Alaska (135 page)

'Wonderful!' his passenger shouted. 'Let's go home,' and when he landed the plane on her lake and ferried her to the 821

dock, she told her waiting husband: 'Pay him double. I never realized we lived in such a gorgeous place!'

His unplanned excursion meant that he was delayed about two hours on his return trip south to Matanuska, but this posed no problem, for in late July there would be plenty of daylight sunrise at 0314 in the morning, sunset not till 2057 at night but the situation became somewhat more complicated when the dark clouds which had been hovering to the south began to speed in with that astonishing ability to move that made Alaskan weather so unpredictable. A sky could be warm and bright at five, cold and menacing at five-thirty. This evening it was menacing.

It was about eight at night when LeRoy approached the Matanuska area, which meant that he had almost an hour of light left, but this was somewhat irrelevant because he had fuel for not more than forty minutes and the finding of his home lake in light was obligatory. However, by the time he had located Knik Glacier and knew where he was, storm clouds of a rather violent nature rushed in to obscure the area and he knew that any attempt to either fincl his lake or land upon it was futile. He therefore began casting about for an alternative, and there were a dozen eligible lakes in the area, but now they too were closed down by this rampaging storm.

It'll pass in a hour, he told himself, but that won't do me much good. So he must either speed back northward, hoping to outrun the storm, and land on one of the lakes adjacent to Palmer, where several planes headquartered, or continue south and try landing on some arm of the Knik River or even the bigger Cook Inlet, but to attempt the latter would be risky, for if the storm contained strong winds, it might generate waves too high and powerful for the Cub to negotiate. The situation was becoming ugly.

What to do? He tightened his seat belt, relaxed his hands, shook them twice, then gripped the wheel even more firmly and gave himself time-tested instructions: Now's the time to take a deep breath, LeRoy. You know you can always land this bird on the ground. Chew up the pontoons, but they can be replaced. You can't.

Looking out, he saw to the right the menacing tops of the Talkeetna Range: Let's get out of here! and he swung sharply to the left, striving to gain as much altitude as he could, but when he did he could see nothing below.

In this extremity he sought no miraculous escape, no sudden revelation of a known lake. He was in dire trouble and he knew it. He would survive only if he flew in a manner to put every chance condition like wind or sudden gusts or 822

choppy water, and only if he flew with but one resolute purpose: Let's get her down.

Eight minutes to go.

He would forever remember those eight minutes at the end of which his tank was empty.

He flew south till he was certain the Knik River must be under him, within a mile give or take. He descended precisely as he would have done had the terrain been visible, and he trusted the strength of the storm to remain constant. Most of all, he kept control of his plane, adjusting to the wind as if he had wheels and a clear landing strip ahead. When his altimeter showed little free space beneath him, he did not grit his teeth and prepare for some unexpected shock: he continued to breathe evenly, kept his hands at the same pressure as before, and prepared to land in whatever lay below.

Not quite as fatalistic as that: I'll have some visibility. I'll see whether it's water or land, and if it's land, I'll have about two minutes to find water. He did not add that in those minutes it would be vital as to whether he flew north or south at low altitude to find his water.

At the end of the sixth minute he broke through the clouds at an altitude of forty feet and saw below him only land, and extremely rough land at that. To put his plane down in that mix of trees and hills would be insane, but in which direction lay the river? Calmly and for no reason that he could have explained, he estimated that it was behind him, to the north, so in an easy swing he brought the plane about in a 180° turn, dropped even lower, and at the last practical moment saw ahead of him the rippling waters of the river. Breathing just a bit more deeply, he steadied the wheel, judged that he was landing broadside to the wind, which did not seem excessive, and with almost the last cupful of gas he landed the Cub in a faultless approach, and without slowing the engines continued across the river until the front of the pontoons climbed up on grassy bank. Using the luggage ropes he always carried, he tied the plane to a group of trees and set out on foot to find someone to help drag it ashore.

