A FLying Story
A trip along the Al-Can Highway
10 min Read
Earlier this year, as spring was transitioning to summer, I found myself in the Yukon Territory of Canada, sitting on the tire of an airplane, alone on a tarmac. I was heading south for Washington State, racing an unseasonably large storm off the coast of Alaska as it made its way inland. With the wind blowing across the runway, I was completely out of my comfort zone—mentally exhausted and wondering why I had gotten myself into this situation.
The definition for "adventure" is a bit relative, depending on who you ask. For the average person, not from Alaska, my definition, or what I am comfortable with, might seem a bit twisted or frightening. But after a lifetime of being exposed to uncomfortable or scary situations, you start to become desensitized, learn to approach these moments with a kind of stoicism. That, though, sometimes leads you to these situations.
The story begins when I was approached about flying a two-seater prop plane, restored to its original 1946 make from Anchorage, Alaska, to Bellingham, Washington. I had thought to myself, “yeah, no problem, sounds like an adventure”, and I am not one to say no to an adventure.
This would end up being one of those trips that, if I don’t dive into the details, its significance might be lost, not only to the people reading this, but to me as well. Anchorage to Bellingham, at least by the route I flew, is 2,300 miles. That’s the equivalent of driving from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Miami, Florida. The difference, though, is that you’re flying through some of the most remote parts of North America at just 2,000 feet above the ground, battling the extreme elements this part of the world offers. Then, I was doing it alone.
But it wasn’t the remoteness that was the scary part, that’s nothing new to me growing up in Alaska. The parts that terrified me, kept me up at night, were not just the elements and the environment, but the plane I was flying. This plane, a Piper J-3 Cub, is unique. It was built as a training plane back during WW II for both civilian and military pilots. It seats two people front and back, but when you are alone, you sit in the rear seat as a placard on the dashboard states, for weight and balance reasons. There are only four instruments to decipher flight data from: the altitude indicator, airspeed indicator, engine rpm, and oil temperature/pressure gauge, everything measured by a needle. The engine, bolted to an iron frame that is wrapped in canvas, produces 85 horsepower; by comparison, the average car now produces 200-250. Every start had to be done manually. That meant wedging your foot in front of the tire, grabbing hold of the propeller, and throwing it downward as the force turns the engine over. As the propeller whips around and the pistons start their process of suck, squeeze, bang, blow, the propeller catches and starts to rotate at 1000 revolutions per minute. With a few quick foot movements, I would quickly have to reach into the cockpit to take the power to idle, so the plane wouldn't start taxiing off on its own. So yes, it was about as basic as you could imagine an airplane could be. Heck, the fuel meter was just a skinny metal rod on a buoy floating in the nose tank outside the windshield. Now, to fly 2,300 miles, alone, in this paper-machete plane, it was going to take three terrifying days.
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Departing Anchorage by 10 am, the route would take me North-East through two mountain passes, one of them separating the treacherous Wrangle St. Elias mountains from the famous Alaska Range. Refueling in Tok and crossing the border, I finally started to track South, while slowly making my way East. Headwinds stole 30 mph off my speed as winds dumped out of every mountain valley I passed. Fighting to fly straight, the winds would force me into a continual series of arcs as I slowly made my way through the Yukon Territory. At the helm of the winds, and a fuel forced me to stop in Haines Junction to add 5 gallons that was stored in a container strapped to the front seat. Trying to crawl out of the plane, the winds continuing to be a challenge, I quickly grabbed two unused bottles of oil to use as chalks behind the tires, trying to stop the plane from being blown into a ditch.
After nearly eight hours in the air, six of them spent battered by heavy winds, I was still an hour from Whitehorse, where I’d be spending the night. The challenge hadn’t eased. I felt as if I was flying more sideways than forward, with an occasional jolt that left me suspended for a split second before gravity would catch me, pulling me back down into my seat. As I approached Whitehorse, a call crackled over the radio: flight service had been trying to locate me, an hour overdue.
Mentally drained, that final landing for the day in Whitehorse would be the hardest. A 20 knot wind, gusting 25, was a direct crosswind on their main runway; their crosswind runway was, of course, closed. At the limits of what this plane could handle, it would naturally want to turn into the wind, as I smashed my foot against the left rudder pedal, trying to fly straight and line up with the runway. Every big gust of wind would push me off the center line, causing me to use 3000 of the 8000 feet of runway before attempting to set the plane down. Without exactly recalling how I managed to land, I ended up having more of a lateral approach to the runway instead of landing down it. But, making it in one piece, exhausted, I walked across the street to my hotel room, and I was finally done for the day by 10 pm.
—
The next day, waking up early, the forecast was looking a bit more optimistic for the morning before winds picked up again in the afternoon, continuing into the evening. As difficult as the previous day was, I woke up knowing this would be another challenge. Taking advantage of a calm morning, I set out for my first stop in Watson Lake. Three hours of flying and two mountain passes later, the second being the highest and narrowest of the trip, the flight passed uneventfully. The next leg would bring me to Fort Nelson, but before departing Watson Lake, I would exchange weather updates with a couple of pilots headed in the opposite direction. But before going our separate ways, they would make a quick mention of a small fire along the way, and I didn't think much of it.
