PIREP Snowboss: Kaltag to Eagle Island

I had 8-food bags to take to Eagle Island, and my plan was to take it in a C182, that was laying around Kaltag doing nothing. As I was looking over the C182 for any nesting birds I was approached by and old gentleman looking to be a little older than Ole Snowboss. He introduced himself as Eskimo George, and someone had told him that I was flying to Eagle Island, and he would pay me to ride along. I told him I was not going to Eagle Island, I was heading to Las Vegas. Well Ole George looked at the C182 and then gave me a puzzled look. I then laughed and told him that I was joking and that I was heading to Eagle Island. He said the ole lady, he called her Sadie, was expecting him to help her with checkpoint activities, and that he had 300# of food stuff that needed to go. With the bulk of the loaded I figured I needed to use my PC-12, but I wasn't sure it could handle the short runway as I am a little rusty on flying the PC-12, but I decided to give it a try. A couple locals helped load our aircraft, and soon I had the fire burning in the turbine, and taxied out from the ramp and turned onto the runway, dropped flaps-1 and took off from the intersection of the taxiway, and this makes runway-3 pretty short, but we were airborne with runway left over. I pulled power back and climbed to our cruising altitude of 2,000 feet and followed the mighty Yukon River south to Eagle Island. What a pretty day it was, clear skies all around us. My planned approach was over the river to the runway, then if I couldn't stop in time I would end up in the snow, lot's better than going into the river. Shortly the island came in view and I descended down to 1,000 feet and entered a left downwind. I normally drop the gear before using flaps. I turned base and set flaps-1, this bird doesn't like to slow down real well. I turned final, and set flaps-2, and coming a cross the river I set full flaps, and was still going about 90-knots. As I looked at that short runway, I thought to myself, this may not be fun. I kept it headed to the runway and touched down right at the start of the runway, and reversed the props, added a little brake, and to my surprise we had some runway left. I wasn't as rusty as I thought.

I didn't spend much time there, but Sadie was sure glad to see her old friend Eskimo George, and didn't pay much attention to me, and I got out of there without giving up any of my Crown stash. I taxied back towards the river and turned around for a north departure. Once lined up I looked down the runway and said to myself, hell a Navy Aircraft Carrier has more runway than this. I dropped flaps-1, held the brakes and added power, then feet off brakes and we shot down the strip like a tom cat with his tail on fire, and we took off with a little runway to spare. Back up to 2,000 feet with the mighty Yukon River under me. Short flight, but an interesting one. The PC-12, really showed what it is made of. The PC-12, is also known as a rich mans SUV.

BTW...I didn't take any of Eskimo George's money, I enjoyed his company.

Snowboss, in Kaltag