous approaches, and serious bull-shooting, well … sometimes there is more to it.
I woke up at 4:30 am this morning … not because of any pressing flights, but simply because I could not sleep. I ate cereal and made coffee without waking the baby, and then took the 200 yard walk to the hanger at 6 am. Some friends were up ice climbing at the glacier last-night, so they were camped out on the runway, and I woke them up when I opened the hangar door. I worked on the Super Cub for a bit and then Mike showed up, coffee in hand. We thought we had booked some hunters for 7 am, but nobody showed so we continued tinkering around the hangar. At 8:30 the hunters arrived so we loaded them in the Cubs, and flew an hour to the east, almost all the way to Valdez, near the Klutina Glacier. We landed them on a beautiful mountain under clear skies and calm wind conditions.
On the way home we remembered that there was an outstanding job to be done on the Columbia Glacier so I pealed off to the South while Mike hurried back to the house for another flight. I flew to the Columbia and checked snow depths on several ice stations that we put in place for the USGS last Spring. On the way home I climbed up to 13,100′ and circled the summits of Mt. Thor and Mt. Valhalla just for fun. I landed back at the house so hungry I could eat a horse. Fortunately, the Sheep Mt. lodge is just down the street, so I coerced my friends Gar and Jan, and my wife and baby into going down for breakfast, and a strong cub of coffee. Mike had already departed for Skwentna with the Cessna 185 where he would help Fish and Game free a Brown Bear from a snare.
I got back to the Hangar at about 11 am and spent several hours dinking around with my Super Cub on a new project. I also spent some time working on our fueling station so I have pipe-dope, sealant crap, all over my flannel. A gold-miner stopped by who had driven all the way from California to try his luck and we spent some time talking over air-strips, prices, and logistics. Then I flew out and picked my Dad up from a moose camp. He was on a really short, nasty, little, 270′ airstrip that took me three approaches to land on because of squirrelly winds. Shortly after my dad and I returned to the house, two more sheep hunters showed up. So we loaded and fueled the Cubs, and flew them out to one of our more challenging little strips that is at 5000′ elevation and only 330′ feet long. Once on the ground we spotted a nice Ram with binoculars from the air-strip, and we were happy to leave these hunters in a good spot. We got back to the house at about 6 pm just in time for a dinner of fresh sheep back-strap donated to us by a generous hunter. After dinner I took my wife out on a desert-date to the Sheep Mt. Lodge. When I got back home Mike and I swapped the Cessna 185 onto wheel skis for a job that we will do in the morning.
So that’s it, a normal day in my life. Oh ya,’ plus I answered the phone about ten thousand times in there too. I only flew about 3.5 hours which is less than normal, but I spent some time on the tundra and a fair bit flying over the snow. It was just another good ol’ 14 hour work day during the Alaskan summer. And I even got to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with Samantha and Ali.
P.S All of these photos were taken today…It was a nice day.