Fifty Years Fly By

My Trifecta The coup de grâce for me was a three-day weekend of extreme flying in northern Alaska: Extremely north to the Barrow Wiley Post/Will Rogers Memorial Airport on the Chukchi Sea, extremely east to Eagle on the Yukon River and the Canadian border, and extremely west to the remote beaches of Wales, Alaska, on the Bering Sea. In three consecutive days, I flew to the most northern, most eastern, and the most western settlements on mainland Alaska north of the Alaska Range; it was officially my “old stomping grounds.” On Friday, my task was to pick up eight convicts and a single guard in Barrow with the Chieftain workhorse. Overall they were good passengers; they stayed in their seats, didn’t try to escape, but were lousy tippers. I was not carrying a gun at the time of the 436 nautical mile scenic flight back to Fairbanks and the State Troopers waiting for me on the ramp. Barrow (name changed to Utqiaġvik in 2016) is among the oldest permanent settlements in the United States and 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The native Iñupiat lived around Barrow as far back as AD 500. Today it has a thriving population of over 4,000. West and north of Deadhorse, Alaska, Barrow was significantly influenced by the vast oil fields on the North Slope. One of the more popular hangouts in Barrow was Pepe’s North Of The Border Restaurant, but unfortunately, the popular and famous Mexican landmark burned to the ground in 2016. Saturday, my charter flight was only 171 nautical miles to Eagle, the sight of the chrome globe monument dedicated to Roald Amundsen, the first man to complete the voyage through the deadly and frozen Northwest Passage in 1906. He skied 500 miles overland from his winter camp on the Beaufort Sea to telegraph the news to the rest of the world. The Northwest Passage was a historic expedition that Joyce and I retraced over 28 days in 2015, as we followed Amundsen’s route from east to west. Eagle is located where the Yukon River enters Alaska from Canada; settled by indigenous peoples, including the Hän, a thousand years ago. The population was 86 at the 2010 census, and every February, Eagle hosts a checkpoint for the long-distance Yukon Quest sled dog race. The record low ambient temperature recorded in January was -71° Fahrenheit. They saved the best for last when I was assigned to fly 509 nautical miles to historical Wales, Alaska, population 149. Wales is coastal with almost no tidal excursion on the Bering Straits. Due to its location along migratory whale routes, Wales became an important whaling center; however, it was named after the country in Western Europe. The influenza epidemic from 1918 to 1919 decimated the population and the economy of Wales. While my client attended a village meeting that morning, I tried to get some exercise and found myself on the seashore, beach combing. In a short distance, I discovered an immense bleached bowhead whale vertebrae discarded in the extremely fine white sand. It was massive, washed out, but almost entirely intact. I have it displayed in my library to this day. The remarkable scene before me as I stood on the shore was that of Little and Big Diomede Island along with a clear view of the Russian coast. (No, Sarah Palin did not live there.) Wow! All of a sudden, the notion of a land bridge did not seem all that improbable. The people that crossed the Bering Land Bridge 36-43,000 years ago lived a subsistence lifestyle and were the ancestors of the “Eskimo” people. Referred to as Beringia, the land bridge was 620 miles wide and had a favorable mild climate at the time of their crossing. The Thule People who settled Greenland more than 3,000 years ago gained access through this same route. During my travels, I became acutely aware of the history of dinosaurs in Alaska on the North Slope. I knew that there were many fossils in the 49th State and that the first dinosaur petrified remains were discovered there in 1961. Today, recent finds help draw an entirely new picture of the prehistoric beasts. Alaska's North Slope dinosaurs lived in places once thought impossible for dinosaurs to survive, or the climate was much different then. Already the number of separate dinosaurs found surpasses all other dinosaur sites in the rest of the world's polar regions. Twelve known dinosaur types are about 68-73 million years old from the Late Cretaceous Period. Previously, paleontologists assumed all dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Only in the 1960s, did scientists begin entertaining the possibility that dinosaurs could be warm-blooded. No DNA has been found in dinosaur bones on the North Slope. No one knows the exact answers to these questions, but new discoveries on the Colville River throw doubt on the migration theory. Several new dinosaurs, including small meat-eaters, probably couldn't physically migrate the round-trip distance of 5,000 miles. Instead, North Slope dinosaurs may have survived year-round on ancient river systems that supported lush summer vegetation. Enough seasonal plant life may have grown during the 24-hour sunny summers to last during the cool-to-cold dark days of winter. I look back on those days with exceptional fondness. As far as I was concerned, I had the best job on Earth. In a nutshell, I was paid to explore and sightsee every day and still slept in my own bed. It was everything that anyone could ask. The two mountain ranges include Mt. McKinley, the tallest peak in North America at 20,320 feet. I discovered massive sand dunes, virgin rivers, grand evidence of glaciation, actual glaciers, volcanic calderas, meteor impact craters, and endless expanses of tundra. Yes, world class vistas, all types of wildlife, forests, wilderness as far as the eye could see; and it was all mostly unspoiled by man. There were isolated areas of historic gold mining regions with intact dredges from the early 1900s. Visible from the air was the 800 miles of the historic 48-inch Alaskan Pipeline, and coastal remnants of the Distant Early Warning System (DEW Line sites), that was evidence of the cold war. There were millions of lakes and large swift rivers. Then there were the native people; I admired the “Bush People” who lived a subsistence lifestyle in an unforgiving environment. I envied their way of living, in tune with nature, and mostly self-sufficient.