Alaska! Up North and to the Left

by Steven Swaks

  The accustomed Romanzof traveler backed off and sat on the couch, the newbie stood there and wondered what to do. Welcome to the Cape my friend, this is only the beginning of your misery. The hard core traveler knew better. A single glance at the weather and the answer was staring at his face, yes, it was going to be a long wait. Bill was one of those old timers, the Cape had no more secrets and even at Norton his face was fairly familiar. The shoe laces went untied; the old metal desk in the waiting area turned into a game table and the playing cards flew out of the pack. Allen stayed by the window and stared at the falling snow. After what could have been a fraction of a second in his tormented mind and an eternity for the commoner, Allen turned around to face Bill and Bob after abandoning the emptiness of the white wintery sky.

  “So… what do we do?” Allen asked still standing by the window.

  “You come sit at the table, take off your damn shoes and play some cards!” Bill said laughing.

  “How long do we have to wait?”

  Bill smiled and shrugged, “no idea, couple of hours, couple of days, you’ll find out at some point!” The two technicians laughed again. “Why don’t you ask the pilot?”

  Allen’s head swiveled and his eyes locked on me as if I was the source of ultimate knowledge. I was the one with answers, I would be shaking the magic wand to make it all go away. His mouth opened, but I raised my palm facing him in a defensive gesture and I shook my head.

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that, the weather is supposed to be bad for the next twenty four hours. That’s for the Delta, Cape Romanzof is always worse… who knows, could be days.”

  “Yup, there’s going to be a whole lot of card playing!” Bill laughed again. “What time do they open that burger joint down by Alaska Airlines? I’m hungry!”

  The old white desk became the center of attention for stories and laughter; they had lunch and complained about paying $17 for a burger and fries. The meals came and went, and aside from a required duty day away from the hotel room, I understood why our airline was more appealing than a dull bedroom. Please come to Norton Aviation, its candy machine, its coffee, its ongoing drama.

  Two days later, on Friday morning, the weather improved with hardly a few residual light snow showers. The bulk of the storm was heading further towards the mountains and a fresh layer of powder covered the delta. Bill, Bob, and Allen were back and ready to fly to Romanzof.

  “You have another tech going with you to Romanzof,” Jeb said.

  “A fourth?”

  “He’s going to be there for two or three hours, so you’re going to stay with him.”

  “I’m staying at the Cape?” I asked surprised.

  “Yup.”

  I had been there many times, almost once a week, but I had never stayed there, I had only been there for a few minutes, just enough time to drop off my passengers, the mail, and collect the inbound traffic, that was it. If I was curious to finally visit the base (I surely hoped they would not keep me on the ramp for that long), I also knew that we would be a lot more vulnerable if the weather went down. A forced stay at the Cape was NOT on today’s agenda, we were talking about Cape Romanzof here, not Miami Beach. I would have stayed all week in Miami. I would have laid on the beach with an eye semi opened and the other one shut. I would have enjoyed the sunshine on my vitamin D deprived skin, and the crashing waves would have been the only sound disturbing my peace. Sadly, I was not in Florida, and staying at the Cape meant a greater exposure to one of the worst weather conditions on Earth. It would have been like running back and forth through a high school corridor with a please kick me sign, hoping to get away without a well-deserved beating.

  My fourth technician entered the terminal; there was nothing peculiar about him. He was wearing an old black arctic jacket and Carhartt overhauls, he had the same beat up look pertaining to the fraternity of the Alaskan old timers, probably coming out of a secret assembly line hidden somewhere in Anchorage. His name was John, that was original, a John in Alaska, they were spreading like typhus. This John was only travelling to the Cape for a quick repair on an antenna before rushing back to catch the evening flight bound to the big city. Some workers did that, they arrived on the morning flight, worked a few hours, and flew back to Anchorage in the evening.

  “Look at this guy, he walks in, doesn’t need to wait one bit, and get on the plane. We’ve been rotting here for two days!” Bob said with a gargantuan voice.

  Allen looked at John surprised and waited for an answer.

  “Hey! I’m not some low life like you, I know how to pull the right strings!” John said laughing before shaking Bob’s hand. “It’s been a while!”

