Flying the Iditarod Trail: Moving from Galena to Unalakleet Part 2

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Taxiing out for the flight home

Parking the snow machine didn’t mean that the day’s journey was over.  I still needed to retrace my steps, so to speak, but the trip back could be more of a straight line, and if everything went how it was supposed to, with a whole lot less up and down.

            Our little plane, a 1955 Tripacer, had been parked in Unalakleet over the winter and was going to be my way home.  Before heading to the plane, I stopped by Tim and Mary Beth Daniel’s for a quick dinner.

            After hearing a recount of my travels that day, Mary Beth Speculated, “So, I guess you’ll do your three take offs and landings before heading back to Galena.”

            “If she fires up, runs smoothly, and feels good on takeoff,” I replied, “I’m pointing her home.”

            “I thought you would have to do that to be current after not flying all winter,” She pointed out referring to the FAA regulation requiring three takeoffs and landings every 90 days.

            “Only if I have passengers,” I answered.

            “It is up to him on this one,” Tim supported.

            The weather forecast before I left Galena was predicting a 24-hour-window that would be closing sometime early in the morning before sunrise.  A quick call to flight service confirmed it.  If I was going to get back for work for the upcoming week, I was going to have to go that night. 

            I thanked Mary Beth for dinner and Tim took me out to the plane.  I loaded up the small bag I was taking with me, did my preflight and climbed aboard… in the process I snagged the antennae wire of the hand-held aviation radio I had been using after my main panel mounted radio failed.  The wire pulled free, and I just sat staring at it.

            Tim scrambled for parts to repair it and thirty minutes later the radio was operable.  It had just been another thirty minutes, but the sun was sinking, and heading east would only mean flying into the dark that much sooner.

            I set the brakes, primed the cylinders, called “clear prop,” reached under the seat for the starter button and grinned as the prop spun and the trusty little O-320 sputtered and then fired to life.

            The run-up went well and with just me and a light bag, the plane leapt into the air.  Pointed toward the north on takeoff, I circled back over the ocean, cleared the airport, and headed east up the Unalakleet River valley back towards Kaltag.

            The flight normally takes around an hour and fifteen minutes from takeoff to touchdown.  I had about 30 minutes of good light left—just enough time to get through the pass at Kaltag before entering the long stretch of flat, obstruction free flying that led to Galena.

            At home in Galena, Myra looked at the clock and did her own math to when she would see me land.  She watched as the sun dropped behind the trees to the west.

            A half hour into the flight and the sun only gave a light glow as the moon made its presence known.  It was a relatively cloudless night and the moon illuminated the snow below.  I had just gone through the pass at Kaltag.

            Myra bundled up the sleeping one-year-old Ellen, started the truck, and headed to the airport.  She sat in the truck on the tarmac looking for airplane lights.  Sitting in a quiet truck and staring out at the sky down river did nothing to make time pass, and she started the engine and drove around the dike, passing the usual last-minute crowd gathering at the Galena Liquor Store (unfortunate name for a store that sells almost everything… and also alcohol).  One lap around the dike and the flashing beacon of a little plane could finally be seen over Pilot Mountain heading on an invisible rail to runway 07.

            The wind was light and directly in my face as I set up for long final.  I turned on the runway lights that looked like Christmas below, switched to my left tank, pulled on the carb heat, pushed in the mixture to full rich, and drew back on the throttle.

            “Galena traffic, Tripacer 2523P long final zero-seven, Galena,” I said to only myself as there would be no traffic at this time of night over a remote Alaskan strip.  My voice in my ears was almost alien after listening to a snow machine motor for eight hours and then an airplane engine for a little over an hour.

            It had been about a year since I had landed an airplane, my main gear lightly kissed the runway, the nose wheel came down over the center line, and I slowed down and taxied off 07.

            “Here comes Dad,” Myra exclaimed as she drove up to where the little Tripacer was normally tied down.

            Ellen excitedly looked out the window at a plane tied down on the tarmac no matter the pointing and prompting Myra was doing to draw her attention to the running airplane taxiing up to the parked truck.

            I taxied to my tie down spot, checked mags, shut down the avionics, pulled the mixture all the way out, and watched the prop spin to a halt. 

            I had left in the dark that morning and returned in the dark that night: 8 hours of driving snow machine, 3 hours on the ground in Unalakleet, 1 hour and 15 minutes of flying: a good, full day of Alaskan bush travel.

           Outside of the plane, Myra gave me a firm hug, “I wasn’t worried,” she said.

Parked waiting for my arrival (Photo courtesy Doug Swanson)