It was late September, the end of another hunting season in the Western Arctic. Rivers were beginning to freeze from the bottom up. The days were down to 11 and a quarter hours from sunrise to sunset and diminishing rapidly. It was time to leave.
My partner—I’ll call him Sam, a Super Cub pilot and master hunting guide—was planning to depart along with me for the 440-nautical-mile flight from Kotzebue, Alaska, to Fairbanks via Galena and the Yukon River. He planned to join me in Galena, where we could compare notes, refuel, and take a short break.
As the day progressed, Sam kept coming up with “one more thing” he had to do before he could go, and we dawdled for several hours. Around 3 p.m. I decided to leave in my Cessna 206. He said that he would be right behind me. Fickle weather in the Arctic can strand you for days at a time. When a window opens, you had best go through it. The sky conditions were good, as were the winds.
After I landed at Galena, I discovered that Sam had decided not to go at all that day. By now it was 4:30 p.m., but with the remaining 250 nautical miles to Fairbanks, the current weather, and my familiarity with the route, I decided to depart. I expected to arrive a bit before dark.
The flight along the Yukon River to its fork at the town of Tanana was generally good with occasional areas of lower ceilings and rainshowers; however, I had 20-plus-knot headwinds. The weather was deteriorating, but still not too bad. Picking up the right fork onto the Tanana River, I continued on. The sky condition continued to deteriorate, but there was not a long way to go: only 83 nm as a raven flies, but I was following the river. The showers were now mixed rain and snow. The sun had set.
As I came around a bend nearing the town of Nenana, flying low over the river in the twilight, a horror manifested before me: power lines and a bridge. I executed a hasty, modified chandelle to the right, cleared the trees lining the bank, and climbed enough to find the Nenana airport and land. I had been using world aeronautical charts for convenience, but the WAC’s detail is low and the wires and bridge are barely visible on it. A sectional or terminal area chart has the detail needed.
It was raining moderately, cold, and dark. The Nenana airport has no services and is not within walking distance of town. At Fairbanks, 35 nm away, the weather was marginal VFR. I decided to continue on.
Taking off and staying on the Fairbanks side of the bridge and power lines, I resumed following the river. About 15 miles out, the Fairbanks ATIS indicated it was no longer VFR, with wet snow falling. I asked the tower for a special VFR clearance. They said they could accommodate me after a 10-minute delay for inbound IFR traffic. I had briefly considered asking for a pop-up IFR clearance, discarding that as a possibility because of the icing potential. All I could do was set up a tight holding pattern outside the Class D and wait for the clearance. After a very time-dilated 10 minutes, I heard the golden words.
With the ILS/localizer frequency tuned and identified to assist me, I proceeded up the river and intercepted the localizer at a couple hundred feet above ground level. A few seconds later, the rabbit (the runway-centerline sequenced strobe) became visible, followed by the approach lights and the threshold lights. The visibility was perhaps two miles in snow with a ceiling of 800 feet. After an uneventful landing and taxi to a familiar tiedown near the tower, I thanked ATC and shut down.
So how does one facilitate an “accident looking for a place to happen” like this? Depart late. Waste time. Fail to take into account how following a river increases the total distance and time. Press on with daylight diminishing and weather deteriorating. And fail to have the necessary charts at hand to be aware of the hazards to navigation.
Related Articles
