The Caribou trip

From: Haggstroms <hagg@alaska.net>

Hi Iril -
We met my brother at Flathorn at 8:30 the morning we went Caribou
hunting, so we could pick up our rifles and top off our gas tanks.  Gas
jugs kept falling out of Lonnie's plane while he was organizing his
gear, so we figured the preflight at Birchwood must have been somewhat
rushed.
After getting airborne, with a nice little tailwind picking up our speed
somewhat, Lonnie told us about a shortcut through Lake Clark Pass that
would take 70 miles off the route. That sounded good, so we said we'd
follow him.  He told us he'd be climbing  to 5000' to cross over the
glacier..... okay.
As we droned along, climbing for altitude, the scenery below passed by
at a leisurely pace.  Lonnie said we better make it 6000' just to be
sure and give ourselves room.  By now, the scenery had slowed down
considerably more, and we seemed to be entering some sort of curious
space/time warp (I was sure I had seen certain landmarks many minutes
before.... or was that hours? Why did I seem to be standing still when I
was accelerating through space at .107 mach?).  I was kind of wishing I
hadn't got rid of my ADF so I could have tuned in some appropriate music
to drum my fingers to..."A Long Time Coming"  or something.
There was a 25mph headwind at 6000'.  Lonnie mentioned he heard on
"Alaska Weather" there would be headwinds at that altitude. Okay.....
theoretically this route WAS shorter.
Everybody's perspective was shaky.  I couldn't tell what drainage Lonnie
was heading up because we were higher than the reference points.  From
Daryl's vantage I looked like I was heading up the wrong drainage, and
he kept telling me to bear to my right to pass over the glacier.  From
my view I was dead on for the glacier, but Daryl was headed up the
Chakuchamna drainage and I asked him if he knew where he was going.
Lonnie told us both that he was only a mile ahead, but we knew that
couldn't be correct because there were dust specks floating by larger
than him.  I think we were having a bit of low-level hypoxia, without
the euphoria.
Soon, after we had assured each other that we all knew exactly where we
were at, and where we were going,  we popped over the back of the
glacier into Lake Clark Pass, and it wasn't too bad being high here.
Any winds that were present on the valley floor weren't getting us up
high, and the headwinds were slowly dissipating.  Lonnie and Daryl spent
the trip through the pass comparing ground speeds -  a dueling GPS's
sort of thing.
The sun was out over Lake Clark, two hours into the trip, and the ice
blown free of snow, so you could see some spectacular pressure ridges
crossing the lake.  Lonnie and Daryl calculated how violent a death
one's landing gear would suffer on a couple along the way.  Lonnie asked
if anyone needed to stop while we were over Lake Clark, as he didn't
want anybody's kidneys to start screaming. We all said we could last
until Iliamna, as the call of nature was only murmuring at this point.
We should have inquired why he asked - we started picking up bumpy wind
at the south end of Lake Clark as we neared Nondalton.  Lonnie said
winds were forecast at Iliamna for 25-30 from the north. The call of
nature began to whine.
By the time we hit the shore of Lake Iliamna, my call seemed to be a
little more urgent than the others. Daryl and I looked for a suitable
lake to set down on - preferably one with a tree in the middle of it to
act as a token outhouse. Finding nothing like that, we sat down on a
lake which had open vistas for miles in all directions - a reasonable
compromise. As we were shutting off the engines, Lonnie came on the air
and said they'd found a herd of 150 caribou southwest of us, and they
were setting down. That hurried up our job at hand considerably (men
have it sooo well outdoors in a wind), and very soon we were off again,
and spotted Lonnie. All the lakes in this area were windswept and bare -
we taxied  to the upwind shore and stopped with the skis up on the snow
in case the planes had any ideas about backtaxiing on their own.
The herd was about a 1/4 mile from the lake - Lonnie & Dave went upwind
and Daryl & I went downwind. Our position was best for sneaking up on
them, and we figured that our shots would direct the herd upwind toward
Lonnie. The herd began looking bigger and bigger the closer we got - it
was wall to wall antler racks. Several thousand was closer to the true
size of the herd. Dave, Lonnie's 'bou spotter, being a master of
understatement, needs to stay away from fish spotting............
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'll send the rest of the story tomorrow. Writing it seems to be taking
longer than the trip.
The Iditarod was good - Doug Swingley of Montana just won it this
morning with a record time.... 9 days with a good looking team. I
wouldn't mind having a few of those dogs. It is hard to think that Joe
Redington, the "Father of the Iditarod", Alaskan icon,
legend-in-his-own-time, is gone now - it's hard for me to grasp. While
flying the trail, I did a lot of thinking back to when I was a 10 year
old tomboy, running wild, and first met him (he was our nearest neighbor
on the homestead). I walked  into his yard and saw dogs tied to every
tree, pole and stump in sight  - 150 total. He asked me if I'd like to
run dogs in the future, with that twinkle in his eye, like a leprechaun,
which he is, really, being so short of stature. I was struck dumb and
fell instantly in love with mushing. I've known him all my life, and
never met anyone like him. It's sort of like my father died, and flying
the Iditarod this year was actually kind of sad. I thought a lot about
the Iditarod legacy he left. What the Iditarod has become is not what
Joe envisioned. I'm not sure I'm going to fly it again. Even when he was
terminally ill last spring, with the pressure of the public eye on him,
he made time to come by the hospital after my accident and try to cheer
ME up.... he finally said if I couldn't get my wrecked plane back in the
air, he'd give me his dog team. Can you imagine the appalling generosity
of him giving me his team just to get me on my feet? He knew I would
never accept it, and it would probably get me back in the air, which it
did. But the reason it did is because I knew him - he would have really
given me that team if I didn't get going. How could I have ever faced
that? And how did he know what no-one else seemed to?  I knew what he
was saying to me - " If you can't fly, then you can run dogs. You can do
something - I'll see to it. Just don't give up, no matter what it is you
end up doing." I feel as if I lost my most long term supporter.
Love,
Kathy



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