Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  This time was different; even if the 207 appeared like a safe haven away from the wind and the light rain, my passengers stayed out, well covered in their parkas to help us load the Skyvan. I carried a few suitcases into our plane and secured them with a cargo net. Within minutes, the Skyvan appeared only preceded by its peculiar sound, sort of a continuous melody from a distant Amazon.

  We were hardly done loading the Skyvan when our local agent, Jimmy, approached me. I had never met him, but he was obviously wearing a concerned look on his face.

  “Are you with Norton?” He simply asked.

  “Yes, I’m Steven.” I shook his hand and waited for what was to come.

  “One of my nephews left on a small white skiff this morning with two of his buddies. He told me he would come back by 12:00. He’s been late for hours now,” he paused. He was a large Yupik man well overweight and was carrying a passive strength. Everything in his attitude was calm and peaceful, but he was radiating a blunt force. “Do you think you can go check out the water just north of the island when you leave? Could you look for them?”

  I did not feel comfortable venturing and roaming over the sea with a single engine and two passengers, but the Skyvan was available. His freight would not complain about the search and his two Garrett turbine engines would provide an unequaled level of safety.

  “I can’t do it, but don’t worry, let me talk to the Skyvan’s pilot. We’ll take care of it,” I responded.

  I walked to the back of the Skyvan; Dax was bent over, tying down straps in the back of the plane.

  “Dax!” I hollered at him.

  “Yo!”

  “Come here a sec!” Dax came to the edge of the rear cargo bay.

  “What?”

  “I just talked to Jimmy. I guess some kid and his friends went out this morning on a small white skiff. They were supposed to be back by noon. They went north and he wants me to go check it out. I can’t do that with passengers.” I shook my head. “Could you go?”

  “Sure! But, hey, I don’t have a VHF, I’ll let you know if I find something on point nine.”

  “That works! Thanks!”

  Jimmy was listening and standing back. “I’ll give you a call once Dax finds something or…” I ran out of words. We both knew what the other outcome was, not finding anything. “I’ll… I’ll keep you posted.” There was a sense of temporary relief on his face. Something was being done, but the anxiety was still there, we all knew what could happen.

  Dax was the first one to take off. After climbing a few hundred feet, he turned to the north and started his search. We took off a minute after him, turning to the southwest and following the coast line for a while. I had been on the ground for less than half an hour, but the weather had considerably changed. The miserable mist and clouds were a bad souvenir, the sun was coming out in an unrealistic array of glitter and the green hills were all there offering themselves to the departing aircraft. The rocky coast, the sea, and the distant cliffs of Nelson Island were portraying the true Alaska, the wild and untamed one, so far away from the touristy postcards.

  Dax was flying in large circles, attempting to cover as much ground as possible, glancing on either side of his plane, banking and scanning, hoping to find the sailors. So many people had been lost, whether it was on a snow machine, a boat, a plane, or even on foot, so many left and never came back. They ventured to the village next door to visit family, medical appointments, or a hunting trip. Some vanished during a blizzard walking back from the neighbor’s house a hundred feet away. Whether it was a short stroll or a snow machine trip, something unexpectedly happened, the craft broke down, the weather changed or somebody was simply and cruelly lost. After a few hours, a family member or a friend worried and contacted the neighbors and authorities. A few snow machines or four wheelers from the local villages gathered. The Bethel Search and Rescue volunteers, the Civil Air patrol or the State Troopers joined the search from the air, but so many times, the rescue workers came back empty handed. Other times, the rescuers came back with a heavy heart, destroying an entire family’s hope of finding their loved one alive. It happened several times a year, and it was never any easier. The victims were not strangers or anonymous names in a newspaper, they were locals from the Delta, a friend of a friend, a distant cousin, a neighbor, a coworker or somebody somewhat related to us. We hoped my overdue sailors would not belong to the dreaded chain of events.

