Up In the Air
We meet our pilot early today. The guide, Michael, and I load into a very small, old, three seater bush plane. Quickly we are ascending out of the Fairbanks urban area and begin to encounter the lakes and forests leading into the Arctic far ahead. As we approach the re-fueling spot at Bettles one and a half flying hours north of Fairbanks I notice heavy cloud cover far ahead over the Brooks Range mountain peaks. This seems to be an omen. My pilot, Matt immediately goes to the weather station to determine how bad the weather actually is. Our proposed landing strip is on the Arctic coast. A large front has already moved in dropping visibility to less than one mile. The hours pass and it is determined for safety reasons that we will not be able to proceed to our planned landing at Lake Teshekpuk.
Oh well, we will have to spend the night camping near the little aircraft on the now dreary Bettles airstrip.