This next leg would be the first time that I was faced with a real choice in my route. I could leave the safety of the highway behind and follow a river out of the valley, then cross an hour of untouched wilderness before landing in Fort Nelson, my next fuel stop. Or I follow the highway, which I have yet to stray more than a mile from so far, through the mountains, out another pass, and onto Fort Nelson.
Growing up around bush flying, I have learned that the most important trait a good pilot can possess is their decision-making ability; the flying part is fairly easy. So, without much for survival gear and a lack of trust in this airplane, I chose to stick to the highway and continue to get battered by the winds funneling through the mountains. Whether it was the right decision or not, I’ll never know. I probably would have been fine taking the route along the river. But the choice I did make led me straight into one of the scarier moments of my short flying career.
As I exited the pass and along the highway, the “small fire” I was warned about had been fueled by the afternoon winds and was erupting. I was now staring into a plume of smoke, covering each side of the highway, and rising to 15,000 feet. Having used two and a half hours of fuel, there was no turning back; I had to keep flying to get to the next fuel stop. The valley I was exiting in Muncho Pass sat at 4,000 feet, and this little 85-horsepower engine doesn't perform all that well at that altitude and in the afternoon heat. Catching an updraft, I made it to 6000 feet and skirted over the tops of ridges that eventually funneled me back towards the highway and into the thick smoke that tailed off in the direction I was headed. I have no experience flying around fires, but at this point, I didn't know what to expect as I entered a dark cloud of smoke, and my visibility deteriorated. My only choice was to approach the uncertainty of what was to come with confidence, not letting the fear creep in. Fear leads to doubt, and doubt leads to mistakes, so you find the confidence, even if it is manufactured in uncertainty. Choosing to shut out the fear, staying calm, confident, I followed the river along the highway. Luckily, the mountains had transitioned to high plains, and before I knew it, the visibility returned and the smoke let up. Taking a deep breath, there was nothing to worry about, and before I knew it was setting up to land in Fort Nelson. But before I could relax, there was still a 20-knot quartering headwind on landing that needed my attention.
Stepping out of the plane, wind blowing across the tarmac, there I was, exhausted, wondering why I got myself into this situation. I was far from home. At this point, I had covered over 1,300 miles and 15 hours of flying in two days, and the worst was behind me, so I told myself.
—
Sitting in Fort Nelson, I had a little under two hours before reaching Fort St. John. From here on out, the flying should have been easy, a tailwind heading south and no more mountain valleys or weather to worry about.
I went to start the plane, and all of a sudden, the biggest gust yet caught my attention. Waiting for it to pass, I then threw the prop, jumped in the plane, and started taxiing for the runway. The winds had not let up at this point, but instead, picked up with gusts in the high 20s. As I taxied out, I started adding power a little early, before lining up with the runway, a bad habit I have developed. Without the proper wind correction and it blowing hard across the plane, I ended up on one wheel. Balancing, not wanting to hit the wing on the ground, I mistakenly left the power half in, trying to turn in the direction of the runway. Then all of a sudden the plane began to fly. With a lack of speed, it came back down hard on the runway, bouncing before being picked back up and carried by the wind. Now I was 20-30 feet in the air, being shoved towards the trees. The controls were going mushy, the nose now reaching for the sky, I was about to stall. Remembering the throttle wasn’t all the way in, I quickly pushed the nose back towards the ground while adding all the power in one motion. Diving back towards the ground, I was gaining speed before catching it in a pillow of air feet above the ground. As the wheels skimmed over the grass, I was back in control of the plane, but I was nowhere near the runway. Out the window, I could see the details in the leaves off my left wing. I corrected course, turning towards the runway. When I was back over the asphalt, I straightened out before finally pulling up and turning for Fort St. John, not looking back at the disaster I was seconds away from. With another crosswind landing in Fort St. John I was now in British Columbia, finishing what would easily become the most challenging day of flying in my life.
—
Waking up early the next morning, I left for Mackenzie with good weather all the way to Bellingham. I would refuel at Mackenzie, making my next stop in Williams Lake, then onto Kamloops. The third day was uneventful, just how I had hoped, but it was long. With 7 hours of watching the world inch by, I was taking off from Kamloops for Bellingham. Flying along the I-5, I passed through some of the most beautiful but narrow mountains of the trip. This leg was long, an extra 45 minutes, as a 30 mph headwind through the mountains made for an excruciatingly long last couple of hours. Dropping into the Fraser River Valley, then crossing the Canadian-American border southeast of Vancouver, Bellingham was quickly within sight. One last landing, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, and I was finally finished. What a relief.
These adventures I go on, the days leading up to them, I’m normally scared, sometimes terrified. I know people whose luck has run out, and heard the stories of the worst that could happen. To me, the more you put yourself in those situations, the more it feels like playing a game of chance. So being scared is good, a healthy dose makes you approach it with a caution, a precision. But if you let it control you, if I avoided everything that scared me, I would have lived a boring life, been a boring person, with no stories worth telling. So I’ve learned to live in that unknown, the place that scares me. For you, it doesn’t have to be some adrenaline-filled excursion. But for me, it’s where I get to discover the most about who I am, build real confidence, and learn what I’m truly capable of. That, to me, is the point of an adventure, so now, I welcome that unknown; it’s where I thrive.
