PIREP Terry: Kaltag-Eagle Island-Unalakleet

Well, I knew it would happen eventually.

Hving flown the Iditarod for the last few years as a "Must do", the sight of all that snow and ice has finally spurred the UK's weather into producing a landscape (or should I say Snowscape) to make me feel right at home while flying the supply flights.
We have around 6 inches of snow at the present, with more on the way. Now, 6" may not seem a lot to those of us who manfully fly supply drops at this time of the year, but I can tell you it comes as a nasty shock when the preceding day looked like a scene from my usual flights as a TDS pilot around the Islands of the Caribbean!

However, I'd been given a secret supply drop by Dispatcher #1, and who was I to argue? So I prepped the Osprey and worked out my flight plan, kicked the tires and lit the fires. But first I had to make sure my crew members were familiar with the procedure for leaving the aircraft. We have a special door for rapid egress and ingress (that's going out and coming back in to the rest of my fellow Iditarod Heroes), and the snow was beginning to drift up against the special plexiglass entry/exit port (read Plastic swinging door) - my crew were complaining that they weren't going to leave while the snow was still falling unless they were fed very costly, rare cuts of exotic meats to sustain them against the growing cold.

So I fed the Cats, cleared the CatFlap and shoved 'em both out. Then I went back to my nice warm flightdeck and set off:

Kaltag - McGrath - Eagle Island - Unalakleet. Total flight time:1 Hour 7 minutes.

(on arrival at Eagle Island, I prepared myself to meet the old woman by
uncovering the couple of bottles of Crown that I'd found somewhere just
laying around, and stepped out of the aircraft. The old lady was very pleased to see the gifts, but told me that she'd really hoped that in my arriving aircraft would be Capt. Butler - "Such a _nice_ young man" she said with a growl in her voice and glint in her eye. - I off-loaded the 400lbs of food rather rapidly, and,making my excuses that I was urgently needed elsewhere, took off for PAUN and bodily safety. So, Hurry back to the Island Roger, the Old Lady is saving a bottle of crown for you)!!

Terry