Episode 4: Fun in Tuktoyaktuk and Our safe return to Silicon Valley

Gentle Readers,

When I last left you, your intrepid duo of heros were in Tuk at last, went wading in the Arctic Ocean, building bonfires on the beach from driftwood (it burns really well and is easy to light when fanned by a 15 kts wind!) and cooking our first meal of fish and Caribou. We had a delightful Sunday, or was it Monday (it’s hard to keep track of the days of the week on a trip like this, especially when the sun never sets while one is awake!!), and now we had to try and plan our departure back down south. First, finding south was not as easy as you might think as the magnetic variation for the compass was 28 degrees and so our best way to cheat, we decide, was to simply plug “Inuvik” into the GPS, let it draw a magenta line on the screen and then, when we took off, follow that line…..again, I am getting ahead of myself.

The first stage in any airplane trip, after deciding where you want to go, is to look at the weather and try and figure out what the weather is going to be like at the time of your departure and during the trip. OK, sounds simple until you do not like what your weather research turns up. Richard, being the chief planner for this adventure, was tasked with connecting all his computer stuff up and using our Tuk hosts’ good internet connection to research what the weather would be like on the morning of our planned departure to Inuvik, and then on south. Well, he comes back to me with a bit of a sheepish expression on his face, after his hours of weather research, and tells me that after Inuvik the weather will be really great. RICHARD (!!), what did you come up with for the weather for Tuesday morning (that was our day of departure, in fact) out of Tuk?

Mmmmmmmmmmm he says….….., the cloud should lift later in the morning!! Let me explain; upon arriving in Tuk we had agreed together that to get out we wanted a ceiling of at least 1500 ft and preferably 2500 feet. Ok, on the positive side, “should lift” meant that we would be able to sleep in and not rush the next morning…….said I, to myself. The powers of positive thinking have been able to do a lot for mankind, I have read, but lifting clouds in the arctic was not one of the beneficial aspects I found listed in Wikipedia’s section on the merits of positive thinking!

Next morning we arose later than usual, but it was still early. Richard buried himself, I think, in his computer presumably to discover our future visibility at Tuk’s “international” airport. Ever tried to get a METAR for a small airport early in the morning when that airport is situated 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle? Tuk is at 69 33’ N according to the sign at the airport exit welcoming visitors, and the Arctic Circle is at 67 33’ N, i.e, south of us by a long, long walk. (a METAR, for those who are not pilots, is the observed weather conditions at an airfield at a specified time, a TAF is the forecast weather conditions for a future time at an airport, and that forecast is not delivered with a promise of accuracy. That is to say that a TAF comes with no associated guarantees that what is predicted will ever actually occur!) Well, at the beginning of the morning I did what all weather people should do…….I went and looked out the window! Since we were only ½ mile from the airport, my observations would be pretty accurate, I felt. I remember that what I saw out my “meteorological window” looked to me like the ceiling should be reported as “rooftops plus 20”……..not meaning rooftops plus 2000 feet, but rather meaning rooftops plus 20 inches!

Richard kept a positive attitude and informed me that it should get higher in time. Well, he was right, about 3 hours later……….it got up to a ceiling of about 1000 ft. or so, above the ground and not the rooftops. This was below what we wanted to have for a ceiling to depart; however, when we consulted the maps and found that there was nothing over 200 ft high that we could see on the route to Inuvik we thought that maybe it could be done. Below the cloud base visibility was maybe 6 miles. So….., we decided to go, as there was no reason that we could come up with to honestly hope that things would improve much before spring 2013……. We gathered our bags and boxes of wires (Richard had on this trip about 10 pounds of cables, chargers, mini computers, docking stations, etc. Imagine(!)..…and keep in mind that he was travelling “light”.) Our host, Phillip, had offered to drive us to the airport and help us load the airplane and push it out of the soft and wet sand where we had parked it. So, with Phillip’s van loaded we were off to see the world again.

Now, Richard had done his “Canadian Flying” homework well and had found that in Canada, when travelling more than 25 NM from an airfield, you must file at least a VFR (visual flight) flight plan. It had become our policy that the pilot actually doing the flying would be the one to call Canada Flight Services and file the flight plan. OK, so I used the phone at Tuk airport to call; no problem. However, when they asked what altitude I would be flying at I filed for 500ft….They accepted that as being reasonable!!! In VFR flying one is supposed to fly odd thousand feet PLUS 500 ft. when on an easterly heading until you get to a heading of South (180 degrees). I could not tell them I would fly at 1500 ft. as we would have been in the clouds….so 500 feet it was for cruising altitude. I have never filed that low before!!

