Alaska By Bush Plane
Alaska, the largest state in area, has the fewest roads per square mile. Much of the land is wild and remote. These roadless regions cannot be accessed by road vehicles. Travel is accomplished by foot, dogsleds, all-terrain vehicles, boats, or aircraft.
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We have chartered two float-equipped deHavilland Beavers from Brooks Range Aviation to take us and our gear from Bettles to a small lake near the confluence of two rivers. Two persons and their gear per aircraft, Chuck and I will fly in the yellow Beaver. John and Dan will go in the red and white one.
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North by northwest we flew over the treeless Endicott Mountains of the Brooks Range. Smoke from tundra fires south of Bettles veiled the land as far as we could see, beyond the Brooks and on toward the Arctic Ocean. Our flight destination is a small lake near the confluence of two rivers. By air, it is only 52 miles away. As we were to discover soon, air miles and river miles are not equal.
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Below us, the river that we will be on for at least seven days. We can make out the ripples of rapids as they flash in the sun. From our high vantage it looks tame. Tomorrow we shall see.
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We make our approach, circling once over to check landing conditions, the water, wind, and other hazards such as sunken logs and browsing moose.
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Everything we would need for our canoe trip down the river had to be flown in by our deHavilland Beaver floatplane. Chuck stands by our just-offloaded gear and supplies as the other floatplane lands on the small lake.
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John offloads his equipment and supplies from the float plane that he and Dan rode in on.
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As the planes taxi to their departure point on the little lake, the pilots remind us that we are now on our own. The flight was a one-way flight to the lake. The planes cannot take off with the same load that they came in with because the lake is too small and there would not be enough water to allow for the required take-off run.
Between here and the next outpost of civilization lay 127 miles of wild and remote river.
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