Aviation has been closely associated with Mount McKinley for decades, and the perils of flying there have been considered from the very beginning. When Joe Crosson made the first landing on the mountain in 1932, he intended to drop off his three climbing passengers at the 5,600-foot level and quickly depart. Things did not go as planned.
After unloading their supplies and seeing Crosson taxi away, the climbers lost sight of the Fairchild 71 in the swirling wind and snow. They assumed he had taken off, but as he told them later that night, he only made it up to about 300 feet before a sudden downdraft forced him back onto the glacier. Conditions had rapidly deteriorated, destroying all visibility, so Crosson cut power to the engine to avoid hitting a ridge. After the aircraft finally stopped, he faced another dilemma. Camp was 3 miles away and, more importantly, if the wind damaged the Fairchild, they would all be stranded. So to secure the Fairchild, he folded the big wings back against the fuselage by himself. Although they were designed to do this, the wings were 20 feet long, weighing more than 200 pounds, a job usually requiring two men. In the midst of what had become a snowstorm, Crosson managed to do it, and then, hours later, he snowshoed into the expedition's camp. "Crosson was the same as usual -- calm and matter-of-course," stated the climbers' final report on the incident in the American Alpine Journal. The next day he hiked back to the plane, they all rocked it free of the ice, "jumping from one frozen ridge to the next." Then he took off with little incident.
In the years after Crosson's historic landing, aviation activity continues on Denali. University of Alaska Fairbanks President Terris Moore managed several altitude record-setting exploits during his tenure as "The Flying President" and the long-term achievements of legendary pilots Don Sheldon and Cliff Hudson established Talkeetna as the center for adventures on the mountain.
But unlike the past, flying in Denali National Park and Preserve and on McKinley is characterized today by a sense of collaboration and information sharing that has brought a small group of companies and pilots together. This new era is highlighted by an impressive safety record despite the unpredictable meteorological conditions of the area.
The chosen four
Any licensed pilot can fly through the park, but rights to land within it, and especially on the mountain, are tightly controlled. Four companies have concessions from the National Park Service to land on glaciers in Denali National Park: K2 Aviation, Fly Denali, Sheldon Air Service and Talkeetna Air Taxi. They're the only outfits that can land on the mountain and they're responsible for transporting those who climb North America's tallest peak to base camp -- while also providing tourists with flightseeing opportunities that include glacier landings.
The concession system was inaugurated in 1996 following decades of air taxi landings on the mountain. The new system was designed to bridge a gap between National Park Service demands, which were influenced by visitors seeking a "wilderness experience," and the industry's long economic contribution to the area. The concessions are awarded on a 10-year basis via a park service application process.
Further, Kantishna Air Taxi is the only air taxi based within the park. It operates tours and some commercial flights from Kantishna Airstrip, which is at the end of the 94-mile Service Road in Denali. Several other air taxis are permitted to operate in the preserve areas.
Working for any of these companies presents a unique set of challenges best met after obtaining hours of flight time in the area and maintaining a healthy degree of respect for its complicated geography and weather. Interestingly, however, while all of the pilots in the area navigate the same airspace, they each contribute a unique perspective based on their own aviation histories. Flying in Denali National Park has thus become less a place of heroics and romantic Bush pilot exploits. Today, it's more a sum of its parts, a place with many pilots working as a group to maintain the highest levels of safety.
Diverse pilot backgrounds
"The mountain is almost like a living, breathing organism," says Paul Roderick, director of operations and owner of Talkeetna Air Taxi, who's flown in the Alaska Range for 24 years. "Hopefully you don't ever get too comfortable with it. It doesn't matter how many years of flying you have, the conditions are always changing up there -- the visibility, lighting, blowing snow, fog. It's never the same."
Roderick came to Alaska after graduation from one of the country's top aviation schools, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. "My classmates," he says, "were interested in going into the military, corporate flying or for the airlines." None of those career paths appealed to him. "I was already into climbing, and I heard about Talkeetna and went north in 1991. That was it." He was been flying in the Alaska Range ever since.
Jeff Babcock and Stan Steck came to K2 Aviation after careers spent with the Alaska State Troopers and National Park Service, respectively. Both of them flew as part of their jobs in other areas of the state. For Steck, who went to work as a law enforcement ranger in Katmai National Park and Preserve with only 500 hours of flight time in 1991, flying has always been a critical part of his job. He later transferred to Denali National Park but credits an aviation classic for bringing him to the mountain. "I read 'Wager With the Wind' (a Sheldon biography) and it made a big impression," he says. "And then later, Jay Hudson became a good friend of mine." His knowledge of Denali's flying past is deep, but he stresses that one thing has always remained the same for pilots: "The biggest thing is knowing your geography."
For Babcock, who arrived in Fairbanks in 1980 to study criminal justice at the university, the Alaska State Troopers provided his early aviation experience. He flew for the agency in base assignments across the state including Kodiak, Juneau, Petersburg, Palmer and Anchorage. His first glacier landings were with the troopers in Cordova on the Sheridan and Scott glaciers, experiences that came in handy when he went to work for Rust's Flying Service and K2 (which have the same owners) about eight years ago. (After being interviewed for this article, Babcock took a position as Alaska regional aviation manager for the National Park Service.)