  Dax continued circling. His fuel was becoming an issue. How long could he stay orbiting? As he continued his search, Dax crammed numbers, I have 1050 pounds of fuel, I burn 600 an hour, what’s that? An hour forty five of fuel. An hour to Bethel, thirty minutes reserve, that’s only 15 minutes left for the search, after that, I have to leave. Dax consulted his wrist watch, 6;17 pm, he wrote down 6:32 on his clipboard. After that, get out of here and fly back to Bethel. The idea was wrenching. Dax occasionally read or talked about failed rescues, but this time, he was part of it. He was the lone search party, his failure to find the little boat could mean their drift to the open sea.

  6:21 pm. Nothing. The plane banking and turning.

  6:24 pm. How long before Bingo fuel? Eight minutes, that’s it?

  6:26 pm. A dot on the water! Dax banked one more time for a better look. A sun glare on a whitecap, nothing!

  6:29 pm. Three minutes left. Damned! Dax blotted his sweaty palm on his cargo pants.

  6:32 pm. His heart sank. Dax turned for a last time for a heading towards Bethel, guided by rules and common sense. There was nothing else to do, call Steven and relay the sickening message. Sorry, I could not help, better luck next time, grab your own boat and do it yourself. If he could not find them from the air, a slow search party on a fishing boat would not do any better. His stomach knotted. A bitter taste invaded his mouth, spreading like spoiled peanut butter. Dax could not drive himself to key the radio. Call Steven and tell him, get it over with, who knows where they are? Dax looked out. The sea was glistening under the afternoon sun. Did I look hard enough? Did I miss them? Should I stay? One more turn, two at most. I shouldn’t. I can’t. Sorry kids.

  Another dot, another whitecap, I have tried my best… another whitecap? That’s not a damn whitecap! That’s a boat! Small white skiff, that’s THE boat! I’ll be damned! His thumb instinctively pushed on the microphone’s knob to call me, the two lifesaving Garrett engines roaring in the background.

  “Five One Charlie, Five Zero Niner?”

  “Five One Charlie, Go ahead.”

  “Yeah, I found the boat, 8 miles from the coast, heading towards Mekoryuk, looks fine.”

  “I’ll let them know, thanks!”

  We did not know them and we would probably never even meet, but we felt a relief and the wonderful sense of having helped the community. Dax did not have to give up looking for them and hear later on that their bodies were found somewhere on a sandy beach. I relayed the message to Jimmy on the VHF and continued our trip back to Bethel. With a slight tail wind, our journey back would take another seventy five minutes.

  The weather was much nicer leaving Nunivak Island. In less than thirty minutes the ceiling had gone up a few thousand feet and the visibility had greatly improved. The younger technician was sitting next to me and predictably fell asleep. Clay was behind me staring at the waves going by; I was also looking at the sea, building memories about this flight unfolding before me. Something in the water caught my attention. There was a large object, a shape in the water. Was it? I looked at Clay who had the same puzzled look on his face. A large hump back whale emerged out of the water, her back already diving into the abyss. The furtive moment was simple and yet magical. It came and exploded in an unmatchable experience, then moved on, offering a unique intimate memory. We were both dazed by the sighting and we gladly lingered in this moment. The water was no longer an enemy and it had offered one of its most precious gifts. The cliffs of Nelson Island slipped under the plane, another plateau or two and there would be Toksook Bay, Nightmute, the Baird Inlet, and fi
nally Bethel. There was nothing more to expect, only a typical flight punctuated with routine radio calls.

  Alaska had a last present for us, the first plateau came served with a small herd of muskoxen. I had always heard about the animal, but besides the stuffed one in the hallway of Anchorage airport, I had never seen a live one, let alone a herd of them… until now. There they stood like sore thumbs, black marks in the middle of the green land.

  Clayton’s eyes were riveted to the animals. He leaned forward and shook his coworker. “Hey, Samuel, hey, Sam, wake up!”

  The young man opened his eyes startled.

  “Look at that!” Clayton pointed at the amazing sight.

  Samuel looked through the window hardly out of his nap, what was he supposed to look for? Tundra, that was nice, tundra was everywhere in this forsaken place. Why was Clay so excited? What was wrong with him? He looked around to find more tundra. Samuel wanted to close his eyes and rest.

