Postcards

Pilot, passenger, and Super Cub wing it to Alaska

From the porch of our home in southern Fauquier County, Virginia, my wife and children bade me farewell. I promised them my safe return, climbed into the Piper Super Cub, and took off from our front-yard airstrip. Four hours later, I landed in Wooster, Ohio, at the airport near the home of my parents, Bob and Leslie Breeden. The following morning, July 6, 1998, my mother and I left for Alaska. Mom, then age 61, is a first-grade schoolteacher who relishes traveling. It was a dream of hers to see Alaska.

This was my fifth flying trip to Alaska over a span of a dozen years. Alaska is a place where I have had many cherished adventures, and a place I dearly love. Previously, on separate trips, I had taken my wife, father, and friends. It was my mother’s turn. This would prove to be another great trip. Flying through the remote and majestic mountains of British Columbia, the Yukon Territories, and Alaska is unparalleled adventure. The exhilaration of exploring this area by air is heightened by the sheer beauty and the challenges of mountain flying. But the richest reward is being able to land and spend time in these dramatic wilderness settings. When you are hundreds of miles from the nearest road, bush flying is the only way to access and experience a vast area of the North American continent.

For flying to and safely landing in mountain country, my ultimate airplane of choice is the Super Cub, an evolution of the original Piper Cub. A reliable Lycoming engine with two and one-half times the original horsepower makes for short, crisp takeoffs. Wing flaps and aftermarket vortex generators enhance lift at low speeds and therefore provide short, slow landing rolls. At sea level with a 60-degree air temperature, and loaded fairly heavily as we were for the trip, the airplane would take off with only 200 feet of ground roll and land in the same distance. With a 15-mph breeze, the takeoff and landing rolls are reduced to 75 feet or less. Thanks to oversize 26-inch tundra tires, the airplane can land on riverside gravel bars and mountain ridges strewn with rocks as large as grapefruits. With tandem seating and windows all around, there is tremendous visibility. Four hours of fuel at about 90 mph, not counting reserves, makes it feasible to fly 360 miles between fuel stops.

Crossing the Midwest was an easy, enjoyable shakedown cruise. Mom and I got used to speaking with the intercom and headsets. We arranged our charts for ease of use in the airplane. Mom plied me with Fig Newtons and trail mix while we glided along a few hundred feet above green farms and small towns. Mom read the names of the towns that we passed from their water towers, and wrote them in her journal.

Arriving at the Canadian border at the end of the second day was a real treat. The International Peace Gardens is a border station between North Dakota and Manitoba. There is a beautiful, symmetrical formal garden and monument lying half in the United States and half in Canada. We camped right at the vacant airport, listening to moose bugling and a thunderstorm that came through during the night. In the morning, we flew away to the north just before low stratus swept in from the south and blanketed the area.

With rare but appreciated tailwinds, we crossed the Plains provinces, landing occasionally for a rest on the grassy open range. We stayed in a hotel for the first time in Red Deer, Alberta.

During the middle of the fourth day, the Rocky Mountains finally came into view, dark and purple in the distance. We made our final fuel stop in the plains at Grande Prairie, British Columbia. There, the canola fields shone a vivid bright yellow. Truly speaking, Grande Prairie was almost an island of prairie in a vast taiga, a broad region of northern spruce and fir trees.

Together Mom and I went into the flight service station at the airport. There we got a weather briefing, discussed the movement of high- and low-pressure systems, and viewed weather charts with a weather briefer. Matching intellects with the weather experts was a rich experience in itself. After absorbing the information, I followed my gut and we filed a flight plan due west, directly toward the best weather and the mountains. The alternative would be to fly further northwest, skirting the mountains, following the relatively bland route with poorer weather. As well, for the first time during our trip, instead of listing three or five hours en route, I put in that I would arrive at my next destination, MacKenzie, British Columbia, at noon the following day. With a flying time of only about two and one-half hours, enough time was allowed to weave a route through the passes and valleys in the mountains and scout a suitable place to spend the night. No particular place was in mind, but we were prepared if we discovered something.

We fought 25-knot headwinds and sun directly in our eyes as we closed in on the mountains. We flew low to avoid some of the headwind, over a few small farms that were giving way to forests, unbroken except for occasional boggy marsh areas. We could only fly so low, with the glare of the sun masking potential obstacles. The best views were from the side windows, looking back. In these conditions, we crept up to the first mountains. I concentrated on matching the valleys, ridges, and peaks on the chart with the view before me. Navigation through this area was by following rivers and mountain valleys with a thumb on the map, backed up by GPS.

