My last few blog posts included the subject of flying. But not all my adventures involving planes in Alaska included me as a passenger.
As a game biologist working in Anchorage in the 1970s, let's say I didn't fit the mold. Hunting dominated the philosophy of powers to be in the Game Division and any other values of wildlife would take care of itself. But, I had become an avid photographer so my values were misaligned with my employer. Thus, I took several opportunities to step away from my job including leave without pay or vacation time.
So for one two-week break I hired on with the US Park Service as a wildlife biologist. I still can't figure how I pulled that off, but there, Rollie and I were assigned the task of documenting caribou calving in an area north of Denali National Park. It's an area which President Jimmy Carter later designated as a National Monument in 1978 before legislation added it to the Park under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). President Carter signed ANILCA into law in December, 1980, just before the end of his term.
Travel 20 miles north down the Toklat River from the Denali Park Road and you'll come close to our assigned area. Incidentally it's not too far from the location of an abandoned school bus on the Stampede Trail where an idealist adventurer, Chris McCandless, later died in 1992 from starvation, possibly brought on by eating poisonous wild-potato seeds. The book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer documents McCandless's ill-fated adventure.
But, I digress. Our plan was to backpack down the Toklat River drainage from the Denali Park Road where we'd set up camp and search the surrounding area for calving caribou. And to lighten our load, our food would be air-dropped to us. Nice! Did I mention the need to wear mosquito netting head gear on that hike because of...take a guess?
For several days before our departure we packed food items on our menus in plastic bags so we could burn the bags after consuming our meals rather than keeping opened packaging around our camp to attract grizzlies plus having to pack it out at the end of our project. Pure genius.
So contents of jars of Tang (an orangish drink), a tasty variety of Mountain House freeze dried dinners, instant cereal, powdered milk, Pilot Bread crackers, were each opened and transferred into plastic bags. Perfect. All we had to do was pack them in a large sack for our supervisor, Will, to air drop at our camp site. We were proud at how efficiently we had packed that bag.
Now, I'd been chartering planes for awhile and knew a Super Cub's stalling speed was somewhere around 40 miles per hour. I knew the Cessna Will would be flying would be flying faster than that but somehow I envisioned a low, slow pass and our food container gently leaving the plane as Will sent it our way making a mellow descent onto the tundra which would cushion the fall.
Time for the air drop arrived and I remember being shocked how fast Will was flying as he approached far above the elevation that I had imagined. I mean, really high above us. That's when the duffle containing all our carefully packed food shot out of the plane like a US Air Force air to air missile rocketing towards the ground, not tundra, but a gravel stream bed.
Then, it hit...exploding in a cloud of freeze dried peas, beans, lentils, rice, chunk of ham, eggs, powdered Tang, powdered milk, cereal, Pilot Bread and whatever else was on our planned menu, rising like smoke over the bag. In an instant our fine dining pleasure was turned into one item on the menu for three meals per day. Need I say, Tang flavored milk isn't a good addition to egg-infused rice and beans. Anticipation for our meals for the next two weeks didn't exactly qualify for the adjective, eager.
By the way, we may have seen one caribou in those two weeks but we never got close enough to be sure. However, except for the dining part, it was a fine camping trip.
Lacking any digital images from those days, I'm attaching a few photographs Kären recently took of (to stay sort of on the subject of "aviators" and food) great blue herons. Much to our delight our backyard may have become a heron rookery because last year we had two nesting pairs and this year it doubled to four nests.
A bit more visible while awaiting the next "food delivery."
An impressive sight in our yard and this is only a "baby" in pre-flight training.
Finally a clear view
Wait a minute! What are you doing up there? These photos are supposed to be about aviation and food!.
