Two weeks with Crazy Horse, a lifetime memory

Ed "Crazy Horse" Gurtler" with Leslie Mead at Ed's Innoko River Lodge 1978
Photo by Raine Hall Rawlins in the book "Iditarod, The First Ten years."

     Edward Gurtler Sr. was born on the North Fork of the Innoko River in 1933. He died in his home in Wasilla April 3, 2019. He spent his early years hunting, fishing and trapping helping his parents support the family. After graduating high school in Holy Cross Ed joined the Army in the early 1950s and attained the rank of sergeant. After military service he went to work as a heavy equipment mechanic and operator and helped to build much of the state's infrastructure including the distant early warning system (DEW line) and the Trans Alaska pipeline. Ed owned and operated a hunting lodge on the Innoko River for many years. An avid bush pilot he flew thousands of miles across the state in his Cessna 170. He also was an accomplished musician and singer, pilot, mechanic and big game guide. Ed "Crazy Horse" Gurtler's memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday, July 14 at VFW Post 9356, 301 W. Lake View Ave., Wasilla, Alaska

     I knew this man for only about two weeks in 1979 but our time together was so intense it left me with memories lasting forty years.

     I had set out to write a book about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race but that effort stalled when the people I was working for refused to fund a trip along the trail during the race. By pure chance I met a man who offered to fund the whole project even hire an airplane and pilot.

     He gave me a check on the spot but then kind of disappeared and as race time approached I had heard nothing and began to worry. Somehow just days before the race he let me know he had hired a pilot but the man couldn't do it until two days after the start. So, if you will, on a wing and a prayer, I set out to cover the first couple of days somehow. I bothered the race people until they got me on a flight with Larry Thompson who at that time was the main Iditarod supply pilot. This is how I was introduced to Iditarod flying. Standing on the tarmac I watched him land at Anchorage's airport. Larry stepped down from the airplane and opened the cargo hatch. He reached in and pulled out a chain and 12 dogs piled out. They'd been dropped at early checkpoints. I asked him what he did if they started fighting in the airplane and matter-of-fact said, "I just turn the airplane upside down, settles 'em right down." 

     We skipped checkpoint by checkpoint up the trail and over Rainy Pass and he dropped me on the far side of the Alaska Range at the Farewell checkpoint where I was supposed to meet my pilot. I told the folks there that's what I was doing and someone asked who the pilot was and I said Ed Gurtler. Someone in that room, and I couldn't tell you who, said "oh you're flying with Crazy Horse?"

    An airplane flying upside down with fighting dogs bouncing around the cabin and now a pilot named Crazy Horse. For a moment I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

     He didn't make it that day so I spent it watching and talking with mushers resting at the checkpoint, slept uncomfortably on a floor and woke the next day to a clear blue sky a condition folks in McGrath later told me they called "severe clear," and shortly, the engine of a small airplane approaching. Ed Gurtler climbed down and we shook hands and as quickly as that we were both back in the airplane and climbing into that sky. We headed out across the Farewell Burn, a huge area that a wildfire a couple of years before had left nothing standing. In short time we came upon a dog team moving across the burn. 

    The pilot asked me if I wanted to take a picture and I said, "sure." Immediately the airplane turned into a screaming dive plummeting earthward while I watched in my viewfinder until I couldn't take any more, snapped the shutter, dropped the camera and grabbed this little bar of steel in the overhead. The pilot whose Crazy Horse moniker had become more literal pulled up and when he leveled off he gave me a sideways glance and asked, "Want another one?"

   Probably shaking, I assured him that was enough and we flew on. When I finally released my handhold I realized probably I had just been tested and found myself hoping I'd passed. As we flew along over Alaska, I realized something else too. I had always been a nervous flyer but now inwardly had to laugh at myself for in my fear grabbing onto the very thing that was trying to kill me was a useless action. From then on for the rest of my life, I never feared flying with my new-found fatalistic view.

    We stopped for a bit in Nikolai and spent the better part of two days in McGrath.