I am glad to report to all of you that, apart from flying between 800 feet and 900 feet above the ground all the way to Inuvik, the trip was uneventful. The GPS, while knowing where Inuvik was, became confused as to towers and high ground and kept flashing to us that we were about to drive into some towers or mountains; we looked, but could find nothing in front of us more than 12 inches AGL (Above Ground Level). Richard will have a chat with Garmin’s customer support group sometime to ask why their terrain data base thought that there were radio towers out there on the Tundra…..Takeoff went well, with your scribe at the controls (Richard is a trusting soul) and after about 40 minutes of flying we began to see small, skinny trees below us and 15 minutes after that we saw Inuvik and called “Inuvik Radio” to tell them where we were and that we wanted to pay them a visit. We also wanted to go shopping in Inuvik for our girls, as even though we checked several times hoping the “fur Shop” in Tuk would open, the fur shop in Tuk remained boarded up and closed; nobody was able to volunteer where the owner had gone. I should have known that she probably left early for Florida to spend the winter! So it was not possible to buy gifts for the ladies in Tuk.

We landed uneventfully at Inuvik and topped Mr. Maule up for the next leg of the trip south, and then we called a taxi and headed in to Inuvic town in order to find the IRC building where, we were told, there was a boutique outlet for local Inuit crafts. The taxi driver turned out to be named Abdullah Mohamed, according to his card! This was not an Inuit sounding name, to say the least, but our driver was a very nice gentleman and loved living up in Inuvik, he told us. Shopping done, we headed back to the airport where Mr. Maule was waiting for us. It was Richard’s leg to fly Inuvik to Norman Wells, I think. Anyway, it was a 3 hour leg and basically no houses, homes, castles or other real signs of human habitation between us and the next fuel stop……Interesting. We filed another flight plan, but this time at a real cruise altitude.

The flight onwards was again without much sign of human habitation; our planned fuel stop being in Ft. Simpson, again a leg of 3 hours or a bit less. We arrived at Ft. Simpson and called “Radio Ft. Simpson” and a nice ladies voice came back to us giving us the wind and the preferred runway. I even managed yet another landing that did not shock Mr. Maule’s owner too much. Ft. Simpson is a great place to get gas as one does not pay for it; you leave your address and the aircraft’s tail number and they say that they will send a bill on. Nice!

The young lady who handles the radio there was very charming and wanted to know where we were coming from and where we were going. When we told her that we were heading for the San Francisco Bay Area she was fascinated, and later shared with us, that she had never been out of the Province in her whole life, which I estimated as 23 or 24 years! She had seen the city on TV and read about it, but had never been to a big city….Fort Simpson has a population just fewer than 1,290 people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Simpson#Demographics). She looked wistfully after us as we headed out the door……..and it surely was not because of our good looks; I am bald, short and fat, Richard is tall and with hair, but we were both born in 1951 and show the miles!! Next stop…..Norman Wells. Our plan was to try and make it back to South County Airport in the Bay Area in 3 days by flying about 7 hrs per day, not counting the time for fuel stops. We made it, but it was a push. It was a good thing that Mr. Maule had the foresight to bring two pilots along so that we could fly alternate legs and keep going.

Norman Wells arrived again without incident. On the way to Norman Wells we flew by the town of Wrigley; Wrigley makes Ft. Simpson look big and easily accessible!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley,_Northwest_Territories). The population of Wrigley is somewhere between 113 souls and 165 souls, according to Wikipedia, and it is ISOLATED!!!!!! Next stop after Norman Wells was Ft. Nelson where we planned to spend the night.