We climbed many thousands of feet in the last 30 miles, and the first mountain ridge passed easily below us. Ahead, deep, forested valleys met steep mountain slopes. In high places near the rocky mountain ridge tops, blue cirque lakes (bowl-shaped mountain basins, which often contain small lakes) mirrored the gray granite walls. Mom instantly appreciated the beauty of the mountains, but she felt that we were only a speck in such a huge three-dimensional world. She really loved the cirque lakes. I approached one at a shallow angle and flew by a couple hundred feet parallel to the face of the mountain, so she could get a good view and take a picture. Mom got comfortable, but I didn’t yet see anyplace, except for a few exposed ridges, to land for the night. That wouldn’t do. For about an hour we crossed this majestic maze of 6,000- to 8,000-foot-high ridges and 3,000-foot valleys.

Locating a place to land in the wilderness is a matter of either finding a place where naturally many places are suitable (like an open desert), or in the case of a mountain range like this, finding an anomaly. Still heading west, we crossed the next ridge and encountered just such a place. The next valley floor was an open alpine meadow. This valley was wider than the others, which had mostly been narrow forested notches. In one corner of the meadow stood a red-roofed cabin. Mom thought this whole scene looked like the Swiss Alps. The level open area was a good half-mile wide and a mile long, but from the variety of colors of the grasses, bushes, and flowers, I had to have a closer look before I could commit to landing. So we gently circled down, found the wind direction across the valley floor, and flew a slow, low inspection pass about five feet off the vegetation. Mom interspersed, "Oh, Bob, are you sure it is safe to land?" with "Oh, Bob, this is beautiful!" I confirmed that we weren’t landing, only taking a look. And this was beautiful. Purple, red, yellow, and pink flowers flashed by under the wings. At one end, the flowering vegetation appeared ankle- to knee-high, but gradually increased to waist-high or deeper. Granite mountains flanked the valley on three and one-half sides, with a healthy stream leading out through a narrow notch at the south end.

We climbed back up and looped back around in the valley to the starting point of our original low pass. Then we slipped down just over the trees on the slope at the approach end to the valley floor where the shortest flowers were, coming in at about 30 mph groundspeed. This time we rolled the wheels on the ground to see if it felt all right. Adding power would instantly take us away. But in this case there was no need.

Mom and I got out of the airplane into the bright sunshine, thoroughly exhilarated. Fresh mountain air. Panoramic views. We walked, talked, and enjoyed the view. We had come four hard days and discovered the crème de la crème. They say luck is opportunity meeting preparedness. Whatever, we were fortunate. After exploring the valley for an hour on foot, we tried the cabin door. It was unlocked, with a note inside that said, "Since you have made it here, welcome." Apparently, most travelers come by snowmobile in the winter, along the creek some 40 miles from the road. Mom spent a good portion of the night awake, smiling and watching the clouds and sky through the windows of that cabin.

Mom had proved herself to be an incredible guest on these days of flying. She was glad that she was making the trip up to Alaska with me, and not joining me by a commercial jet flight, as I had suggested to her early in our planning.

During several days of traveling in British Columbia, we followed the length of the Stikine River from its origins at the Continental Divide to Dease Lake. We flew on to Atlin Lake and the Llewellyn Glacier, the headwaters of the Yukon. Atlin Lake is just 50 miles east of Juneau, Alaska, but there is a major wall of mountains between the two. While we were in bright sunshine in Atlin, Juneau—on the coast—was foggy and rainy. We really wanted to get to the coast via the Alsek River, but weather conditions wouldn’t allow that. The Alsek would come later. We continued on a northwest heading inland to Alaska, passing through Whitehorse, Haines Junction, and Tok.

Once inland, we spent several days flying in the Alaska Range and the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The Wrangells, known for clear blue skies and brilliant white glaciers, did not disappoint. Using the old mining town of McCarthy as a jumping-off point, we flew into and landed at a miniature strip deep in Glacier Creek Valley. We landed on several gravel bars in the wider rivers, which doubled as great places to camp, because being in the open gave us the ability to see bears and for them to see us. The rivers roared all night with the sounds of big rocks being rolled and tumbled on a great quest downstream.

We flew to the Thompson Pass on the way to Valdez, which was closed in with clouds because of another low coming in from the Pacific. Before turning back inland, we flew parallel to the coast down a valley in the Chugach Mountains that is studded with waterfalls. They pour down both sides of the gorge, with three or five gushing falls visible at any one time.