    From there we flew to Ophir and stopped for a few hours, but with the leaders approaching the midway point at Iditarod we quickly headed off to the northwest. When we reached the old town, we circled a couple of times but then decided to fly on toward the Yukon River. Instead we flew into our next adventure. Very quickly after we left Iditarod the weather began to deteriorate and it wasn't long before we found ourselves in serious whiteout conditions. Over the course of our flights so far I told him I was a boat captain and right there he asked me about my navigation skills. Apparently convinced, he handed me a chart, pointed to where he thought we were and asked me to watch below and try to follow our progress on the chart and also point out any high points in the terrain. With that settled he brought the airplane down to treetop level and began to follow the curves of a frozen stream below us. I remembered a flash of something I had learned in Boy Scouts, "when lost follow water downstream." I figured that's what Crazy Horse was doing, following a stream that looked from the chart like it ran into the Iditarod River near the abandoned town. But, as we progressed I got the feeling he was also looking for a place to land.

      In time I pointed out a higher hill to our right and how the stream curved around the base. He smiled. He followed the stream around the hill and there it was nestled against the bank, the old gold rush town of Iditarod. Before we landed he asked if I wanted a photo from the air and I said it would be difficult in the flat light. He picked up on that term, I would learn later. Once again safely on the ground I took a few tentative steps and then went to work. Ed found a couple of friends in an occupied building and spent the day there.

    In the morning I received an education in Bush flying. Think about starting your own car on a cold morning. Maybe you had a plug-in engine heater or if worse comes to worse a way to jump start it. Now picture the same situation with an airplane on a slough of the Iditarod River in one of the least inhabited areas of Alaska with the temperature around zero. The first indication I had that this was a problem was when another pilot brought the oil he had drained from his engine indoors and put it on the wood stove to warm. Then I watched Crazy Horse prepare his airplane to fly. To warm the cabin and free any ice from the control cables inside he had installed what amounted to a duct system with hosing used in clothes dryer vents. At one end he placed a small one-burner camp stove and let the heat from it circulate to where it needed to go through the ducting. Given an adequate amount of time he climbed in and worked the cables to make sure they operated correctly and then hustled me into the airplane so we could take off before they had a chance to freeze again. Once running, engine heat kept them functionally warm.

    Back in the air on another severe clear day we headed for the Yukon River. We flew over Shageluk and then Anvik where I wanted to stop, but Crazy Horse wanted to go on to Grayling where his friend Ernie Chase had invited us for dinner. Having been living on corn nuts and jerky for the better part of four days, now, the idea of moose stew sounded great so we went to Grayling. By the time we arrived the day had reached a gray twilight. A couple of airplanes stood parked on the river and Ed checked the wind and looked over the surface for adequate landing room. He finally settled down on what appeared perfectly smooth snow-covered river ice, but the minute we touched down we bounced right back up into the air. We came down hard the second time, a little softer on the third until the pilot finally brought the little airplane under control. Once stopped Crazy Horse gave me a sideways glance and said, "flat light, bouncy landing."

   

The result

 After a dinner of moose stew with Ernie Chase and his family we slept the night and headed upriver in the morning. We pressed on, stopped at Kaltag, then Unalakleet, then Shaktoolik and on to the Seward Peninsula where the weather took one last lick at us as we flew from Elim to Nome. As wind poured off the peninsula from the north it came smoothly off the flatter valley floors but off the bluffs it came blasting creating a turbulence that threw the 170 all over the sky. Crazy Horse fought the stick for at least an hour until we rounded Cape Nome and headed for town. Once we returned to earth, we piled out of the airplane and stood there shaking hands on the runway, knowing we had shared an adventure. 
     At that point I realized Crazy Horse had grown from simply the pilot ferrying the writer around into becoming a major element in the greater narrative. He belonged in the story, too. 
     We went our separate ways for a while, but the next day we met in the office of the Nome Nugget where I was staying. I confirmed with Ed that he had a place to stay and he told me he had to get back and how long did I intend to stay. I told him I needed to stay until the banquet but I could fly back commercial, so we said our goodbyes and my thank-yous there on Front Street in Nome and that was the last time I ever saw Crazy Horse.

    But those two weeks on the trail have lived vividly in memory for forty years. I still get a smile when I hear or use the term "flat light." And every time I ride in an airplane I recall that plunge at a musher on the Burn, smile and fly confidently. So, now, Crazy Horse is gone and though it sounds a little schmaltzy, all I can think of to say is fly high my friend and may you only encounter severe clear sky.

Other memorials