Ft. Nelson was found, in due course, and with a night landing we had made it. As we taxied across the ramp we noticed a 727 sitting there with two gentlemen peering at the right main landing gear, and a lot of people were waiting outside the entrance to the terminal. As it later transpired, the 727 had problems and all the passengers had been off-loaded. They too were going to spend a night in Ft. Nelson. We tied Mr. Maule down for the night and tried to find a taxi; no luck. The terminal was now locked and all the signs for motels were inside and unreadable except for one – we called the number on the advertizing poster and yes, in 20 minutes they would come out and pick us up. We were hungry and tired and wanted a bed…….lucky for us the 727 had broken down. This event caused the motel to keep its restaurant staff late and so we were able to get a bite to eat and crash into bed. Next morning, bright and early, we had breakfast and asked at the front desk for a lift to the airport. A nice gentleman said that he would take us in his shinny, new and VERY big pickup truck. Great, as the airport was too far away to walk to, especially with Richards boxes of magical cables and computers. On the ride out to the airport it transpired that our nice chauffer was none other than the new owner of the motel and casino! We had a nice chat; he was from Kelowna, BC. He and his business partner had just bought the property, he told us, as the largest deposit of natural gas in North America had just been discovered near Ft. Nelson ; the town had now “negative” unemployment and he was importing lots of staff from other parts and maybe even from Asia. They estimated that a motel and casino would do well with all the gas drilling employees that would be arriving. He seemed a nice business man and had been both a trust company owner during the housing boom and prior to that an air traffic controller. We talked about flying and my last trip, many years ago, into Kelowna in a Mooney; he knew what I was talking about when I told him about shooting a localizer approach in to land at Kelowna on that trip and then figuring out that Kelowna was basically in a large box canyon requiring a minimum rate of climb if I missed the approach. Happily I made it in, but that whole experience in Canada is another story for another day……..

Well, we found the fuel chap at the airport and ordered breakfast for Mr. Maule. Our objective for the days travel was to fly from Ft. Nelson to Bellingham, USA; a distance of about 700 NM. In a 180 MX-7 Maule that is a LONG way! We also had to cross, or at least get through, a bunch of small mountains called the Rockies………in a small airplane!

As I have pointed out earlier, Richard is Planner in chief while my role, apart from sharing the flying, is that of “Kibitzer in Chief”; I review the planning and Kibitz. Well, our challenge on this leg of the trip was to get to Bellingham and this entailed crossing the Rocky Mountains, if possible, without having to fly at 14,000FT and sniff oxygen. Richard found us a routing on the map that had us flying south along the eastern side of the mountains and then following some canyons to, I believe, Medford, then out of the canyons and on to Abbotsford and then Bellingham in the USA. Looked good to me; last time I had done this kind of thing was in the year 2000 or there abouts. I was flying a hot-rodded Mooney 201 with 300 hp in the nose (replacing the factories idea of only 200 hp up front) and only me in the plane along with some books and papers and a change of underwear; light. Also, I had a big bottle of oxygen along and when I last planned this type of crossing of these mountains I just drew lines from waypoint to waypoint, planned for 16,000 ft. or 17000 ft. depending on direction, strapped on my oxygen canula and went. So…while I may have drawn part of the route along canyons from one way point to the other, I was not flying in the canyons. What I failed to think about was that we were not in that type of a little airplane and Richard, when he planned to follow the canyons, intended that we may have to be in some if not all of the canyons!! Well, we take off and eventually turn towards the mountains and into the first canyon…these were not really valleys as I felt that one could see each side, and the mountain tops too clearly for it to qualify as a valley; there was no flat, wide valley floor with apple orchards, peach blossoms and wheat fields below! Therefore, it was a canyon!

There was no other way to do this, apart from flying to the bottom of Mexico and back up the other side, so “in for a penny, in for a pound” as they say……..I took my role of CK (Chief Kibitzer very seriously; Richard was flying and I would say “Richard, it is now time to turn!!” as I watched the end of a canyon terminate in what appeared to be a wall with an exit to the right or left into another canyon. I am convinced that this commentary on my part really helped Richard as he concentrated on flying!! (he didn’t say much at the time…!) Anyway, we made it through, just as the map had shown that we could. The highest we went, I think, was perhaps 7,500 ft.; well done Richard! Eventually we came out of the Rocky Mountains and into what I call the Vancouver delta. We overflew Abbotsford airport and then on to Bellingham.

Bellingham and clearing customs back into the USA:

Well, here we are, back in the USA at Bellingham, Washington airport. Strictly speaking, we are not back in the USA until they let us out of the dreaded “yellow Box”. I was dreading this as I thought that the custom’s process back into the USA would be unpleasant. At first no one came out to talk to us and we knew that we are not supposed to “exit the airplane until told to do so”, so….I called the ground controller and asked what we should do. The ground controller was very nice and said that he would call customs; they were supposed to see us when we pulled into the yellow box, but…. Anyway, in a few minutes a custom man came out. He was very nice, asked us where we had been….our reply really surprised him! He then checked the airplane, found our customs sticker and asked us to bring our paperwork inside. Inside, we met a nice customs lady and she checked our passports and then said “welcome back”. A pleasant, non-intimidating, customs passage back into the USA; I can highly recommend entering the USA via Bellingham airport in Washington State!