  “Yep, tell me about it!”

  “Where’s our pilot? Is that plane ready or what? I don’t want to miss my evening flight!”

  “Why? You don’t want to stay with us?”

  “You’re too fat and ugly! I’d much prefer to get back home and hang out with my wife and bratty kids rather than staying stuck in Romanzof with you!” John taunted with a condescending smirk.

  I introduced myself to my fourth passenger and walked into the hangar to tug the plane outside. In this early November morning, temperatures were already dropping to the low teens and the heated hangar was truly appreciated. However, when it snowed, it was a race to embark and fire up as soon as the plane was out of its den. The nicely warmed aircraft encountering the cold Alaskan fall created all sorts of problems. Once outside, while the cabin lost its toasty charm and repelled the passengers along with the pilot, the snowflakes melted upon hitting the warm metal skin of the aircraft. Soon after, the plane rapidly cooled off and the recently melted flakes froze solid on the wings and destroyed any aerodynamic smoothness and the resultant lift. The friendly administration always reminded us to leave the plane in the hangar with the gigantic door opened in order to cool the plane away from the snow, so, when the chilled plane came out of the hangar the gentle snowflakes stayed in the phase where they belonged and did not wander about the different states of the H2O world. In the meantime, management cried upstairs while they lost hundreds of dollars in useless heating, but we did what we had to do before safely leaving the base.

  I walked back in the terminal to gather my passengers and walked them to the plane right outside the hangar. Bill and Bob jumped in the middle row like two dogs in their basket, my briefing would be a distant slur heard so many times. John, was neutral, another small plane ride to the Cape did not really concern him either. Allen’s experience was different; each step towards the aircraft was a walk towards an unprecedented experience, a walk to death row. The comfortable terminal was staying behind and the bush plane was a passport to over there, so far away, perhaps two hundred miles away, who knew, the pilot did, but at this point it did not really matter anymore. The anxiety was carving the virgin’s face sparkled with an ounce of curiosity. Soon, they would be there and endure the next six weeks to come.

  One by one, the planes launched for their first flight of the day. Robert was flying Two Five Delta, the Caravan. The company instructor fired up the turbine engine and jerked the craft forward after a brief but appropriate warm up. The over grown Cessna rocked on the snow covered tarmac like a clumsy penguin in the Arctic, the long wings bouncing and amplifying each bump and each snow drift in a rocky dance. The propeller blast was one more layer of misery to the Alaskan morning. The giant blower lifted the fresh snow off the ground and generated a micro blizzard on the ramp with a large cloud of snow and hurricane force winds. In an instinctive move, the ground crew shielded their faces and turned their back away from the storm. In a few seconds, the plane taxied away and the snow came back down in a manmade winter wonderland. On a smaller scale, the cycle repeated itself when Matt and I taxied out our 207s.

  Soon after we left, the Skyvan started its shrieking Garret engines and left the ramp. Norton Aviation was coming to a rest. There were no more planes to attend to and no more demanding pilots. The ground crew gathered around the coffee
pot for one more chat. Idling Toad came by once in a while and joined the discussion. Jeb most often stayed behind his counter and thrived on his continuous state of alertness, or stress, the line was so fine, who knew? Once in a while, he emerged from his stack of paperwork and over ringing phones to join the conversation. They talked about anything and everything, from the location of the caribou herd to moose hunting, from Norton Aviation policies to the next load, bashing the cocky pilots in the process. They were simply a few friends, mainly Yupik, sharing stories and jokes, waiting to load the next flight, or the next Alaska Airlines truck to come and deliver its freight bound to villages.

  If there was such a thing, the typical flight to Cape Romanzof climbed towards the west, and flew over the villages of Atmautluak, Nunapitchuk, and Kasigluk, the three small communities corralled in a triangle a few miles from each other ten minutes away from Bethel. Kasigluk was the furthest west with the longest runway, and so many times the 3000 foot strip had been a safe haven for troubled or iced up planes coming from the coast. It was the end of an ordeal from over a hundred miles of emptiness and desolation. Kasigluk was the savior, the first sign of life on the GPS after crossing an ocean of frozen tundra.

  Jeb stepped in on the radio, “Five One Charlie Bethel Base?”

