Through Alaska by Bus, Train and Plane : Flghts of Isolation and Grandeur

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Nothing captures the magic of Alaska better than flying across its vast wilderness areas in a small airplane.

Recently, I made two such flights that any traveler can 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 Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America. From the plane, McKinley seemed close enough to touch.

Small planes, otherwise known as bush planes, are the signature transportation of Alaska.

There are all types: Beeches, Navajos, Otters, Widgeons, Beavers and Cessnas, most of them twin-engine and propeller-driven. 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 indispensable.

So much of Alaska remains a roadless wilderness that bush planes are virtually the only way to get around. Some planes sport wheels to land on small airstrips; others have floats to alight on the state’s many lakes and rivers. In winter, large skis can be strapped to the bottom of the plane for landing on snow.

Anchorage’s Lake Hood is said to be the busiest seaplane base on earth. Similarly, Anchorage’s Merrill Field boasts having more takeoffs and landings than any other airfield, but the planes are bush planes rather than jumbo jets.

The freedom offered by the small airplane is exhilarating, allowing passengers to drop out of the sky into areas that are seldom, if ever, visited.

Because bush planes fly at low altitudes, perhaps only a thousand feet above the ground, occupants feel more in touch with the terrain than on board a commercial jet. Often, caribou, moose, grizzlies and wolves are sighted from the air.

Although many people who would fly with no worries in a 747 are a little apprehensive about small planes, once airborne and with nothing but spruce forests stretching to the horizon below, the rewards are many. And there’s really very little to worry about. The safety record of bush pilots in Alaska is impressive and most of them have extensive experience.

For example, 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, the bush flights will be canceled, so allow some flexibility in your schedule for a second-day flight.

Bush plane flights are moderately priced. Each of my flights cost $100 to $200 round trip in planes holding 6 to 10 passengers. Many of the flights take off whether the plane is full or not.

After you’ve already spent all the money to go to Alaska, $100 to $200 for a flying adventure is a reasonable add-on for an experience of this magnitude.

Anaktuvuk Pass is an inland Eskimo village in Gates of the Arctic National Park, north of the Arctic Circle, about 260 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

From time immemorial, this group of Eskimos has hunted the caribou that migrate through the region, with herds reaching a quarter of a million animals each autumn.

By the early 1950s, the legendary bush pilot Sig Wien was landing with some regularity at a small strip in Anaktuvuk Pass, causing these nomadic peoples to congregate regularly near the airstrip and eventually to settle in the region as trade developed.

Today, there are about 250 of these Eskimos, called Nunamiut Inupiats, or inland Eskimos, living in the village at the strip. They are the furthest inland of the many Eskimo populations.

The flight north in late May from Fairbanks in Frontier Flying Service’s twin-engine Beechcraft took me over broad tundra flats, across the serpentine Yukon River and then through the spiky Brooks Range mountains to the village.

We passed beyond the northernmost forests. Below, I could sometimes follow the pipeline through the wilderness, carrying oil from Prudhoe Bay in the north to Valdez in the south.

A flight goes to the village from Fairbanks each morning and returns each afternoon, making it easy to fly in for a brief visit.

At the village, we were met by Steve Wells, who came to Alaska to teach in the 1970s, married a village girl, Jenny Paneak, and has stayed ever since. Jenny is the daughter of Simon Paneak, patriarch of one of this Eskimo community’s most prominent families. It was Paneak’s rapport with Sig Wien that set in motion the founding of the village.

I toured a small museum run by Jenny Wells, where displays show how the Eskimos lived by hunting the migrating caribou, fishing for grayling trout and harvesting berries and other plants during the brief summer.

The chief virtue for 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 each autumn. Even today, these Eskimos are one of the few people 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: caribou leg, marrow from 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.

In winter, these people need to keep their caloric energy output high because temperatures dip so low. Last winter, Steve Wells traded in his two broken thermometers, which were stuck at 40 degrees below zero, for the latest improved temperature-measuring devices, which now go down to 80 below.

The temperature was more comfortable in the spring, however, when I rode out with Steve in a small, all-terrain vehicle to a promontory above the village to enjoy the scenery.

The vehicles, called Argos, seat six people and are capable of going over land or water, with four balloon-like tires on each side. We could make our way at will over the rocky tundra and small streams. Until a few years ago, dog teams would have been the only way to move in this region, especially in winter.

