A winter storm on this week's episode of "Flying Wild Alaska" -- the Discovery Channel's reality show about Alaska bush pilots -- grounds plenty of planes, but those that make it off the ground find flying is all the hairier.
The narrator tells us that this storm could bring hurricane-force winds in excess of 100 mph, as a massive low pressure system will bring snow and fluctuating temperatures that threaten to occasionally spike above freezing.
"It's a huge storm," Jim Tweto, COO of Era Alaska, says. "It's gonna impact every base we have (in western Alaska)." He tells us it's going to hit Bethel first, then move north with a potential to reach all the way to Barrow.
Despite all this, the Era Alaska hub of Unalakleet hasn't been hit as the episode opens, and pilot Ben Pedersen is looking to outrun the storm and drop off a load of supplies to the village of St. Michael.
Also looking to beat the weather is Ariel Tweto, Jim's daughter, who is on her way to Anchorage to meet up with her sister Ayla for a road trip to the annual Arctic Man -- although the annual ski-and-snowmachine race 150 miles north of Anchorage might run into weather problems of its own.
Racing the clock
Just as Jim predicted, Bethel is the first hub to be shut down. The Bethel terminal is one of the busiest in the Era service area, so several passengers -- and some valuable supplies -- are stranded in the Southwest Alaska village.
The village of Tununak, west of Bethel, was hit by a separate winter storm over the last couple of days, and, combined with an offline grader normally used to plow the runway, has left pilots unable to perform any of the usual three daily flights each day to the village.
"We are racing against the clock," Era pilot Erik Snuggerud says of delivering goods to Tununak before the Bethel terminal shuts down. "We've got food, diapers, all kinds of stuff they need."
But when the terminal does get shut down, it's no joke -- Snuggerud tries to open a hangar door and it whips open from the wind, dragging him across the ice.
While DOT plows work in Bethel trying to keep the runways clear in case there's a break in the weather, Snuggerud decides to throw a blizzard barbecue, cooking up moose burgers and hot dogs in a hangar. They bring a plate of dogs into the people waiting in the terminal, passing them out to what are surely unhappy passengers.
Snuggerud pauses to check on the weather status. "Update on the weather?" he asks into a walkie-talkie.
"Horrible," comes the reply.
"Continuing to barbecue," he says, and goes back to tending the grill.
Meanwhile, Unalakleet-based pilot Pedersen has dropped his supplies for the village of St. Michael and is headed back to Unalakleet, taking off even as wind tears across the runway. As he passes over some mountains, his visibility suddenly drops and rain begins falling.
"You can train for this stuff for years and years, but nothing really beats getting out into it," Pedersen says. Pedersen, just a greenhorn last season, is gaining confidence and his flying is becoming pretty impressive. He drops to 500 feet in order to improve his visibility.
"We're in trouble," he says as the cloud cover continues to grow heavy. He radios Ferno Tweto, at the Unalakleet terminal, to see what the conditions are. "It's very snowy," she says, adding that the snow set in without warning.
Pedersen, flying low, has to get past two recently-installed towers near one end of the runway in Unalakleet. Despite the decreased visibility, he passes them without a problem and comes in to land.
"Sometimes," he says, "weather just comes up on you real fast."
Funny thing happened on way to Arctic Man
In Anchorage, Ayla and Ariel have picked up their RV and their friends and are ready to head out of town -- if they can figure out how. They take a wrong turn when trying to get on the highway, heading south instead of north. It appears the Tweto girls are directionally challenged.
"Us Tweto girls, we have no sense of direction," Ariel says.
Outside of Anchorage, they meet up with Era pilot Luke Hickerson and decide they're going to follow him -- although even that may not solve their navigational problems.
"I got lost last year too," Luke says, "so it's gonna be awesome."
Ferno, who's still in Unalakleet, is worried about the girls.
"I don't like my girls going to Arctic Man," she says. "Every time they go, I'm worried about the long drive and all the drinking that goes on there."
When she hasn't heard from Ayla or Ariel after they should have arrived, she calls up a weapon every parent probably wishes they had in their toolbelt: she contacts Era pilot Jared Cummings to cruise by Summit -- where Arctic Man is held every year -- and check up on them.
The Arctic Man is on hold due to its own weather issues, so Luke and Ariel go to meet Jared upon his arrival. Unsure of the landing surface, Jared performs several touch and goes in the soft snow, the skis of his plane porpoising in the soft powder.
"Call Jared 'Captain America,' coming badassing into Arctic Man," Luke says, coining a new verb.
He has to get back off the ground, but now that he's seen Ariel, he can put Ferno's mind at ease.
"Have fun at the beer tent," Jared says, before taking back off.
The weather eventually clears, and Ariel acts as announcer for the race, in which a skier skis a portion, then grabs a tether attached to a snowmachine and gets towed behind at speeds approaching 100 mph to finish the race.
Fighting the weather
Back in Bethel, there's a long enough break in the weather that Snuggerud wants to make a run to Nununak, so he loads up a few of the most essential supplies. The runway in Nununak still hasn't been cleared completely, so Snuggerud plans to fly to Toksook Bay, a little to the south, to land there and let a local use a snowmachine to take medical supplies to the clinic in Tununak.
But first, Snuggerud has to wait for a Dash 8 sitting on the runway in front of him. Snuggerud's travel window is dangerously small, so he's not too happy to be stuck behind another aircraft. I won't quote him here, but suffice it to say, he's pretty pissed.
He takes off for Toksook Bay, but gets reports of visibility dropping to a quarter mile and winds blowing at 41 mph. Snuggerud is worried he will have to turn back toward Bethel, extending Tununak's supply drought longer than the seven days they've already gone.
He goes for it, and makes a successful landing in Toksook Bay. A subsistence hunter, Charles Post, is waiting there with his snowmachine, and they unload the modest cargo from Snuggerud's plane.
Post snowmachines the last 10 miles to Tununak, dropping off medicine for the struggling village.
Other pilots deal with their own weather situations in this episode: Pedersen has to fight with a bit of icing on his wings after he passes through a fog bank with rain suddenly turning to snow. Pilot Phil Ekdahl, on a flight to Akiachak, has to deal with fog, rain and snow while battling with wind on the narrow Akiachak runway, trying not to stick a wing in the snowberms lining either side.
Jim also takes a brief flight in this episode, hauling a group of sled dogs from Unalakleet to St. Michael, leaving them all out of their kennels so it doesn't take two flights to haul them. The dogs sit and shiver in fear. That's the way my own dogs react to the vacuum cleaner, so I can't say I'm too surprised by the dogs' attitude toward flying in a noisy small plane.
At the end of the episode, Jim and Ferno take a walk -- with the winter storm still in effect -- to the top of a hill in Unlakleet.
"People think it's crazy to go out walking in that wind," Jim says, "but it's just another day for us."
They stand on top of the hill and lean into the wind, putting their arms out or jumping in the air and being bowled backwards. It's weather much of Alaska can sympathize with right now as we face our own fluctuating temperatures and high winds.
Brrrr.
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com