Getting Home

Life as a designated shit magnet rarely stays dull for any extended period of time. That little thought came to mind between sudden drops as my stomach lodged somewhere near my throat, as if my plane lurched off the edge of the world. Dirt and leaves floated up off the floor of the Piper Cub weightless magically suspend in midair. Then the body slam into the seat, crush my spine like the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center.

The blinding rain pounded the windshield and skylight overhead, producing a deafening noise and mixing with the smells of dust from the floor and hot air coming from the cabin heater. The strain of the seat belt straps jerked at my shoulders and across my waist to hold me, at least, somewhere near my seat. All part of the storm gripping my plane as tightly as my white-knuckled fingers gripped the control stick.

At sixty-six years old what purpose did I, Jake Aureola, serve in this life? A fleeting thought passed through my brain presumably to get a jump on what flashes before your eyes in the moment of death. I tried to wrestle the airplane into something close to level flight. Not knowing my purpose didn’t help much, and it only occurred to me as I contemplated a sudden and destructive end.

I glanced at the electrical panel again, located above my head and to the left, wondering if I dared to reach up to check the fuses and deciding once more, control of the airplane took priority. It could wait.

Thinking back on my life, I felt the closest to content or being in the right place while working for the Anchorage, Police Department years ago. Long before then, and many times since, I understood God had something for me to do. At the moment, he kept me busy trying to remain alive.

As the plane rolled to the right, I watched the Alaskan tundra pass by below my wing tip. Keeping the wings parallel to the ground I struggled against the storm something akin to maintaining balance standing in the center of a teeter-totter in a hurricane.

Just a few hours ago, I thought I was where I was supposed to be. I had plans of my own and God never made me privy to his. Being back in Alaska the fall of 2016 and flying with my buddy John was comforting thing, a feeling I was where I needed to be, and should have served as a warning.

I flew in the rain before, but rarely like this. The winds and turbulence in the clouds were familiar. The sound of the deluge pounding, smashed into the plane by the wind, and the crashing thunder drowned out the comforting drone of the engine. Lightning, God’s fireworks, an awesome wonder at a distance, is a frightening menace up close. Storms are a part of nature and, Mother Nature was one mean old . . ., well, not a lady.

When flying in a storm, it’s a very personal experience. A friend of mine, who had graduated with me from the academy in early 1983, flew 747s now for an air freight company, and he flew those giants around storms like this.

I was not flying in the coach seats of a 747 or even in the much smaller 737, the workhorse of the passenger airline industry, in Alaska. No, I sat in the pilot’s seat of what Alaskan bush pilots referred to as a “rag and tube” airplane, but legendary one, the Piper Super Cub. A two-seater, weighing less than eighteen hundred pounds, legally fully loaded. I was flying at less than fourteen hundred, and in this storm, it felt no more significant than a sparrow.

The plane lurched left like a car skidding out of control on an icy road. I stomped on the rudder peddle to bring back straight. And, like over-controlling a car, it skidded to the right. The plane moved helpless as insect trapped in a bottle floating over Niagara Falls. No control, I held on leaning and bracing against the forces of nature.

My gut rolled like a snake in my stomach, my body hinting this might be my last flight. The greasy sweat on my face wasn’t from the heat and not exactly fear either. I didn’t have much time for being scared, but from knowledge gained from National Transportation and Safety Bureau reports of pilots who met their end in such circumstances. Seems it’s never one thing that kills you.

How I came to be in this storm resulted from a combination of necessity and misjudgments. I camped with friends, moose hunting near Fourth of July Creek on the upper Yentna River ten miles north-northwest of Skwentna, Alaska. The weather was fine when we arrived and landed on a dried-up slough that served as our runway—a path through a sea of golden fall leaves hanging by threads from the willows, birch, and aspen trees carpeting the riverbanks in the area. We erected our camp above the flood line in what a couple of hundred years ago amounted to a sandbar in the river before it changed course. We pulled our three Cubs up close to camp.

Winds coming off Alaska’s highest peak were common. The mountain referred to locally as Denali, even though it was named Mount McKinley on all the maps. A recent presidential edict renamed it back to Denali. It had been a bit conflicting as an Alaskan-raised kid. I always thought of it by the Native name, translated roughly as The Great One and much more appropriate than McKinley, who, as president, never set foot in Alaska. A vocal critic of most everything the president did, as many fellow Alaskans were, the idea he could, on his whim, change the name infuriated people.

A wind-driven cloud blocked my view ahead and brought me back to the job at hand, forcing me farther west and closer to Mount Susitna. Desperately, I tried to stay nearer to Cook Inlet, to my left or east of me. There were stretches of beach and sandbars at the mouths of several rivers I could land on if I got any break in the storm. For now, I found myself many miles off course. Herded by forces of nature ever farther south and west.

The Denali winds come up fast and, at times, can last for days, sometimes a week or more, gusting over seventy miles an hour. I had been shown this spot thirty years before by my ex-wife’s dad and one of our better friends, and infamous Cub driver, known as Gator. On that trip, between six hunters, we had gotten three moose and plenty of meat for four families to last the winter.

