Back in Anchorage

Leaving our Big River camp a week ago Sunday in sub par weather, we were all a little apprehensive about the plane ride home. There were three flights that left, one the night before, and two on Sunday. We were the last flight on Sunday and the weather wasn't getting any better. Immediately after we took off we were blown off our axis and the pilot had to quickly correct the plane from being consumed by the strong winds. You know the weather is bad when the pilot lets out an "Oh Shit" or "Oh, that's not good". Having done most of my traveling on large commercial planes (aka 747s), I have never taken the seat belt safety briefing seriously until now. I started with about five inches of wiggle room in the fixed wing plane but by the end of the flight you couldn't stick a needle and thread between me and the seat belt if you tried to. I have never felt turbulence so bad before - on several occasions I seriously thought we were going to die, and as I took photos out of the window of the plane I thought to myself, "Wow, this could be the only evidence the coroners have of what we saw before we crashed." Getting off of the airplane, I don't know if the pilot did it out of guilt or thankfulness, but he shook all of our hands. We all knew that the flight could have turned out a lot worse than it did. The people on the flight before ours said they heard a mayday call over the radio as they made their way over the mountain ranges. After getting back to Anchorage the first news we heard was about two planes that had crashed on the same day in the same area we were flying through. Whew!

Getting back to Anchorage on Sunday I was back in the office first thing on Monday for work. The only thing that kept me motivated for office work was knowing that I'd soon be in Margaret on my way to Homer with my coworkers for a weekend camping trip.

Photos from the airplane