Couping to Alaska 2008 Part 2
Whitehorse Yukon. June 17
I realize that I am almost ten years older than I was the last time I
flew to Alaska. After 6 hours of flying I am ready for a day off. We
landed at Whitehorse and instead of staying in the rooms rented by the
FBO we got a bed and breakfast in town. It was in the basement of a
house near downtown. We shared the place with a widow from Toronto who
was in town to start a tour of northern Yukon.
The next day we rented a kayak and floated about 30 kilometers down
the Yukon river. The river is wide with a nice current. You could
clearly see that it could accommodate steamers to Dawson. The swallows
build nests in the clay of the bank and, where the clay is right the
river has birds skimming all over the surface.
We saw two eagles sitting in trees by the river. One was a golden
eagle (we think) and the other was am immature bald eagle. Still it
was a huge bird. Toward the end of the paddle we started hearing
thunder from the dark clouds that had been building all afternoon.
The threat motivated our paddling for the last couple of miles.
That evening I had Caribou Stew at one of the local restaurants. We
were seated next to an Australian couple who were up on a tour. He
started telling me about his 37 foot boat and the 1200 liters he
needed to fill the tanks. Suddenly fuel prices did not seem so bad. On
a long leg we might put 65L in the tanks. Now Whitehorse was charging
$2.14 (Canadian) per liter (about $8 per gallon) .
The next day we left for Fairbanks. The weather pattern was a
common one for this time or year. Some morning clouds with cumulus
building as the day went on leading to showers and threats of
thundershowers in the afternoon. We then found out that while Northway
is building a ski strip, they are not selling gas. Since we were told
there were headwinds all the way, this was an issue. We arranged to
buy 20 L in Haines Junction, only an hour out of Whitehorse but needed
to extend the range. The next gas is at Tok Junction, about 40 miles
beyond Northway.
Northway has a nice restaurant with a cook who likes to jam on his
guitar when he can. Customs was a very nice woman who checked the
plane for radioactivity. We had previously heard that many planes of
this vintage are radioactive because they used radium paint in many of
the instruments. We were clean.
In Tok Junction we ran into the Cirrus Owners club. There were 8-10
Cirruses on the field and the group was checking charts. They had
flown the coast route using their 1000 mile range to entirely bypass
Canada.
Tok to Fairbanks was a straight shot up a broad valley. It is less
that 200 miles so range is not a real issue. On our flight we
encountered 15-20 mph headwinds. We were bounced around and had to
dodge showers up the valley. Nothing looked like a thunderstorm but
the clouds were high cumulus.
We arrived in Whitehorse and started to make arrangements. I
wandered over to the Civil Air Patrol building and started talking to
a group of people. One, Clay, was a flying instructor at the
university. He invited us in and let Verna use the phone to make
arrangements while we talked about flying on the North Slope.
We went over where to get fuel there are two places before you
reach the coast, Umiat (an old navy base) and Kavik Camp ( a place
which is not even on the charts although a now have GPS coordinates. I
was warned that weather on the coast is very dicey with fogs coming in
during the last ten miles or so. He also told me that the local CFIs
have a meeting Tues the Thurs at the aircraft campground in the airport.
Verna reported that there were no cars to be had and few rooms. It
turns out that the town has a huge party on the 21st celebrating the
solstice. We eventually took a cab into a B&B in downtown. The next
day we walked around downtown Fairbanks. We saw any number of log
cabins ( I remember from our last visit that not an insignificant
number of these used to be houses of ill repute. We wandered into a
shop which reminded me of the old curiosity shop in Seattle, a little
junk, a few antiques, all piles at random. There were selling mammoth
bones (also walrus) by the pound. I bought a bone showing the wear
marks of a molar as if the animal had lost a tooth and was not
grinding against the jaw.
That night we went to the campground and had a long discussion about
flying to the North Slope. We decided that going to Bettles grabbing
fuel and landing Anaktuvuk Pass, a rare inland Inuit village was
reasonable. Heading further onto the slope was more or an issue.
After a much thought and discussion we decided on a couple of days
absolute rest. I decided to ground my self until I feel better. We
found a car, found a B&B 20 miles out of town in North Pole Alaska.
North Pole is where all children's letters to Santa go. All the street
lamps are striped like candy canes and the streets have cute names
like St. Nicolaus lane. There is a Santa Clause house. I understand
that there may even bean operation to respond to the letters and, of
course, letters from Santa have a special cache' when postmarked from
the North pole.
We spent a delightful day and a half sitting and reading our books.