On this trip, we landed at camp four days ago and no sooner settled than the wind began to pick up. By morning, it was blowing fifty to sixty miles per hour as registered on the plane’s airspeed indicator. As a precaution, we dug holes in the sandy soil and parked the big tundra tires in the holes facing into the wind, then covered the tires with sand. The wings were roped to drift logs left on the old riverbank. John and I propped the tail wheels up on a sawed-off tree trunk about eighteen inches high. By trimming the controls, nose down slightly, the force of the wind helped to hold the aircraft on the ground. If parked normally, the wind would have been forcing the wings up and causing tremendous strain on the tie-down ropes. Possibly damaging them.

In the storm, my eyes caught a glimpse of something I believed at first to be a hallucination but turned out to be a flight of Canadian geese also seeking some safety from the storm. The normal V-shaped pattern broke into every goose for themselves formation with patches of gray and white feathers. For a moment, I felt sorry for them and then realized they were more likely to survive than this Cub pilot. I pulled away giving them room to maneuver and avoiding a collision with what amounted to a sixteen-pound bowling ball with feathers.

For the last three days, we kept busy tying and retying the tent ropes to the five-man military surplus tent the wind loosened every few hours. Venturing out into the wind resulted in the sand blown off the slough dragged across your exposed skin like a sandblaster. My skin burned from thousands of tiny cuts leaving my hands and face raw.

We brought a heat stove for the tent, but the wind made it too dangerous to use. So, we were generally cold as temperatures hovered above freezing at night and climbed into the 50s in the daytime, which was pretty good for late September.

Earlier, before these storms came in, the wind had died down to thirty or forty miles per hour. We had been eating candy bars, energy bars, and cold Vienna sausages straight from the can. We started out with some jerky, but the first day cooped up in the tent we ate it all.

A break in the clouds, probably created between thunder cells, gave a quick view to the east, and I saw an oil platform breaking the waves out in Cook Inlet. I wasn’t sure which one, but I estimated it put me south of Drift River and Tyonek airstrips somewhere behind me in the middle of the last storm and would soon fall under this new one.

Sitting in the tent and listening to the wind, I considered the flight I needed to catch back to Virginia the next day. I arrived back in Alaska for a three week visit my daughter and her husband in Seward. Later, I met with John and an Alaska State Trooper friend of his up at John’s home near Willow. John retired from APD and rebuilt airplanes in his hangar during the long winter months. His hanger sat next to the house he owned in an airstrip community fittingly called Rustic Wilderness.

After my adventures in Mexico, I decided to get back into flying and found a guy with a Cub out near Culpepper, Virginia, who ran a tourist trap flying circus off his private airfield, and he gave lessons. With my license current, I passed my flight medical, and was legal to fly when I landed in Alaska. I spent a day or two making sandbar landings with John in the backseat on the Susitna and Yentna Rivers getting back some of the skills I possessed 20 years ago.

I believe flying is about as much fun as a guy can with clothes on. When I sold my Super Cub before leaving Alaska, it felt like losing a good friend to cancer. You eventually learn to get along, but the pain never goes away. My ex always believed I gave more thought and comfort to my plane than I did to her. If true, I am seriously sorry, but I think she exaggerated, a little.

The gap between storms passed, and the adrenaline rush began wearing off at a bad time. My shoulder ached, butt numb, and there was an aggravating little cramp in the back of my leg, but no way to stretch or rest. If the storm didn’t get me, exhaustion might. Feeling like a punch-drunk boxer eleven rounds into a twelve-round fight and I realized I’m going to lose.

John and his Trooper friend planned a hunting trip, bought me an out of state hunting license, and insisted I come along. John recently finished a rebuild on a Cub, and by coming along, we could fly in enough supplies in one trip to make the stay comfortable. Besides, if we did shoot a moose, it would make for fewer trips coming back. The flying was a great way to bribe me into going along.

In the fading light I moved ever closer to Sleeping Lady, the name locals called Mount Susitna, and could no longer see over or around her, as my visibility was limited to what I could make out through the right-side window and straight down. A view the ground often came as the swirling winds coming out of the storms tried to roll the plane onto its back. Several times I thought the storm would tear the wings off, but Mr. Piper designed an incredibly strong plane. I began to appreciate how it gained such a well-deserved reputation.

I once believed my moose hunting days were far behind me, so I had been as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve at John’s invitation. Most hunting trips turn out to be camping trips, and there was little expectation of getting a moose. John and Dan, his Trooper pal, set up the tent, cut firewood, and stashed extra fuel while I visited in Seward, so our personal gear and food were most of what we hauled in with us.

We spent three days of forced captivity filled with complaints about the weather and war stories going over our exploits as the department shit magnets. I left APD after ten and a half years, but John had stayed on retiring as a Lieutenant ten years later. Dan was still active with the Troopers and twenty years younger than us. He was a big, strapping, blond-haired kid standing well over six feet and easily tipped the scales at 225 pounds, with no fat on him I could detect. We took a vote and decided two to one Dan would be the packer if we got a moose.

My eyes were straining and watering, trying to see through the rain, and my ears ached from the constant roar as the storm assaulted the body of the small craft. The incessant jerking motion was like being beaten by Mike Tyson. I began to look forward to the crash.

