The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race generates so many stories. While there are lots of people around to report them, some of the best never reach the point of publication. This is one such. It came up the other night when I was reminded of it while telling stories of covering the race as a writer. This one could be filed under flying as well as sled dog racing, or even dumb things journalists do. Choose your place.
We were flying from Golovin to Nome in a Cessna 206, the pilot, two television news people and myself. For the most part we flew through a gray out; that’s like a white out only gray with some precipitation in it. Picking out landmarks from the air proved difficult in the flat light and to add to the difficulty, the pilot, good as he was had never flown Alaska’s Seward Peninsula before. He flew low attempting to follow the beach line or at least the sporadic line of exposed driftwood sticking above the snow at the high tide line. The pilot handed his chart to the fellow in the other front seat, whom I will not name because he has since reached national network exposure and recognition for news reports.
He rotated the map a couple of times, a sure sign of a person unfamiliar with navigation. To the right of a westbound airplane, there is land and some low mountains, to the left, the Bering Sea, sometimes covered with ice. There are three promontories to be passed on the way from east to west before reaching Nome. Mushers driving dog teams go up and over them, people flying airplanes go around them.
Realizing the fellow with the chart was not to be trusted and from my boating experience having some knowledge of navigation, I watched the shoreline, too, and kept track of those promontories. First came Bluff and then Topkok and we flew on westward. Visibility degenerated to virtually nothing. On the approach to Nome from the east, once the airplane passes Cape Nome, the largest and last of those promontories, the pilot has to turn toward land more to the northwest. When the fellow supposedly navigating told the pilot we had passed Cape Nome he turned to the northwest thinking he was heading for the Nome airport.
At this point I was pretty sure we had not passed Cape Nome, which is a significant mountain that rises directly out of the sea. Not wanting to correct a pilot which is a horrible breach of any kind of professional etiquette you can think of, I held my tongue hoping we would see it in time and all would be fine. However, visibility worsened still more.
The time came when I couldn’t stand it any more. I was sitting directly behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He lifted his earphone off his ear and I told him I was pretty sure we had NOT passed Cape Nome.
He did what I have heard pilots do when given adjustments by air traffic controllers, that is perform the maneuver immediately without question. I had just barely finished the sentence when he laid the airplane almost on its side in a hard left turn heading out to sea where nothing would stand in our way.
In short order Cape Nome slid by us, it seemed reaching to touch the landing wheels. As it turned out we had been within a mile of that severe snow-covered rock face almost invisible in the gray out, and flying straight at it at a speed of about 100 miles an hour. Do the math for how long it takes an airplane to fly one mile at 100 mph. Simply, whew, that was close. If I hadn’t said something we might have flown straight into it without ever seeing it.
Not too much farther along, the city of Nome came into view and we made our landing. After I had retrieved my gear from the cargo area, I happened to catch the eye of the pilot. We stood for a moment looking into each other’s eyes, nothing said, but the understanding passing between us that we had just survived a very close call. I am not sure the other two passengers even realized it.
That was the last flight in a small airplane I ever took on the Seward Peninsula. Every one of the flights up there had involved some kind of adventure like this one and I am just as happy if I have to in the future to take a boat or a trail.
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