Alaska Part Three - You Never Come All the Way Home

Most of us first heard the word Alaska in grade school textbooks. It was the 49th state, Seward's Folly, the land of grizzly bears and eskimos. More recently (and unfortunately) our children might associate it with Sarah Palin or the Deadliest Catch, a land where men can still be men.

My childhood visions of Alaska were more intimate. My father would go on fishing trips there deep into the wilderness. He came home with tales of floatplanes, fishing camps, and river adventures. Within a week or two of his return a cooler of salmon showed up on our doorstep, a testament the stories were not exaggerations or of "the ones that got away." I believe to this day Alaska is my father's favorite place on earth.

I watched the late evening sun touch the horizon and reflected on those memories during my reluctant drive back to Anchorage. This visit to the last frontier state was brief and made possible only through a work commitment. I was so fortunate to have my stepmother, a companion on many of my father's trips, put me in touch with bush pilot Bill Quirk. Bill had joined in on one of their back country romps, and he regaled me with fond recollections during our flight over the Knik. His stories were a bridge to my father's narratives allowing me to feel I was following his footsteps.

I rounded a bend and my rear view mirror became obscured by a multicolor reflection. At first I thought it was a refraction of the rain on my windows, but one look over my shoulder revealed the most majestic panorama I ever beheld.

A double rainbow rose in blinding technicolor off the dark ripples of the Turnagain Arm only a half mile distant. At its base water boiled in an orange blaze. Red, yellow, and blue-tinted mist blew off its towering arches. I heard a voice whisper faintly on the wind, "Look what I can show you. You've only just arrived.” 

I cast a long, wistful stare. With my heart in my throat I turned northward once more.

My father once remarked, "Once you've been to Alaska, you never come all the way home."

He was right.

 

Alaska Part Two - Alyeska

Bush flying was just the beginning of a twelve hour odyssey to experience as much of Alaska as possible. I had driven straight to Merrill Field from work and still wore slacks and an Oxford. It was time to change clothes back at the hotel before embarking on phase two.

My clients had been happy to suggest "things to do" in and around  Anchorage. Most of them involved sightseeing and hikes along the Seward Highway. My bush flight traced the Knik Arm waterway extending northeast out of Anchorage on the north slope of Chugach mountains. The Seward is a coastal highway along the Turnagain Arm that bisects the Chugach range to the southeast. The Knik and Turnagain Arms both emerge eastward from Cook Inlet at Anchorage.

There are numerous interesting and scenic stops along highway including Potter Marsh Bird Sanctuary, Beluga Point Lookout (for whale-spotting the aforementioned), and Windy Point. The drive alone offers jaw-dropping scenery nowhere to be found in the lower forty-eight. I offer evidence of this in part three of this log.

I was most curious to witness the bore tide. The Turnagain Arm experiences one of largest tides in the world, up to forty feet, second only to the Bay of Fundy in North America. During certain moon phases the incoming tide can form a continuous 6-10 foot tall wave that rolls for miles along of the estuary. Kayakers and surfers often ride the wave, and sightseers find it prime time to spot Beluga whales and harbor seals behind the tide. (more here on the bore - http://www.alaska.org/advice/alaska-bore-tide). Alas I was too late time-wise and too early moon phase-wise to experience the wonder.

 
I drove southward deftly attempting to divide my attention between the road and this visual Mecca, destination Girdwood and the Aleyeska Resort. As I turned off Seward Highway a faint rainbow appeared in the pass and my deftness became skewed, which is to say I nearly ran off the road. Tragedy averted, I wandered through Girdwood and toward the resort.

Aleyeska is the largest ski resort in Alaska, though being August in the Kenai Peninsula not a snowflake was to be found on the steep ski trails. Instead the mountainside offers beautiful hiking. Locals had recommended the North Slope Trail which rises 2300 feet over 2.2 miles. The top mile of the trail crisis-crosses beneath a colorful, glassed tram that ascends from the 300-room hotel to a mountaintop terminal featuring a snack bar and the 4-star Seven Glaciers restaurant.

My watch showed 5pm as I turned into the resort parking lot. The hike looked doubtful as there was a light drizzle falling through the broken overcast. I walked to the tram base station to purchase a ticket and could see the upper terminal high on the slope. Not wanting to fork over for a pricey ticket and realizing daylight would remain at this latitude until well past nine, I set off for the trailhead. 

I enjoyed relatively easy walking at first, but started to second guess my decision as the light drizzle turned to steady rain and the temperature dropped. Visions of tomorrow’s news danced in my head, “Another stupid tourist succumbs to hypothermia.” I continued on.

The sun reappeared between the clouds and another rainbow rose high above a glacier in the east. This time I could stop to admire it without totaling my rental car. A mountain spring bubbled beside the trail and wild flowers rimmed its edges (Debbie, I wish your were there to name them all). The trail steepened, I needed to take frequent rests, and sweat soaked through my shirt.

After an hour I stepped into the upper terminal. The snack shop wasn't going to do, I was starving. I ascended a carpeted staircase to the Seven Glaciers and ambled to the hostess station in my soggy blue jeans and sweaty shirt, "One for dinner...?"