  “Five One Charlie go ahead.”

  “Could you tell Two Five Delta to stop by Nightmute on the way back from Toksook? They’ve some backhaul down there.”

  “Okay.”

  That’s what dispatch used to do. They called a nearby plane to relay a message to somebody else further. Their ground based radio ranged only 25 miles at best for a plane at low altitude and it went further as the plane climbed. Anybody flying in the area could work as an improvised relay station.

  “Two Five Delta, Five One Charlie.”

  “Go ahead.” Robert was on. He often had a nonchalant tone on the radio with a slight taint of annoyance.

  “Hey Rob, can you go to Nightmute after Toksook. You’ve some backhaul over there.”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Hold on. Bethel Base, Five One Charlie.”

  “Five One Charlie go ahead.” Jeb was quick to answer.

  “What’s the load?”

  “Three hundred pounds of backhaul.” That was good enough. There was no bulky parts to juggle with, just a few basic boxes to stack up in the back.

  “Hey Rob, it’s three hundred pounds of backhaul.”

  “Ok, thanks.”

  As usual, Robert kept it to the minimum, but that’s the way he was, as long as he was not involved in the conversation, he did not really care. Even a greeting in the morning was optional. At first, I thought he was annoyed, but he was just in Robert’s world. Once his interest woke up, he became the Robert we all liked, lively and opinionated, he was the fun and argumentative instructor we looked up to and truly enjoyed.

  The trip continued through endless spreads of tundra and scarce landmarks, not that we could see much on this dark morning anyway. There was something mystic about morning flights. The radio was still fairly quiet, there was a certain peacefulness which would soon disappear with the sunrise. With each blast of the strobe lights in the morning darkness, occasional snowflakes came and went to the rhythm of the lights, vain ghostly apparitions. To add to the mystique, the full moon played with the clouds. Halloween was just behind us; Stephen King would have been aroused.

  The sun was finally rising, but we were flying west, away from its life. Instead of its warm red and orange glow, I could only see palettes of grays over the endless spread of frozen lakes and tundra. The colors were long gone, the snow and ice were here to stay.

  The elongated Takslesluk Lake was a welcome sight emerging out of the darkness. It was an old friend awaiting, a lone landmark for some variety to the tundra and smaller lakes scattered like thousands of puddles over the delta. Five or six mud volcanoes, miniature versions of their feared grown up counterparts, soon followed on my right. One of them had the perfect volcano look, with the steep flanks and the deep crater, complete with a small lake at its base. Further, the Ingrisarak Mountains, with a proud 635 foot hill and its 364 foot neighbor, stood in my flight path. They might not have meant much on a normal day, but they often became a great source of respect as the ceiling went down. 635 feet was quite high when the cruising altitude was a mere 600 feet above sea level.

  An hour into the flight, Bill and Bob had long collapsed in their seat. In their numb world, the flight was as exciting as a road trip through Iowa in a Greyhound bus. Allen was sitting by himself in the last row, right next to strapped down suitcases and tool boxes. While staring outside, he knew he would find a sign of life, a road, telephone poles, something, but even wild life did not bother to show up. The white ground was the only spectacle, the frozen eternity spreading beneath the plane in an infinite set of ruffled sheets. We were in a capsule floating above a foreign world, a world made of crystallized lakes and snow covered tundra. John was next to me, vainly trying to entertain himself by staring at the GPS and the gauges. Another two planes were visible on the moving map, a Coastal Aviation Caravan, and a plane with a tail number I was not familiar with without company prefix.

  “Five One Charlie, are you on company?” A foreigner’s voice called on the company frequency.

  “Roman?” I asked, yet comfortable about the positive answer.

  “Hi, surf boy! How are you doing my Californian comrade?!”

  “Hey! This ain’t your stinking Siberia! Don’t start to throw comrades in my face!” I said laughing.

  “Who said I was Russian? Hey, I knew that was you beach boy! How do you like the weather my friend?”

  “Ain’t as bad as your hood!”

  Roman chuckled.

  “Are you coming back or what? It’s already November!” I added.

  “Why? Do you miss me?”

  “Heck no!”