Now it was time to find a bed and something to eat…….panic! We started to call the normal list of hotels / motels. No rooms (eek!). Apparently there was a state fair going on and all rooms in all hotels were booked EVERYWHERE! Well, eventually Richard turned up, on his i-phone, a motel called the Shamrock. He called; yes, they had one room left, yes it had two beds, but even the guy at the desk warned Richard that it was not one of their better rooms. The price, however, and more importantly the availability was right; $58 / night including the tax! Richard and I were beyond caring; we found a taxi which came to the exec. terminal and picked us up and we rode over to the Shamrock motel! It was situated by the side of the highway, near the airport (taxi fare $5.00!!) and we took the room. Just next door to the motel was a Greek diner and we ran straight over. They were almost open, provided that we ordered only things that were cold or that could be deep fried they told us! The fryer had not been shut off but the ovens and the grill had been; dinner was fried calamari and “Greek salad”. Health food it is not, but……..

We then returned to the hotel and crashed on our respective beds, dead to the world until the following morning at 6:00am, or there abouts. Fried calamari requires a lot of digestive power……….! Well, after waking, and trying to shake blood back into our heads, Richard called for a cab with his trusty iphone. That is when he learned that the Shamrock motel was known locally, amongst the taxi drivers, as “Heroin Hotel”!! Oh, well; we had had a good night’s sleep, and it was cheap……..!

OK, final day on our Bhutan March back to E16 (South County Airport). We managed to find a fuel truck to give Mr. Maule breakfast and we grabbed some free coffee in the pilot’s shop and took off again for the final 700 NM home. We landed at Scappoose airport, Oregon and then at Redbud, Oregon (I think that’s the name), then Red Bluff, CA and finally…………..our home airport.

We landed uneventfully at E16 (South County Airport) and Richard taxied Mr. Maule back to his regular nest. We unpacked, loaded things into Richard’s car and then pushed Mr. Maule into the hangar so he could get some rest and we headed out and back to Richard’s house. Richard had already called his wife, Sally, from Red Bluff giving her a “guestimated” time we would make it back to the house.

So there I am, relaxing in the passenger seat of Richard’s car and….my cell phone rings! How could that be, I thought. I only just turned it back on. Well, it was my brother David! He had been following us on the GPS tracking system SPOT that a lot of you used to follow our progress; he saw that we had landed back in California and wanted to call and congratulate us for making it back, and me for surviving yet another crazy stunt! I really was very touched; and even more so when he told me that he had believed in us making it back to our starting point sufficiently that he had dispensed with taking out an add-on life insurance policy on me!! Now, can you really believe what would have happened if David had called up one of his friends in the insurance business and told them that he wanted to insure my life while I was travelling. Oh, where is your brother going, they would have asked him? He would have had to reply that I had gone to visit Inuits and see if I could find Santa’s house and that I was “riding” a small, 180 hp Maule airplane up and down canyons in the Rocky Mountains and over the Tundra!!! David, I really am touched that you called; I am really glad, as well, that you did not embarrass yourself with insurance colleagues by trying to cover an uninsurable risk and explaining what your brother was up to!!!!

When we arrived back at Richard and Sally’s home we found that she had prepared a great dinner of Casoulet and Salade de Canard Confit; had invited friends Jimmy and Carol and Lou and Ellen and generally made a hero’s welcome. Boy was the evening fun!!

Our round trip adventure had covered 4,400 miles (7040 Km for those metric aficionados amongst us) in 10 days, taken us north of the Arctic Circle and allowed us to at least wade in the Arctic Ocean, taught us how to change Maule MX-7 landing gear legs and introduced us to the nicest bunch of airplane enthusiasts in the time warp airport at Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Quite a trip!! Thank you Richard!!!!!

I hope that all of you were not too bored by my narrative of our adventure; truly it has been like talking to friends, even if I do not know some of you very well….yet!

Stay tuned for another adventure; I have complete confidence in Richard’s ability to find a new project!

Your scribe,

Mark