Nothing captures the magic of Alaska better than the adventure of flying across the vast wilderness in a small bush airplane.
Recently I made three such flights that a traveler could easily duplicate.
From Fairbanks, I flew north to a remote Eskimo village at Anaktuvuk Pass, in Gates of the Arctic National Park, visited for the day, and flew back to Fairbanks that evening.
At Denali National Park, I took a 70-minute flight-seeing trip to get a close-up view of Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet the highest peak in North America. From the plane, McKinley seemed close enough to touch.
In Anchorage I flew west to a wilderness area for a day of northern pike fishing at Alexander Lake and saw moose, beluga whales and eagles on the return trip.
Small planes -- otherwise known as bush planes -- are the signature transportation mode of Alaska. Ever since the first bush planes appeared in the 1920s, they have been important links in the state's transport system. Large commercial jets serve Anchorage and Fairbanks in central Alaska, but beyond that the small plane becomes critical.
So much of Alaska remains a roadless wilderness that bush planes are, in fact, the only way to get around. Some bush planes sport wheels to land on small airstrips. Others have floats to alight on the state's many small lakes and rivers. In winter, skis can be strapped to the bottom of the plane. Anchorage's Lake Hood is said to be the busiest seaplane base on earth. Similarly, Anchorage's Merrill Field is reputed to have more takeoffs and landings than any other airfield, but the planes are small bush planes rather than jumbo jets.
It takes some adjustment for many passengers, who would fly with no worries in a 747, to sit next to a lone bush pilot in a small plane with nothing but spruce forests stretching to the horizon below. However, most bush pilots have remarkable longevity. Mick Van Hatten, who piloted me into Gates of the Arctic, has flown for the past 29 years on every flyable day, in all kinds of weather, without incident. When the weather turns nasty, as it often can in Alaska, bush flights will be canceled, so allow some flexibility in your schedule for a second-day flight, if possible.
From Fairbanks to Anaktuvuk Pass
Anaktuvuk Pass is an inland Eskimo village in Gates of the Arctic National Park, north of the Arctic Circle, about 260 miles north-northwest by bush plane from Fairbanks.
From time immemorial this inland group of Eskimos has hunted the caribou that migrate through the region, with herds reaching 250,000 each autumn.
By the early 1950s a legendary bush pilot, Sig Wien, was landing with some regularity at a small strip in Anaktuvuk Pass, causing these nomadic peoples to congregate and settle in the region. Today there are about 250 of these Eskimos, called Nunamiut Inupiats, or inland Eskimos, living in the village at the strip. They are the farthest inland of the various small Eskimo populations.
The flight north from Fairbanks in Frontier Flying Service's Beechcraft plane took me over broad tundra flats, across the serpentine Yukon River and through the spiky Brooks Range mountains to the village. I passed beyond the northernmost forests. Below, I sometimes could follow the pipeline through the wilderness, carrying oil from Prudoe Bay in the north to Valdez in the south.
A flight goes to the village from Fairbanks each morning and afternoon, making it easy to fly in during the morning and out in the afternoon.
At the village we were met by a mammoth of a man, Steve Wells, an outsider who came to Alaska to teach. Steve arrived in Anaktuvuk Pass and married Jenny Paneak, who comes from a prominent village family -- that of Simon Paneak, patriarch of the Eskimo community. Paneak's rapport with Sig Wien set in motion the founding of the village.
I toured a small museum run by Jenny Wells that showed how the Eskimos lived from hunting the migrating caribou, fishing for grayling trout and harvesting berries and other plants during the brief summer. The chief virtue in a man was to be a good hunter. As nomads, these Eskimos lived in portable skin houses, following their food supply. Caribou would be killed in the autumn and consumed through the winter and spring. A typical family would take about 12 caribou during the autumn as they passed through on their annual migration. Even today, these Eskimos are one of the few subsistence peoples who survive on hunting rather than agriculture.
At Jenny's house I sampled the full range of the typical meat and fish diet of the Eskimos. I ate caribou leg, marrow of smashed caribou bone, grayling trout and muktuk, or whale blubber. All these foods were shaved off frozen chunks with the typical rounded Eskimo knife, the ulu. Jenny Wells' mother, Suzy, living on a traditional Eskimo diet, will eat this meat and fat diet, raw or boiled, three times a day.
Anaktuvuk is known for an important craft, making caribou masks, and Jenny's mother is one of the foremost practitioners. Hundreds of the masks are displayed at the local village store, the Nunamiut Store, the place to get lunch while in the village.