  Clayton tapped on the window to show a specific spot. What now? Samuel thought. His gaze hardly attempted to find something of interest, more to please Clayton and to be left alone rather than truly find something interesting. His trip was over, and he wanted to head back to town, that was all he was interested in.

  What in the world is that? Samuel’s eyes opened wide as if Claudia Schiffer had walked into a bar and came to sit next to him to drink a cold beer. His eyes flew back towards Clayton who was smiling and nodding.

  “What’s that?!” Samuel said almost screaming to overcome the engine sound.

  “Musk ox!” Clayton answered laughing at the sudden change of expression.

  Samuel’s head swiveled back towards the herd, now disappearing behind the horizontal stabilizer.

  I looked towards my passengers and turned my index finger in small circles in the noisy plane to ask them if they wanted to circle around the mammals. Both of them exploded in excitement, nodding like little children who were just asked if they wanted a strawberry sundae for dinner. I turned the plane around and came back for more. The muskoxen looked at us with defiance, what was that little thing flying above us? With their heads pointed right towards us, we were a little spec intruding on their territory, the message was very clear. The beasts were impressive and docile at the same time, at least so it seemed from a distance. For whatever reason, even if the musk ox was a good candidate for domestication, the Yupik had kept their relations with the animal strictly on a hunter/ dinner basis.

  Unlike the beginning of our flight, the rest of our journey was calm and peaceful, the continuous humming from the engine rocking a slow procession of lakes going by. I had the satisfaction of having accomplishing my job, but at what cost? I had gambled and won. I had kept the flight legal, but with a reduced safety margin. This was not what aviation was about, it was about consistency and predictability. I did not want to become a hot shot pushing the limits and jeopardizing my safety along with my passengers’ just to get the job done. Mekoryuk came with a few lessons learned and a label. As far as Jeb was concerned, I would not launch a flight to the island with a reported ceiling below 9000 feet. Sadly, Jeb did not seem to mind pressuring us to send us out there when he safely stayed behind his counter. This flight was indeed a turning point, the revelation of a relationship between a dispatcher and his pilots, the conflict of interests and productivity versus safety.

  Dinner at Nyac

  June

  Everything was still fairly new; I was roaming from progression to setbacks, lessons learned to novice mistakes; yes, Jeb, I know, I forgot my clipboard on the dispatch counter, I did not need to be reminded on the radio for all the other pilots to hear.

  Little did I know that I was observed from afar. First, there was Jim Karl who kept a close eye on my performance. There was nothing very direct, no post checkride assessment or rigorous oral quiz, only a recurrent consultation between Jim and Robert, my company instructor, to make sure I was doing well. Once in a while, Jim directly asked me a few anodyne questions between two cups of coffee to find out if I was comfortable with the flights. I mostly was.

  Jim Karl was not the only one to scrutinize my performance. The Nyac gold mine owner, Dr. Karn, was also observing me. The doctor was not a bad man, but he was the physical caricature of the wealthy businessman sitting on an armchair and smoking a large Cuban cigar with a black top hat while laughing at underfed workers laboring for him. Beyond the rough and unforgiving appearance, hid a warm and compassionate owner who truly cared for his employees.

  Dr. Karn was in control of his life. For decades, he had worked tirelessly to develop his own micro empire. As a businessman, he was in control of everything but one aspect of his life, the flight in and out of Nyac. Dr. Karn had a direct say to Jim regarding his pilot, but that was it. Once Dr. Karn sat on the passenger seat, he became a follower, unable to have any real input on the next 35 minutes of his life.

  My first flight with our most prestigious passenger went well. Jim heard some positive feedback and gave me his blessing to fly to the mine several times a week to bring spare parts, fuel, mail, and occasional passengers.

  Twice a month, Dr. Karn came from Anchorage to spend the weekend in Nyac in order to keep a finger on the pulse of the operation. Norton usually dropped him off on Friday afternoon and picked him up on Sunday evening just in time to catch the Alaska jet. Unfortunately, Norton Aviation was officially closed on Sunday, so the newest pilot who qualified (me, in this scenario) was the appointed volunteer to take care of the flight. So, every other Sunday, I was destined to abandon Lydia and attend to my flying duties. As pilots, between the preflight and the overall time away from home, the flight was not financially worth it. With our wages only kicking in when the plane’s engine was running, the dollar amount did not nearly match the effort. Even if he never talked about it, Dr. Karn had long understood that fact and was very appreciative of our dominical sacrifice. Every time a Norton pilot came to pick him up on Sunday, Dr. Karn invited him to join them for dinner as an unspoken token of appreciation.