We returned inland for a couple of days. We were ready for a hotel again. After making a low pass, we landed on the road in front of friend Diamond Nadine’s Roadhouse on the Denali highway. We taxied the Cub up into the parking lot, whipped the tail around to the boardwalk, and shut down. We jumped out, handed a bag with our dirty laundry to one of the girls who came out to meet us, grabbed our necessity kits, and headed for the showers.

We then crossed Prince William Sound, which we could see in its entirety from 2,000 feet. Jim, who I had met on the Internet, has a Super Cub and lives in Sterling on the Kenai Peninsula. We stayed with him and told bush flying stories way into the night.

Our next major endeavor was to cross the Cook Inlet and fly through the wildest portion of the state. Everything and everyone in this area must be flown in. Our goal was to land within walking distance of walrus, which hang out on the beach below a 300-foot cliff on the Aleutian Peninsula, some 600 miles from Anchorage.

We flew though the narrow Lake Clark Pass, a corridor for airplanes going to and from the west. We saw de Havilland Beavers on floats, Cessna 185s on floats, and Super Cubs. An immense World War II-era C–47 went by 100 feet off our left wing. The pilot, who was hauling aviation fuel to Illiamna or King Salmon, said a friendly "beep, beep" over the radio as he passed.

As always on our trip, we were packing two weeks of food, suitable clothing, a good tent, comfortable sleeping bags, and a shotgun with slugs. Carrying a gun is required by state law in Alaska and would significantly improve our odds in case we stumbled upon a particularly aggressive grizzly.

With 30- to 40-kt crosswinds from the south, we continued on our way westward, following the north coast of the Aleutian Peninsula. The active volcanoes that make up the backbone remained shrouded in cloud, but our route along the coast was clear. After one and one-half hours, we reached the Cape. To our delight, the walrus were there. In the strong winds, we landed—or, rather, perched—in a creek bed of black sand near the coast. Wearing wind parkas, we walked along a bluff to peer down on a toothy group of 850 walrus.

We ventured back through Prince William Sound, fueled in Cordova, crossed the mouth of the Copper River, and proceeded eastward along the coast—a 150-mile-long beach that could be mistaken for the beach at Chincoteague, Virginia. We landed and stretched our legs, enjoying the mild temperatures and the smell of the salt air. Further on, we circled the aptly named Icy Bay, which has continuous glacial snouts fronting its coastline.

Following a trip to the Hubbard Glacier, at last we were able to fly up the wild Alsek River. This river is cut off in places by glaciers flowing down the sides of the mountains flanking the river, and it is an immensely steep river gorge. The Alsek cuts through the high coastal mountain ranges from the interior of the Yukon Territory to the Pacific Ocean near Yakutat, Alaska. Yakutat is a place where low-pressure systems coming in off the Pacific regularly pack into the coast, and it is often called Yuckutat for this notoriously poor weather. Flying the three- to four-hour flight downstream from the interior to the coast is unwise. In addition to the normally wet coastal weather, the glacial ice floating in the river on its last 50 miles to the coast can drop the temperature down below the dew point, resulting in a pocket of fog blocking the route to the coast. The alternative is to fly up the river, knowing that if the mouth of the river is clear and passable, the drier interior surely will be, affording a safe flight to Haines or Whitehorse. We picked a couple of days of moderately high pressure to fly the coast to Yakutat, and thus we were able to safely begin this trip up the marvel that is called the Alsek.

In the course of the 24-day trip, we flew for 132 hours and made 25 bush landings. These landings were made on yellow sand beaches; black volcanic sand beaches; in a fjord on a stony beach strewn with icebergs; on a windy, rocky mountain ridge 6,000 feet above sea level; in flowery alpine meadows; in the grasslands of the prairie; and on gravel bars and gravel islands in rivers bordered by 2,500-foot or higher vertical walls of rock. Some of our "runways" consisted of tiny spots suitable only for an experienced pilot in a Super Cub, perhaps marked at the approach end by a pile of rocks or a washed-up spherical orange fishing float that a previous bush pilot had placed there. But I’ve been at this a while. I used my judgment and coursed our way through and landed in some of America’s most impressive, dramatic country. For my mother and me, this was a trip of a lifetime.

Robert Breeden, AOPA 948167 , of Catlett, Virginia, has logged 4,500 hours in his 17 years of flying. He is the owner of a Piper Super Cub and Cessna 185.