"Anyone can be trained to fly the airplane," says Babcock when asked about what makes Mount McKinley special. "It's the weather that must be learned. To safely operate in that environment --up at base camp or on the glacier -- weather approaching in 20-30 minutes can trap you. Judgment of that weather is important; teaching judgment is important."
Roderick, Steck and Babcock are emblematic of many other pilots with years spent flying in the range and on the mountain, but they also exemplify a modern attitude toward conservative flying that each of them helped cultivate.
"At K2 it is safety above getting the mission done," asserts Babcock. "When I'm training a new pilot I always tell them if the hairs raise up on the back of your neck, then it's not worth it. You have to listen to what your gut is telling you.
"Knowing how to make the right decision is crucial to the job."
Babcock is even more direct about the lesson he considers most critical. Concerns about weather closing in behind you are important for all mountain flying, but in a place like Denali, where the geography is so severe, it is perhaps more significant than anywhere else. "You have to leave a back door open," he explains. "If you enter the (Alaska) Range, you want to be able to get out. Always have an option. If you take off out of base camp then you are immediately taking a risk that you can't go back. You have to be sure you have more than one option."
Benefits of cooperation
The four companies landing on the mountain fly thousands of trips a year, and during the climbing/tourism season the traffic density in the park area is comparable to the state's larger airports. To accomplish this number of flights in one of the more challenging environments in the country requires continuous effort and vigilance, as evidenced by the recent midair collision at Talkeetna Airport between a student pilot and Talkeetna Air Taxi, which resulted in one serious injury. It remains under investigation.
Even using the National Transportation Safety Board database, search limitations make it difficult to determine exactly how many accidents have occurred in the park over the decades, and there is no record at all that would include every accident back to the Sheldon and Hudson flying era after World War II.
The most recent fatalities happened in 2010, when a corporate aircraft operating just inside the park's borders crashed and killed all three on board. Prior to that accident, in 2009, a private plane crash caused the death of wolf biologist Gordon Haber; the pilot survived. Conversely, the last fatality involving an air taxi accident occurred more than a decade ago, when McKinley Air Service crashed in 2003, killing the pilot and three passengers while en route to base camp.
Increased levels of cooperation designed to prevent accidents are most obvious in how weather information is shared. Technology has made an enormous amount of data available to the companies and they are in constant contact with their pilots. "There is satellite imagery and weather cameras," says Roderick. "You can see the weather coming in now, gauge the size and intensity of storms."
Websites such as FlightAware allow K2 Aviation and Talkeetna Air Taxi to track their aircraft, which fly back and forth all day long to base camp and landing zones where tourists are able to enjoy glacier tours. "If we experience something with the weather, we share it," stresses Babcock. As much as the technology allows, everybody knows what the conditions are and when they start to degrade, the word is rapidly spread."
According to NTSB Alaska Region Chief Clint Johnson, such pilot reporting, which has gone on informally in Alaska for decades, is a significant part of a new nationwide effort by the agency. "Alaska-based investigators Brice Banning and Millicent Hoidal are involved in a working group to look at ways of improving the sharing of weather information. The goal is to get more data out there to more pilots, as they have been doing in the park and other challenging areas in the state."
Veteran McKinley pilots know weather can change rapidly in the mountains, so constant updates are crucial. This was bought home in 2013 when a de Havilland Beaver operated by Talkeetna Air Taxi was forced to land by diminishing visibility on Ruth Glacier with six tourists aboard.
"I could land 2 miles from them, but the temperature and dewpoint just made it impossible to get any closer," explains Roderick. After two nights huddled together in the aircraft with basic gear such as sleeping bags, park service rangers hiked in more supplies to the stranded passengers, who were able to fly out a day later.
That kind of conclusion -- a safe outcome that allowed passengers to tout their Alaska adventure -- is what Steck considers the real business of flying on McKinley. "Our job is to create happy people," he explains. "We give them the trip they've been planning their whole lives. The mission now is to create smiles, and to do that you don't press the weather."
Evolution of Denali aviation
There is still a lot of traditional flying that goes on in the Alaska Range. "We fly a lot of climbers and tourists," says Roderick, "but also miners and rafters. We are on and off of gravel bars and other places in the range where honestly no one may have ever been before. There is still an element of pioneering to the flying out here. Every time you go out in the spring to drop the landing markers on the glaciers, it's like you're the first one there again."
Enhanced weather monitoring and other efforts are all part of a concentrated effort to make aviation safe in one of the most volatile meteorological systems in the world.
"We look at everything," says Steck. "We don't take anything for chance, and we are lucky to have excellent mechanics working with us, on top of everything else."
"It's all about good decisions," says Babcock. "That's what the companies want to see, and turning around is part of that."
Contact Colleen Mondor at colleen@alaskadispatch.com.