To the Arctic
Someone once said that “a plan is something you deviate from.” And we all know things rarely work out as planned- especially in the wilderness. This Arctic trip was no exception. Our planned route was to land on the Aichilik at the coastal plains and hike south, upriver, to the continental divide, cross it and drop into the Upper Sheenjek River for pick-up. But part of the hope for our eleven day backpacking trip in the eastern Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as that we might see part of the Porcupine caribou migration. The caribou had crossed the Aichilk three days prior.
We camped the night before heading into the bush on the side of the dirt airstrip at Fort Yukon, the Gwichin vilage where Kirk Sweetsir operates his two Cessna 185s for Yukon Air. An old painted sign on a rusted metal shipping container says “Welcome to Ft. Yukon North of the Arctic Circle. Population 687.” There are no roads to Fort Yukon, but it is a port on the mighty Yukon River. Otherwise only bush planes service this tiny population. Despite this, Fort Yukon was the furthest west outpost of the British Empire in North America-first established as a Hudson’s Bay Trading Company outpost in 1847…back when it was still Russian…continuing until expelled by American traders in 1869 following the purchase of Alaska. It is also the final resting place of London born and Kings College educated Archbishop Hudson Stuck, co-leader of the first successful expedition to climb Mt. McKinley (Denali)- sadly the only thing worth mentioning by Wikipidia- but who also served the native community of Alaska for over thirty years, famously traveling thousands of miles by dog sled in his missionary work. When he died of pneumonia in Fort Yukon, he requested to be buried in the native cemetery.
Zipping up my fleece against the relentless mosquitoes in the nine PM sunshine, I leaned over our map Kirk had spread on the container floor. Peter and Mark, my husband and a friend of ours, huddled in. “I was going to drop you off here. Caribou are west now though.” “What about the Jago?” Peter asked, looking at the next major drainage over. “Sure, we could do that,” Kirk said. “You guys can cross over one of these passes to get the Aichilik…” He pointed to an area where the contour lines were amply spaced in the mountains between the two rivers. “Come down this drainage- this is where the wolves den- and you can head south from there. Wolves have been working this whole bank here-” he gestured to parts of the Aichilik. “Had a black one come right into Robert’s tent last week and steal a cabbage! Never seen anything like it in my life!” Kirk was referring to Robert Thompson, an Inuit guide out of Kaktovik. “I don’t know if you’ll see caribou, but this valley is beautiful. I think you’ll really like the terrain.”
As Peter and I lay down for the night in our new tarptent, a lightweight mesh tent with a single layer of nylon, I pulled a t-shirt over my face to keep out the midnight sun.
Kirk loaded us on the plane the next morning. “Just be sure the bear spray is packed in your packs,” he directed. “You guys are lucky,” he continued. “June’s had the worst weather we’ve seen in years. It’s just now clearing up. Gotta drop you guys off, and go pick up some guys on the Jago coastal plains. Sounds like their plane crashed on the way to pick them up!”
These three guys were friends of ours- Mark and Andy Moderow and Paul Denklewater had pack rafted the Jago River the previous week in 35 degree weather and howling, 60 mph winds, sleet and rain. They had been sitting at the coast accompanied by grizzly bear for the past two days.
Kirk is not your typical Alaska bush pilot, though he’s been flying the Alaska bush most of his life. Born in Ruby, Alaska, an Athapaskan village of 100 on the Yukon, Kirk started to fly, and then went back for a Masters in Geology at Cambridge-the one in England. He met his wife there who was getting her doctorate in criminology. They live in Fairbanks in the winter and Ft. Yukon in the summer, from where Kirk flies people to the bush, and his wife advises the British government on policy decisions.
We take off and head north, the endless Yukon flats eventually swelling into gentle hills and then proper mountains of the stormy Brooks Rage. Low clouds block several valleys and passes, and Kirk navigates his way through them seemingly without effort, and with one deep turn where the g-forces press us into our seats. We fly over a high plateau area in the approximate area of the continental divide; that term is used loosely and has little meaning here, he explains. Essentially it determines which rivers flow south and which flow north. We fly over the Sheenjek, where we are meant to arrive in 11 days and where the Muries famously camped in the mid-1950s, revisited only a couple of years ago by George Schaller.
As Kirk picks his way in and out of valleys further north in the range, he finally opts to fly over the foothills and avoid the passes all together; as the Cessna floats over the open and rolling tundra landscape, tiny brown shapes become visible. “There’s a group of caribou,” Kirk notes, as several hundred of these shapes make their way east spread loosely across the foothills. Another group, then another become visible, all moving slowly in the direction we are flying.
We swing into the Jago River valley. We are minutes from landing, but the fingernails I have dug into my palm for the last half hour have lost their effectiveness. I lost my breakfast in a plastic bag, quite humbly as the one other pilot on the plane. Bush flying is a long way from straight and level. Kirk nicely ignores my breach of protocol, and comes in for final on a long tundra strip. Across the river from us are maybe two hundred caribou. “Looks like you guys got lucky,” Kirk said. “They’re all moving toward this valley!”
Dropping our backpacks and shotgun, Kirk waved, turned the plane around and disappeared against the open mountainous landscape with astonishing abruptness. The only sound now was the wind, the mosquitoes and our own small voices.
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