  Tonight, for the first time, I was going to Nyac to dine with the crew. I was about to go beyond the small airport ramp, and I would see more than an aerial view of the mining complex and the mountains. After another beautiful flight above the wild Alaskan woods, I landed and parked the plane by the upper strip. Jason was already waiting for me hunched over the old red Suburban’s hood. This time, I would do more than load the truck and takeoff; I was about to venture deeper into the depth of the mine and broaden my nyacian horizons.

  I stepped into the Chevy. Aside from the shotgun sitting between the driver and passenger seat, there was nothing peculiar about the vehicle, some dried mud here and there, a couple of spare shotgun shells (we were in the middle of grizzly country), a black Maglite flash light, a few loose papers and nothing more. The Chevy propelled forward. We passed the small curve at the end of the ramp and entered a very narrow trail leading to the main house.

  A stream was coming up. Decades ago, a small wooden bridge had been thrown over the river and was barely wide enough for the truck. As we cautiously drove over it, the wheels hung close to the edge, but Jason was used to it. Rather than worrying, he was talking about the mine and the last few days of work. His main complaint was about a large drill bit which had broken two days prior. My main concern was more focused on the edge of the bridge going by, only inches from our wheels.

  The Red Sea parting only took a few seconds, we continued our journey and approached a fork in the dirt road. To the left, there was our destination, the main house further up the mountain; to the right was a trail which ran deeper into the valley and the mine dump a mile away.

  “Well, if you want to see bears, you got to go to the dump. Those bastards like to hang out down there. Make sure you have a gun. Maybe one day we’ll go check it out.”

  “That would be great,” was my contribution to the conversation with Jason, the rest was mostly an endless self-addressed monologue about the mine’s ongoing issues. After a
few weeks on the site, the mine became their micro-universe disconnected from anything else. Isolated in the mountains, there was no crisis in the Middle East, no global warming, nothing not related to the mine operation worth talking about.

  We arrived at a clearing. So far, it had been a succession of thick woods and occasional small trails. There were a few abandoned buildings, mainly rusted metal hangars and workshops with broken windows, most of which had been left abandoned for decades. Here and there, old equipment for the mine or an old tanker truck from the forties were the only witnesses to decades of labor.

  The incline grew steeper as we continued to follow the trail up the mountain all the way to the main house. We parked and stepped out of the truck. I closed the old metal door in a loud clank and gazed at the amazing view. From the bottom of the valley to a broken horizon further southeast, a brewing wild life roamed in the middle of endless thick woods, tall spruce trees brisling in the light wind, and shallow streams. We walked up to the white two story house I had seen from the air. Who knew how long it had been there? The faded white paint did not mean much; it was only another victim of the difficult winters. We climbed a few steps and entered what I could safely consider the epicenter of the operation, Dr. Karn’s den along with the staff’s quarters.

  I followed Jason through the arctic way. We passed a very short wooden door (I had to bend down to avoid smacking my forehead on the top of the frame) and entered the heart of the house, a blend of hallway, kitchen, and original dining room. On the right, was an enclave with a buffet and our dinner waiting, some sparse vegetables, and the required meat and mashed potatoes. A little further, a creamy gravy, and a small brown cake patiently sat at the end of the counter. Three large refrigerators faced the buffet on the opposite side of the protrusion. A few colored photocopies of pictures were taped on the fridge, a lone wolf walking on a local trail, a black bear visiting their backyard, a group picture of former employees, some friends in quest of adventure, here, in the middle of nowhere. The kitchen was surprisingly well equipped. The room was a smaller version of a typical restaurant with stainless steel appliances. If it was expected in a city or even in a small town, it was a surprise to find professional grade equipment in the middle of isolated mountains.