My daughter, Meg is has been an Iditarod fan since we flew the route 5 years ago. She has followed the race every year on the Insider and has continued to talk about wanting to follow the actual race. With many months of planning, we made it happen this year and had an AMAZING trip. As usual, my wife put together a photo gallery that I thought I’d share to entice others to consider making the trip. Will post that a bit later. Here are some pics from the prior adventure. Kids age fast.




You may think you need to have skis, but surprisingly, most of the planes, other than the Iditarod Air Force, did not have skis. With this years route, even the Iditarod Air Force pilots were landing only on plowed runways. – So don’t count yourself out just because you don’t have winter footwear for your aircraft.

I want to thank Chet and Darcy Harris, Toby Ashley, Brian Padin, Paul and Donna Claus, Kurt MacKenzie, Jim O'Neil, and Larry Eggart for helping make the trip so wonderful.

I flew our Cessna up from Boise to Anchorage giving myself plenty of extra time for weather. As it turned out, the weather was very cooperative. Most of the ski areas in SW BC had closed for lack of snow and all the lakes and rivers were open water. Going NW, I passed just east of Nimpo Lake and none of the interior lakes and rivers was completely frozen. I had intended to camp out several places along the way, but this “fell through” and luckily I didn’t… On reaching Smithers, I still hadn’t seen any water to land on and the Skeena was in full spring flow.

I picked up a friend in SE Alaska and we had a spectacular flight up the coastal range, finally finding a winter playground.


Having winter footwear on the ‘wagon I was able to comfortably take a path over the glacial byways that I had not ventured previously. We went from POW island, up the Stikine, and into Skagway (where gas was ~$4.60/gal!).From Skagway we went toward Glacier Bay and decided to spend the night on Casement Glacier.


Notice the loss of surface features when the light starts to flatten. Just like in the summer, while planning your landing, you need to imprint in your head what obstacles are around you (ice berms, crevasses as opposed to rocks,stumps and trees) - in anticipation of departure.



From there, to the Alsek and into Yakutat.
I always thought glacial activity was something witnessed over lifetimes. Fascinating for me to see some of the glaciers’ changes in the past 7 years that I have been witness. Yakutat Glacier feeding into Harlequin Lake, outside of Yakutat has receded several MILES under my observation. Many other glaciers were similarly altered. Not an enviropolitical statement here, just a surprising realization of the ability to witness grand scale changes in nature.

From Yakutat we headed across the Russel Fiord and travelled up Hubbard Glacier on the flank of Mount Logan and down Logan Glacier into the Chitina drainage.
Mount Logan at the top of Hubbard Glacier


Despite all the spindrift, the ride wasn't bad.



Headed down the Logan Glacier. Time frame on this glacier traverse was measured in hours. There is no way to accurately illustrate the grandeur of this place.





Then continuing the glacier travel through the Bremner, Wernicke, Allen, and Scott Glaciers into Cordova. I MUST return to do some skiing!
Alaska weather finally kicked in going across Prince William Sound and had to work to get into the MatSu Valley. So there we were LATE FEBRUARY Alaska, in the Knik drainage with overcast driving us down below any landing sites on the glacier and NO snow in the valley! There was visible water on Lake George and there was no way I was going to land it without some local Beta on ice thickness. Needless to say, the Fli-Lite design (low ground clearance) does not like loose gravel bars, but they are stout and managed it. Hiked around a while as Palmer AWOS reported ¼ mile vis and then carried on after the weather passed.
I went back with local insight on the ice depth in Lake George. The insight I gained leads me to believe the locals are crazy


Consequently, the ice was over 2-3 feet deep, but the 2" of water on top was "unsettling". Especially as a 185 had gone through the ice at Chakachamna Lake a few days before.





I'm going run out of synonyms for "Spectacular"



Ha, and this brings us to the START of our Iditarod Jouney!!?

...... To Be Continued

Good report Matt!

Wow Matt! Very nicely done. Always have learned a great deal from you and the generous information! Top of the line TR.

Matt, check out my photos in my album, you will see my brothers 185 on the Same lake minus the water on top, beautiful country

Matt, it appears you camped on the glacier. How did you preheat?
46tcrft

Come on, Matt! Don't leave us hanging.

Bloomah, Nice 185!

46TCRFT, Yes we camped!

Just two of us in the 180 allows for a bit of luxury and I brought my Honda 1000 Generator. It worked well in temps down in the neg 20F range such as we had on the glaciers. Was nice to start it up as we were cooking breakfast and breaking camp. My initial thought had been the benefit of not having to tend a stove, (I do not like to be out of sight of the stove under the cowl) and that I could just wake up a couple hours early, start it up, jump back in the warm sack and we would be able to break camp faster with the engine already preheated... As it turns out, I am slow to start in neg 30F temps and a cold camp takes longer to break down when you don't have the finger dexterity. Also the need to use the stove to preheat the generator when it got to -30 and below in the interior negated any benefit as far as I was concerned. (perhaps my generator needs to be altered for the cold?) Bottom line, I don't think I would bring it again to interior Alaska and just stick with the stove preheat which turned out to be just as fast. A second stove is lighter and more versatile for the mission. Would also add that you will be wanting to cook/heat water and preheating simultaneously so two stoves just make sense aside from redundancy. I brought my homemade duct work, but Kurt loaned me his brand new Northern Companion. Really a nice piece of equipment which functioned well. Would recommend this if you don't have the desire to fashion your own preheater.
Other thoughts on the generator. A friend was going in a second plane, but then backed out. We were going to bring a Honda 2000 and heat both planes. He also had the thought to bring an electric blanket to put between the bags and the pads. This would have had the generator running all night, an idea which I just haven't "warmed up" to. I just really enjoy the sound of silence and whatever breaks that silence when I am away from town. Maybe I would feel different if we had tried the electric blanket thing.
When away from home, it can be hard to keep all the devices charged from cell and sat phones, Ipads and Ipad GPS's, and camera batteries. You would think the generator would solve this, but none of that stuff will change when it's cold, especially the Istuff as the processor needs to be functioning to regulate the charge. But alas, not a problem as the devices all froze anyway, so you couldn't turn them on to run down the batteries - problem solved, and another reason not to worry about the generator when out and about in less than -20F...

Zane, you know how much I want to go down into the pit and finish this TR, but I've got my 16th wedding anniversary to plan, my trip to Valdez to arrange, my airplane to break and my IA to frame for it; I'm swamped! Actually have been busy with work and repairs on the 180. I don't think well when she's gutted like this. Had to unzip seemingly everything in order to get at and repair a small crack in a bulkhead

Matt 7GCBC wrote:Zane, you know how much I want to go down into the pit and finish this TR, but I've got... <stuff>

Hey, you're talking to the guy who promised a 3 part TR and has only delivered Part 1... 6 months ago.

In my experience, Honda generators won't start reliably in very cold temps. When we were playing that game, we kept the generator in the wall tent with the stove. Left outside at -20 or colder they don't want to start.

Also, be VERY careful to watch the breather on those little engines-they WILL freeze up if run long in very cold temps. Honda used to make a "cold weather" breather. Maybe the new ones use that, but two friends had them freeze up and smoke the motor while running for several hours.

I agree that flame heat of some kind is better, I never liked lugging around a generator that had to be preheated.....to then preheat.

Northern Companion is a good unit.

MTV