Matt Keller

Setting a private plane down in a narrow gorge can be tricky business anytime. In a winter blizzard, it's downright frightening. Skill and guts mandatory.

The good news: Piloting is a really great job that seldom if ever gets dull. The bad news: for every person who wants to fly for a living, there is somebody else who wants it more. Competition for commercial flying jobs is about as fierce as stock car racing.

Matt Keller snaps a photo of a Bush plane over water in the Chugach Mountains during a trip to pick up sheep hunters.

The Port Alsworth fly-in and film festival inspired thousands of miles of flight around Southwest Alaska, not to mention this epic flight video for those of you who missed it. Pro tip: turn up the volume.

What's a few hours in the Talkeetna Mountains offer? Snow, sunshine, rain, rainbows, sheep, caribou, grizzly bears on a river -- and a headstand for good measure.

The Cessna 185 can handle more than it's given credit for, but there is little or no room for error on Alaska's marginal airstrips. The flexibility of the Super Cub in a variety of wind and load conditions make it sensible for most jobs.

Every Alaska bush pilot needs to be prepared for landing in less-than-ideal conditions. Here are a few tips for touch-down on 500 feet of rocks and gravel in the middle of nowhere.

The Tazlina Glacier, approximately 2 miles wide and 20 miles long, is a real beauty.

It may not look challenging, but landing on this airstrip had me earning my pay.

I landed on the gravel bar in order to drop off a wrangler with a saddle and a coffee can full of grain. Fortunately I could land on the same gravel bar with the runaway horses. Unfortunately, they only left me 230 feet to work with.

Massive flooding ensued during the month of September in Southcentral Alaska, making for some interesting flights for Blue Ice Aviation.

Landing on a glacier in the Chugach Mountains, trying to beat the fog rolling in.

Looking for grass to test out some new bush plane tires for your old Cessna 185? In Southcentral Alaska, chances are good that airstrips may still be covered in snow or ice, remnants of last winter's record-shattering snowfall.

What kind of weather can Alaska bush pilots and aviators expect from a "low pressure trough" when flying over and around mountains?

The cost of replacing a Cessna 185 engine might make it less of a workhorse than some other planes, but a (relatively) cheap modification can reduce wear and tear in those off-airport situations.