From Denali National Park around Mount McKinley
The Alaskan name for Mount McKinley, Denali, means "the big one" or "the great one," and that is what you notice most about the mountain, the tallest peak in North America. Its broadly curved top, even from a distance, is immense. Up close, you also see the steep vertical rise of 14,000 feet, called the Wickersham Wall, along the north side. This is one of the steepest rises from a base of any mountain on earth.
But many visitors to Denali never see the mountain because of cloudy weather. I didn't see it on my first trip. On my second trip, though, the mountain was "out." I could observe the peak from the Park Service Wildlife Tour bus, an experience I highly recommend. The sighting whetted my appetite for the ultimate Denali experience: the flight in a small plane close in to the peaks of the mountains.
Don Nicholson of Denali Air was my pilot. During the May 20-Sept. 20 tourism period, he flies visitors to see the mountain, and the rest of the year he flies into remote Eskimo villages carrying routine cargo. Seven passengers and the pilot crowded into a Cessna 207 for my excursion.
The flight went well and the weather was ideal, but the air was turbulent, something to be mentioned because small planes, flying over glaciers and amid mountain passes, get buffeted around considerably. A prospective passenger should be prepared for this and not worry. However, the first time your plane drops or rises a few hundred feet in a violent wind draft can be unnerving.
During the trip out to Denali the scenery is spectacular. You pass jagged wave after wave of the 300-mile Alaska Range mountains. Below stretch the braided rivers, so named because the sediment of the glaciers divides the stream into crisscrossing braid patterns. You witness the grandeur of miles-long glaciers, such as Muldrow Glacier, a huge river of ice moving in slow patterns clearly discernible from the air, chewing up rocks into a fine powder called glacial flour.
From Anchorage to fly-in fishing
Inspired by Alaska fish stories and recalling the many fishing adventures of my youth, I looked forward to a day of fly-in fishing from Anchorage.
I flew with Craig Ketchum, whose family has been prominent in setting up this kind of adventure. Already in the 1960s the Ketchums of Anchorage were operating fly-in fishing trips. Today they have nine planes going full time in the summer. They maintain 42 cabins at various wilderness lakes within 25 to 200 miles of Anchorage, all accessible only by float plane. The Ketchums can drop you at a lake in the morning and pick you up in the evening, or they can leave you for a specific number of days. They also offer raft trips where they drop off you and the raft, picking you up at a scheduled day at a point downriver.
A Ketchum pilot, Don Bale, decided to take me and a few other prospective anglers for a day to Alexander Lake, where the Ketchums have boats and a small cabin, affectionately known as the Homestead. When we arrived, we caught some pike, but not as many as the three fellows lounging at the cabin.
The flight back proved to be special. We took off from the lake, passing abundant birdlife, including clusters of whistling swans. The scenery showed spectacularly, with 90-mile visibility as we crossed the Big Susitna River watershed. At one point we found ourselves circling a few hundred feet above three bald eagles. Then Don Bale exercised his moose-spotting skills and we circled around a half-dozen of the magnificent creatures scattered over the landscape. But the most memorable moment was when we passed over the Cook Inlet on the way into Anchorage and saw beluga whales, white behemoths in the dark water, cruising up the inlet. They were following the schools of smelt, a major source of food.
If you go . . .
From Fairbanks, the flight out to Anaktuvuk Pass and the Eskimo village is offered by Frontier Flying Service, 382 University Ave., Fairbanks, Alaska 99701; telephone (907) 474-0014. The cost is roughly $190 round trip. Have the pilot drop you there in the morning and pick you up in the afternoon.
At Daniel National Park, flight-seeing around Mount McKinley is offered by Denali Air, P.O. Box 82, Denali National Park, Alaska 99755; telephone (907) 683-2261. Flights are frequent and cost roughly $110 for the 70-minute outing. Morning flights usually have a better chance than afternoon flights of seeing the mountain clearly and up close.
In Anchorage, the largest and most experienced of the fly-in fishing operations is Ketchum Air Service, P.O. Box 190588, Anchorage, Alaska 99519; (907) 243-5525. The service can drop you at a lake in the morning and pick you up in the evening for roughly $195. Many packages include cabins overnight. Guides and rafting trips are available.
For more information on the state write Alaska Division of Tourism, P.O. Box E, Juneau, Alaska 99811; or telephone (907) 465-2010.