IN MANY WAYS LEROY DERIVED HIS GREATEST PLEASURE

from his Cub when it wore skis, for then, if a heavy snow had fallen, he would soar over central Alaska with the feeling that he could fly anywhere and land in almost any corner of his majestic world. In the first days of trial and error he learned the limits of altitude to which his little plane could go and the most effective ways of landing on drifted snow. 'Hey!' he shouted one morning as he flew into a blazing sunrise with snow covering everything. ”This is all mine!' But there was 823

also a financial advantage to flying on skis, as one of his customers explained in a letter to his wife back in Maryland: Since I was eager to see the Matanuska experiment, I went to a small airport in the area and asked who their best pilot was and they agreed that a fellow named LeRoy might not be the best but he was certainly the safest, so I engaged him. He had a small rickety-looking plane which he assured me never failed, and after I had inspected the famous valley he asked: 'You want to see our glaciers?' and I nodded. But we were still miles from them, flying over snow, when he suddenly shouted: 'LookeeeeP

and he dropped the plane in a sickening spiral, whipped open his window, reached for a shotgun from behind his ear, flew the plane with his knees while paying no attention to where we were heading.

'Look at that wolf!' he said, and with great skill he brought our plane about, leveled with the huge beast, and killed him with one shot. Then, swinging the plane about as if it were a leaf, he landed not ten feet from the dead wolf, ordered me out so that he could climb down to retrieve the animal, which he threw into the cabin behind us.

When we resumed flight we had been in the air only a few minutes when he yelled: 'Hey! There's his brother,”and down we dropped in that sickening spiral. Again he flew the plane with his knees and again he nailed his wolf with one shot. This time when I started to get back into the plane I said: 'There's blood all over my seat,'

and he became most apologetic, producing from a little box a clean cloth with which he wiped my seat clean. I also noticed that he lashed down the two wolves as carefully as if they were cargoes of gold, and when I said: 'I hope you don't see any more wolves,' he explained: 'For flying you I get $40. For each of those wolves, $50 government bounty,' and I asked him where he had learned to shoot so professionally, and he said: 'I learned guns in Minnesota, airplanes in Alaska.' I later found that he'd had two weeks of flying instruction. Believe me, Elinor, flying in Alaska is a lot different from flying in suburban Baltimore.

It was a few days after this successful wolf hunt that LeRoy stumbled upon the adventure which was to modify his life in 824

ways he could not have anticipated. He was idling at the Palmer Airstrip when a well-dressed, good-looking businessman in his mid-fifties came up: 'You LeRoy Flatch?'

'I am.'

'The fellow who made that remarkable river landing last summer?'

'Luck and a very strong plane got me down.'

'Could I see the plane?'

Bewildered as to why a stranger would want to see an old workhorse like his Cub, LeRoy said: 'That one over there . .. on skis. Lot of miles on it. Lot of savvy in it.'

The stranger studied the exterior of the plane for some minutes, then asked:' 'Mind if I take a peek inside?'

'Be my guest,' and when the inspection was complete, the man asked: 'Son, why don't you get yourself a fourseater?'

'I'm savin' like the devil to get one.'

The stranger laughed, extended his hand, and said: 'I'm Tom Venn, Ross & Raglan, and my wife and I are building ourselves a hunting lodge up on the flanks of Denali.

We need someone to fly in big batches of our gear.'

'I'd be interested. How far is it?'

'About eighty miles northwest heading. Could you handle that?'

'I could. But I'd want to top off with some aviation gas when I got there.'

'That can be arranged. When could you fly?'

'About ten minutes after you got your stuff here. Will you be flying along?'

'Yes. I want to do some exploring along the way and after we get there.'

'You know I'm not allowed to fly into the National Park.'

'There's a lot of land outside it,' and with that, Venn hurried into the building and phoned the truck waiting at the railroad siding to start bringing out the electrical gear. At half after one the Cub was solidly packed, with all the cargo tightly lashed.

Venn, working inside the fuselage and sweating like a deckhand, asked: 'Can we throw out these branches?' and LeRoy shouted back: 'Not on your life. You remember carefully just where they are. Anytime you fly into mountains you may need them.'

