CloudDancer's Alaskan Chronicles, Volume III

Reaching the south end of the Tin City runway we are screaming along (for a Cessna 207) at 160 knots indicated as I pull back slightly on the control yoke to both arrest what small descent rate still remains and hold my altitude as I rack the heavily loaded sled into a 30 degree bank turn. A steeper and faster bank is needed this one time to minimize the distance our high speed will carry the turn radius out over the broken ice floes that lie floating on the waters of the Bering Sea now surrounding us beneath. The last two days of gale force easterly winds have, as they always do, broken up the usually solid sheet of snow covered pack ice. Now there are sheets and pieces of ice instead of a whole. A very few are the size of a large house lot or smaller while most are the size over one or two city blocks by one or two city blocks. Viewed from a much higher altitude they would no doubt resemble a jigsaw puzzle completed, but with large and small groups of pieces just slightly disconnected from each other. The gaps in the disjoined pieces are sometimes narrow, and sometimes quite wide. And between the floes (the disconnected puzzle pieces) the “gaps” are the frigid and, to the human body, almost instantly fatal cold, deep and intensely green waters of the Bering Sea. A human dunked and left in those waters more than four or five minutes would most surely by then be on death’s doorstep. The hills right at Tin City go straight down into the water, as cliffs. There is no beach there to land on. Then, proceeding east-southeast along the coastline there is a gap of about five miles where the hills are low and some resemblance of a beach exists before disappearing again and being replaced for a few more miles with cliffs down to the water. As I roll out of my steep bank with no more than three hundred feet of air between the nav light on my left wing and the hills passing by, my airspeed needle has drifted slowly counterclockwise and is now settling on it’s new cruise speed of 136 knots indicated. The clock shows just 21 minutes has elapsed since lift-off as my passenger in the right front seat leans over and sorta’ hollers in my ear with just the very, very slightest trace of apprehension sounding in, “So what’cha figure this is going to do to our ETA Cloudy?”. Glancing at the dashboard clock again and thinking for a moment, I reply that barring any further other unforeseen complications, we will arrive right on schedule. He is a very nice fella. in his late forties or early fifties, much older than my…. hmmmm… twenty-six no, twenty-seven years. As of yesterday in fact. Yes, my twenty-seventh birthday had been spent in Deering in the early morning and then in Shismaref for the rest of the day and night. At a late dinner gathering an illicit bottle of Johnny Walker Red label whiskey had magically appeared to help wash down the birthday cake hastily procured at the last minute from one of the shelves in Alex’s store. Well not so much birthday cake as five packages of Hostess Sno-Balls that had been opened and arranged in a circle on a large serving platter. Nine of the pink and white half globular gooey coconut frosted treats were arranged in a circle around the first. Each sported a candle representing I was told three years with the candle in the middle cake being of course, the “one to grow on”. I declined the JW at first making the excuse that it was too late and too close to tomorrow morning’s takeoff. I washed the chocolate treat with the creamy sugared center down with the last of my coffee. Then for some reason, I chose to expand my previous answer. So I told them that even were the hour not so late, I was about to win an important bet in less than thirty more hours having stayed sober for the last six months. Amid much hearty laughter as I described the belated birthday party I had planned for two nights hence, I do recall one of my passengers, an admitted teetotaler, suggesting that perhaps I should just choose to pursue a continued course of clean living and now try to add a smoking ban to my personal life. I good-naturedly and politely stated that while I appreciated his concern for my health and well being, clean living was at best for me, more of a long term series of restrictions to be followed only when my doctor someday orders me too many decades from now. Approaching the zenith of my physical capabilities, I am of course, invulnerable in my tiny mind. And Frank, seated beside me at dinner last night as he was now this morning, laughed heartily along with me. But now neither Frank nor I laugh as we peer through the oh-so-slightly tinted plexiglass forward that makes up our windshield. Frank is in the right front seat for at least two reasons. The first is that he is one of the heaviest (body weight) appearing passengers, and when you have to fill a Cessna 206 or 207 you always put the heaviest person in the right front seat . Also Frank is at least a private licensed pilot and wants to sit there. Lastly should by some cosmic quirk of fate something happen to me, it is only most logical that the only other among the seven of us that is capable of landing the machine be in a position to do so. Throughout the last dozen or so hours spent together at the controls of the big Cessna, not once has Frank asked a stupid question. What few he has asked have been all intelligent. Most generally they were about operating procedures or the limitations and capabilities of the aircraft. Truly a nice man and very enjoyable flying companion, customer or otherwise. I can see almost all the way around the bend where the cliffs alongside again continue ahead to fall into the sea at Cape York. Swinging out slightly over the water we look ahead and can see halfway to Brevig Mission at least. It appears much darker which I attribute to the fact that the still half-hour earlier risen sun is not yet high enough and has yet to begin shedding it’s rays on the south sides of these western most hills. With the extra few dozen feet “breathing room” between me and the hills alongside I turn to exchange commentary with Frank for a couple of moments, no longer. Swiveling my head back forward I am instantly astonished BAM It’s raining Freezing rain Jesus Goda’Mighty Where did this come from. I didn’t turn my head away for more than five, maybe ten seconds at the most My altitude remains an unwavering 800 feet but the world around me is rapidly disappearing as my windshield has in just a few seconds iced over completely.