The hostess replied the dining room was full though I could plainly see it was half empty; those inside were in jackets and evening attire. She offered to seat me in the bar lounge where they serve the same menu. You bet.

The meal did not disappoint, king crab cakes and a filet, but of equal delight was the sun’s illumination casting red and golden hues throughout the room, a photographers dream. I attempted to discretely snap photos of guest’s reflections in this magical light but soon tucked the camera away. This was not a wedding.

As the sun began its slumber behind the western ridges I stepped reluctantly into the tram. If you hike up the mountain the ride down is free, a good thing as my pockets were bare after the four star dinner. I needed to hustle. My redeye home was leaving in just a few hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alaska Part One - We're Going to Land Where?

As I looked out the airplane window the snow-capped mountains touched the sky. A broad bay licked mud flats blending to salt marshes then to verdant muskegs, all laced with watery tendrils bisected by a slate blue river. I spotted a glacier deep in a mountain pass. Our flight path would take us closer. This was the Alaska of my father’s reminiscence. I had arrived.

The pilot’s voice drifted through my trance, “We’ll be landing over there.”

I craned my neck. Perhaps Anchorage was ahead and not yet in view though the plane banked and began a slow circle illuminating the glacier in sharper relief.

More distinctly I heard, “I have not landed here in years.”

What did he mean “…not landed here in years?” Doesn’t he fly this route all the time? I looked harder for signs a runway, or anything approaching civilization. My watch indicated we had at least an hour left. What was going on?

“Yep! That should do,” came his announcement and with that the plane powered back and we began a frightening descent into the abyss.

We hit the ground and bounced, then settled down and rumbled over rough gravel. Behind us the plane’s tail shimmied side-to-side. Then we were stopped.

“That was a terrible landing, just terrible!” the pilot quipped.

We were alive. That made it a good landing. Any landing from which you walk away is a good landing.

I extracted myself and walked weak-kneed through the scrub. On a small knoll I spun a gawkish pirouette. In the middle distance the Knik Glacier rose above a narrow lake. An icy blue archipelago floated before it.

I turned again and looked upon the aircraft from which I had emerged, a gold and white two-seat bush plane. The pilot, Bill Quirk, busied himself near the doorway looking for his camera to take with us on a hike to the ice field.

To say Bill is enthusiastic about bush flying would be an understatement. As a young boy growing up in south central Louisiana he caught the flying bug after a helicopter ride with a local pilot. Though his aviation aspirations were stifled by his family, his interest remained and finally in his mid-thirties he joined an Army flying club near Anchorage, Alaska where he worked as a natural resources manager for the Department of Defense. He soloed in 1976 and has since amassed several thousand flying hours and written two books on Alaska bush piloting. It was through Bill’s work as a federal land manager that he met my stepmother, who in turn tracked him down for me.

We walked through the scattered brush down a winding descent to the water’s edge. The icebergs drifting in the light gray water looked much larger now than they had flying over them. Some had smooth pale white contours while others rose in jagged, blue spikes. Bill lamented that the glacier was now only half the size it was a few decades ago. The glaciers in the Alaska Pacific Range are melting, and I could see it both here at Knik and on my airline flight in along the coast where tall, dark ledges surrounding the flows marked where ice had once been. Bill considers he has lived during the “golden age” of bush flying in Alaska before the melt when he could do winter ski-landings just about anywhere.

 
We returned to the aircraft and with an equally bumpy take off the plane, an Arctic Tern, leapt into the air. We turned northwest out of the pass, the Chugach mountains rising sharply to our left and Lazy Mountain towering over Butte and Palmer to the north. Beneath us, the chalky-blue Knik River meandered along the base of the mountains. Scattered ponds and creeks separated by lemon lime colored grasses filled the remaining expanse as far as the eye could see. Bill shot another landing on a gravel bar though rather than exiting he offered, "Let me take take you to a better place." Up we went again.

Our third landing did not disappoint. We put down on a broad gravel bar in the middle of the Knik River. The Glenn Highway Knik River Bridge was visible immediately to our east leading to Butte. As we walked Bill pointed to a tall Chugach peak and recounted an arduous hike to its summit years ago, “I couldn’t do that now. I’m too old.”

"You want to see some moose," he blurted as we walked back to the plane.

"Well, sure." I half expected he would snap his fingers and bulls would appear though it did not take much more than that.

Part of Bill's role as a natural resources manager was to conduct aerial wildlife surveys. In his book he recounts detailed surveys of moose, Dall sheep, bald eagles, bear, trumpeter swans, and even beluga whales though they proved elusive. Now retired he still enthusiastically tracks swans and moose.

Within minutes of flight over the muskeg he banked the plane sharply to the right and pointed, “See the cow moose and her calf?” I did. We proceeded to do a number of sixty degree figure-eight turns all the while spotting more moose and swans. My stomach was reeling.
 
Soon we pointed straight west then southwest toward Anchorage while Bill recounted his favorite flying exploits over the headset. We settled down for a smooth landing on the gravel runway at Merrill field, and the tower controller chatted with Bill about the swans.

Once out of the plane Bill was eager to continue his narrative, but my time was short and I was eager to see more of Alaska in the few hours before my trip home. I gave Bill a heartfelt thanks, jumped in my rental car, and rolled off the tarmac.