The heavily loaded plane, with Venn flying in the right-hand seat, took off neatly from the Palmer Airstrip, rose purposefully to an altitude of four thousand feet and started on a 320”heading. After the routine was set Venn asked: 'By the way, have you ever flown in the Denali area?' and LeRoy said: 'No, but I've always wanted to,' and Venn said with no hint of sarcasm: 'Good, we'll explore together.'

825

They had flown about halfway to their destination when LeRoy gasped so audibly, Venn guessed correctly that his pilot had never before seen the extraordinary sight that lay ahead. Rising majestically above a cloud wreath that enclosed its lower elevations, stood that mass of great mountains Russell, Foraker, Denali, Silverthrone, from southwest to northeast. Except for Russell, these were among the highest mountains in North America, and Denali was the highest.

They formed a stupendous white-crowned barrier across the heart of Alaska, and after gazing at them in awe for some moments, LeRoy told his passenger: 'You can come to Alaska forty times and travel around all sides of those mountains and never see Denali,'

and Venn said: 'I know.' But there it was, in all its frozen glory, not only the highest peak on the continent but also the farthest north by a large margin. When you paid your respects to Denali, you were knocking on the door of the Arctic Circle, which lay less than two hundred and fifty miles to the north.

For about twenty minutes the great mountain stood in solemn majesty, a peak so grand that only two groups of mountaineers had ever mastered it, the first in 1913 when a Nenana clergyman made it to the top, the second in 1932 when a group of four especially daring men used skis and dog teams, an amazing combination, to master the howling winds and the crevasse-ridden slopes. As the plane approached the outer perimeter of the park, LeRoy explained: 'You know, Mr. Venn, the mountain isn't visible from down there,' and Venn said: 'It rarely is. I was here eight times before I ever saw the darned thing.'

So Flatch started to descend, but when he passed through the cloud cover that seemed always to cluster about the mountains as if perversely they refused to let their treasure be seen, he found that the clouds did not end but continued right down to the ground, which in this area was covered with snow of exactly the same coloration.

Trying not to alarm his passenger, LeRoy said quietly: 'We seem to be caught in a whiteout. Tighten your seat belt.'

'Are we going to crash?' Venn asked with that coolness in the face of adversity which had always characterized him.

'Not if I can help it,' but when he started to drop cautiously it was clear that neither he nor any other pilot, no matter how skilled, would be able to determine where these snowlike clouds ended and the real snow covering the ground began. There was, in other words, no discernible horizon, and Flatch recalled the shocking number of Alaskan aviators who in such circumstances had flown their planes nose-first 826

into the solid ground, not having a clue as to where they were or in what attitude relative to the earth. Always, of course, in such crashes, the plane exploded, and in only one or two cases could one of the young-bold pilots boast later: 'I flew it right into the snow cover and walked away.'

In an extremity like this it was essential that 'the pilot not panic, and Venn, watching LeRoy closely, was pleased to see that he was reacting with admirable calm. Three times Flatch tried to land on the snow, and three times he was thrown into total confusion, for he could not ascertain where clouds ended and snow-covered rock began, so he flew in what he was sure was an upward attitude, and when he had gained some height above what he assumed to be the ground, he told Venn: 'We must try to spot something on the ground. Anything. A caribou, a tree, just anything.'

So the two men strove to determine where the ground was, and failed. 'Mr. Venn, undo your belt, climb back and fetch those spruce branches.' After a struggle across the lashed down luggage, Venn reappeared with a large armful of branches. 'Open your window, put your seat belt back on, and when I shout ”Drop,”start throwing out the branches, one at a time. Throw the ones with the most branches first.'

For some moments they flew in silence, each man breathing heavily, and then came the command: 'Drop!' Out from Venn's window the branches began to fall, but only the first one was required, for when LeRoy saw how quickly it came to rest, that is, how perilously close to the ground he was, he said only one word: 'Jesus!' But with the frail bit of directional information provided by the branch, he adjusted in his seat, pulled his plane almost straight up, then circled low until he was lined up with the fallen spruce branch, which stood out on the snow like a great beacon light. Rarely had he been so glad to see something solid.