From Buffalo to Alaska. Day 9 - 8/25/96

Morning was cool, with a heavy dew. The Peace River valley is only a few miles from the airport, and in the morning it is common for a heavy fog to roll out of the river, and over the airport. So while we could see sun and clear skies at one end of the airport, we could not even see the other end of the runway from where we were tied down. So we waited for an hour till the wind whipped the fog back into the valley, and we were off.

Well, almost off. The starter wouldn't engage. Just like a car -- we turned the key, we heard a click, but the engine wouldn't turn over. The only mechanic in town had gone fishing for a week, so things didn't look good. Just in case it was a case of a cold engine (this was the coldest we had been since the trip started) we turned the prop a few times by hand, got back in the plane, and it fired right up. We congratulated ourselves on our mechanical aptitude. So, half an hour later than planned, we were off.

For the first time we realized the loneliness of our trip. There was evidence of civilization below us, but very few friendly pieces of terrain if we needed to land in a hurry. This was the typical view out the front window on this leg.


The view out the side window was a little different. We were flying up a broad valley, that had smaller rivers and streams feeding into it. This is the Sikanni Chief river valley.


There was an emergency landing strip at the Sikanni Chief River, and a second at the Prophet River, a little further on. The Prophet River strip runs parallel to the Alaska Highway, between the river and the road. To give you some perspective on how long these runways were, the Prophet River runway in this picture is over a mile long (6000 feet). The runway at the airport in Buffalo where Chief Pilot keeps the plane is 2600 feet, and we can probably takeoff with only 1000 feet of runway if we needed to.


For those of you saying to yourself "Hey -- that doesn't look like much of a runway to me - there's grass growing out of it, it's miles from nowhere, and there's nobody around" -- you're right. But to us it looks a lot better than landing on top of a 150 foot spruce tree.

We planned a stop at Fort Nelson for fuel. After refueling, we were set for the next leg to Watson Lake, but the starter acted up again. This time, turning the propeller by hand did nothing, and we were stuck.

Cessna 172's like ours are one of the most popular airplanes ever built, and it is easy to find a mechanic for them almost anywhere. But Fort Nelson, BC, on a Sunday, was a challenge. The fellow who ran the Esso fuel station made some phone calls for us, and finally found Hal, a local mechanic who was willing to give up a lovely Sunday afternoon with his family to visit with us.


Here, Chief Pilot explains to Hal the symptoms that lead up to the disease, and ventures a diagnosis. Hal can be observed deep in thought.

When all was said and done, we needed a new starter, and Hal said he could have one flown in from Vancouver (where all spare parts for Western Canada originate) the next morning, and have it installed by afternoon. We were missing great flying weather, but had few options. So we went exploring.

We rented a car (in this part of the world, all rental "cars" are 4x4 trucks), and headed out of Fort Nelson, up the Alaska Highway. We wanted to see the beginning of the mountains that would meet us on the next leg, and also check out this 1500 mile long landing strip we had been following. We wanted to confirm that if we really needed to land on it, we could.

In many places the Alaska Highway is "improved" -- the original highway has been straightened, widened, and leveled. (It's now about 36 miles shorter than it was originally, because of the improvements.) But there are just as many places, especially as you get farther north, where "improvement" has not yet arrived.


In this picture, Chief Pilot scouts out a part of the old Highway that had been abandoned when the new stretch of Highway opened along side. Even this unimproved section looks better than the logging roads we'd been flying over.

Continued on Page 2
Sign Guestbook View Guestbook
| Previous day | Next day | Return to home page|
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1