We admired the gray mountains, the wildflowers, the discarded caribou horns and the lichen-covered terrain, the domain of moose, sheep, bear, caribou and wolf. Steve’s family would go later in the day to the hunting camp a few miles from the village. During the summer, the area enjoys sunlight virtually 24 hours a day.

Life has always been difficult in this region, even with the abundant caribou, and it still remains a challenge. The village is 70 miles from the pipeline and the nearest road, making the bush plane its only link with the outside world. Small prefabricated houses are flown in, but cost a great deal.

The houses are built on stilts, so as not to melt the permafrost, which would cause the house to sink. Former dwellings of sod are now deteriorating, but there are still two livable sod houses in the village.

The local Eskimos accept modern life on its own terms, maintaining the traditions of their people and displaying them with pride in their museum. The village has chosen to be dry, meaning that no alcohol is allowed, which is a local option in Alaska.

Anaktuvuk is known for an important craft, caribou masks. Jenny’s mother, Suzy, is one of the foremost practitioners of this art. Hundreds of the masks are displayed at the local village store, the Nunamiut Store, the place to get lunch while in the village.

Due to the oil wealth of Alaska, the village at Anaktuvuk Pass is relatively secure and well-to-do since the Eskimos benefit from royalties associated with the oil resource.

Only about 600 outsiders flew into Anaktuvuk Pass last year, so the traveler who seeks an off-the-beaten-path adventure in Alaska can be rewarded with a fresh experience.

Denali, the Alaskan name for Mt. McKinley, means “the big one” or “the great one,” and size is what is most noticeable about the mountain, the tallest peak in North America at 20,320 feet.

Its broadly curved top, even from a distance, is immense. The near-vertical rise of the 14,000-foot Wickersham Wall on the mountain’s north side is one of the steepest rises from a base of any mountain on earth.

Many visitors to Denali never see the mountain because of cloudy weather. I didn’t see it on my first trip, but on my second the mountain was “out.”

I could observe the peak from the Park Service Wildlife Tour bus, a wonderful experience I highly recommend. The sighting whetted my appetite for the ultimate Denali experience, the flight in a small plane close to the peak of the mountain.

I went via Denali Air. Don Nicholson was the pilot. During the May 20 to Sept. 20 tourist period, Nicholson flies visitors to see the mountain. For 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 the excursion.

The flight went well and the weather was ideal, but the air was turbulent, something worth mentioning because small planes, flying over glaciers and through mountain passes, get buffeted around considerably. Although the turbulence is normal, the first time the plane drops or rises a few hundred feet in a violent wind draft can be unnerving.

Denali National Park is so vast that the flight west from the park headquarters to the mountain takes more than half an hour.

At takeoff, everyone watches for moose around park headquarters, where the cow moose like to drop their calves in relative safety because grizzly bears tend to avoid the area. Dall sheep, moose, caribou and grizzlies are sometimes spotted on the flight to the mountain.

The view is spectacular, encompassing wave after wave of the 300-mile Alaska Range. Below stretch the braided rivers, so named because the sediment of the glaciers divides the stream into crisscrossing braid patterns. And of course there is the grandeur of the glaciers.

One is Muldrow Glacier, a huge river of ice moving in slow patterns clearly discernable from the air, chewing rocks into powder.

For the photographers on board, Nicholson turned the aircraft to allow them to aim their cameras at the sights. The small plane flew to about 11,000 feet, the highest prudent elevation without oxygen masks.

If the weather is relatively clear, as it was on my flight, the plane can snake its way close to the peaks, riding the turbulent air. Sometimes, when weather is cloudy at park headquarters, you can still get a clear view of Mt. McKinley from a plane.

The north peak at Denali is spikier and shorter than the south peak. The Wickersham Wall is inspiring. During our flight, we were able to spot climbers, a few of the roughly 1,100 who make the ascent annually. The first successful assault on McKinley was made in 1908.

Though I have traveled several times to Alaska, nothing has captured the magic of the area for me as much as small bush planes traversing this huge wilderness.

Only by small plane could I make the close-up acquaintance of the tallest peak in North America and one of the continent’s most remote villages, home of the caribou hunters of Anaktuvuk Pass.