  “Ha, ha, I had some extra charters, I talked to Jim and he was ok with it.”

  “So? When do you come back?”

  “Soon, my friend soon, don’t get too excited!”

  “Don’t worry about that! I’m not!” I said chuckling.

  “It was nice chatting with you but I have to call the agent, see ya comrade!”

  “Yeah, yeah, you take care, be safe, see ya!”

  I looked back at my passengers. “How’re you doing?”

  Allen stared at me with a lifeless look, I was the mad man taking him to the dungeon. He nodded a couple of times and rose a shy thumb up, then his eyes went back to denial, so far out the window.

  We passed the Ingrisarak Mountains, the GPS showed another 20 minutes to our destination and ringed the time to call Romanzof. The airport was not a self-serve runway, pilots could not just show up and pay a visit. Even if the site was mostly self-sufficient, the administration had maintained some cohesion and only a few selected were allowed to land there.

  I switched the frequency on the digital radio and keyed the mic. “Cape Romanzof, Norton Five One Charlie.”

  “Norton Five One Charlie, Cape Romanzof, go ahead,” a female voice replied. It was Charlene, the cook, in her way, she brought a homey feel to the emptiness and her husky voice was a welcome sign of life.

  “I’ll be there in 20 minutes, four passengers.”

  “Ok, stand by for weather.” It took two or three minutes and Charlene came back. “Five One Charlie… The wind is zero seven zero at twelve, visibility six miles, ceiling… Overcast three thousand, temperature minus eight, dew point minus ten, altimeter two niner seven zero.”

  I could not help but comment on the numbers, a self-addressed analysis like an elementary school student giving his report card to his parents. The wind might be a little turbulent, the visibility was good, the temperature -in Celsius, about 17°F-was not a surprise, we were at the beginning of yet another winter. What was left before spring? Six months? I did not even want to think about it. The weather briefing was concluded by a dull but required disclaimer, “t
here is no known traffic in the area, land at your own risk” -Come deliver the mail, your passengers, and my cigarettes, but if you crash, it’s not our fault-Charlene had always been nice to me, but she was also known for her volatile personality. Her cigarettes had a direct say on her mood, as long as they kept coming, it was all good, but if the weather gripped the cogwheel, it was something else. Somebody opened the can of worms and the Shining came out. Heeeeeeere’s Johnny popped his head out the door and did some damage, the survivors clung to the phone and begged to send a plane to bring her the cancer sticks.

  Chevak and its 700 residents were next on the landmark list; the little village appeared on the weak horizon and came as a welcomed break. I did not know much about Chevak, in my pilot’s eyes, it was only a good runway, a large ramp, and a curvy road going to town. One day I might take the time to venture down that road to explore and meet the people. This morning the town was only a sight from above, a few rows of small wooden houses, a store, a school, and a tall antenna standing in my flight path.

  The large Kokechik Bay followed Chevak, the land was dying and the sea was taking over. The last few minutes of the flight was over the frigid waters of the bay embracing a series of cliffs and narrow beaches. Beyond the bay, there was only the beginning of nothing, the end of the West and the gates to Siberia.

  Towering mountains dwarfed the radar site still hidden in the mountains. As we approached Romanzof, the friendly eastern winds turned on us, the beautiful tail winds were mutating into an angry beast surging from the mountains. The approach was always a gamble, a lottery with the elements. Long ago, I had given up predicting what would happen, I could only speculate and give an educated guess. I stayed ready. I warned my passengers about the potential turbulence and waited without a magic recipe to exactly predict what would happen. Even if all the factors announced severe turbulence, the flight might have been smooth, and when the wind was calm, the plane might have been tossed like a dirty rag. But the wind never really went away, it hid in the mountains, lurking around the valleys like an ugly creature. It hunkered down and sneaked between the rocks and the shallow valleys. It waited and rushed out on the passing plane with despicable fury. It was neither a gentle warning nor a gradual tremor, no, the beast did not operate that way, it was rage, it was anger unleashing its wrath on the plane. It was a single horrendous jolt slamming the plane to untold heavens. The pilot and seasoned passengers were used to it; the newcomer hung on and held his breath as the invisible force smashed the flimsy craft.