We had run out of stories and jokes, and I started getting worried about catching my flight out of Anchorage. When I noticed the wind died down some, I thought it was possible to fly to John’s house, pick up the rental car, and get to Anchorage. Thinking about getting home turned out to be my first mistake. We all carried cell phones but no service from where we were. With no way to let anyone know I intended to head back until I was airborne.

Dan and John helped get the plane loaded with gear, holding out on most of the food because they were uncertain how long they expected to stay. We dug out the tires, then they held on to the tie-down ropes to help hold the wings down in the gusty wind as I taxied to the slough. The wind down the slough wasn’t too bad, but you could see the bending tree tops 40 feet above us. When the wind started, there was a blizzard of golden leaves, but after three days, we figured most of them were nearing Seattle by now.

After John secured the rifle I borrowed in the scabbard on the right-wing strut, I firewalled the engine. I felt the tail wheel liftoff, and the Cub rolled about fifty feet when a sharp gust of wind popped me off the ground. As I cleared the treetops, I turned slightly left into the wind with a head-on view of the south slope of Denali in front of me. The wind blew long wisps of white powder streaming off the snow-covered pink granite cliffs. I climbed like an elevator for about a thousand feet without moving forward at all. The spot I took off from was still directly below me. As I dropped off the flaps and trimmed up the plane, I reduced power to cruise speed. I was indicating about seventy-five miles per hour, and the camp remained below me. I banked to the right, towards Willow, and shot away like a feather in the wind.

My old instructors told me to keep my head facing forward, hands on the controls because turning your head and becoming disoriented or losing control of the airplane could kill you in seconds. Judging my height above ground in the rolling terrain would have been easy in clear, calm weather. Since I was catching glimpses of the ground from the corner of my right eye, I was guessing it to be about eight hundred feet down. For a Cub caught in a spin that was less than two turns, you needed one and a half to recover. The harness jammed my aching shoulders as the plane dipped, cutting that distance in half, and then in only a few seconds, as I resisted pulling back on the stick, I awaited the elevator ride back to the top.

That takeoff from camp should have been a warning because, as I lined up on a Willow heading, I could see a storm building, and it was moving from Willow northwest towards Talkeetna. I had turned on the radio before taking off, and I went to call in a pop-up flight plan and decided to change my destination to Birchwood Airport. A place where I could get someone to pick me up and where I could leave John’s plane, but the radio didn’t respond. Checking, I saw the radio and the panel were dark. The breakers and fuses were up in the wing root on the left, above my head.

With the turbulence of the wind, I could not take my thoughts away from driving the airplane. I decided the radio was no big deal. As soon as I got some smoother air I could study the panel with the breakers and get it started, or I would dig out the cell phone in my backpack in the back seat. My second mistake.

Not making any difference now as those were in the past and at the moment, I strained my eyes trying to see past the rain but judged my ground clearance by my view out of the right side of the plane. To my left, the clouds and rain were a solid wall all the way to the ground. I was flying almost entirely by reaction. The storm turned me right, I turned back left. A downdraft would take me down, and I would climb back up and so on. I kept returning to how I got into this mess.

Unable to get in at Rustic Wilderness, I adjusted my flight path to due east by the magnetic compass and, watching the landmarks I recently become reacquainted with. I saw the big bend in the Yentna River, on course for Birchwood. I knew a low-pressure area wouldn’t be far behind a squall line moving along the west side of the Chugach Range, and one thunderstorm seemed to be starting after another, extremely unusual this time of year. They popped up and trained to the northwest, cutting me off from the east side of Knik Arm and Cook Inlet. I decided to turn south and try and reach an airstrip at Drift River run by the oil companies supporting operations on the oil platforms in Cook Inlet, or maybe I might make Tyonek Village airstrip. It was a Native village west of Anchorage with a good airstrip. Both airports are closed to private planes, but in an emergency, you could land anywhere with enough room to pull it off, and this qualified as an emergency.

I planned to wait out the weather there and make a quick trip to Lake Hood and still make my flight. My third mistake. Looking back, I should have found the first sand bar and grounded me and the airplane where cell phone service existed. Instead, I figured to land at Lake Hood and have friends or family to return the rental car, and John could pick up his airplane in Anchorage when he got a chance.

Turning further south and drifting west, I saw the Alaska Range to the west and north socked in with clouds. The storms moved in on both sides of me blocking out the sunlight and getting darker fast. I hoped to find an airstrip, but the turbulence made it difficult to keep control of the plane. I sensed the wings bending and heard, at times, the tubing groan as the airframe flexed with the sudden change from downdrafts to updrafts. The clouds built up over Mount Susitna, and the line of storms were across Cook Inlet.

As the storms surrounded me, I aimed the plane down to a lower altitude hoping to find a sandbar when thunderclouds blocked the remaining light and night came in seconds, and even more rain. I wondered if it were possible to drown in midair.

The dark made seeing the ground, well anything, impossible. It kept me fighting to keep the plane level and maintain airspeed. The only question remaining, where I would crash. Looking around for any path not as bad as where I was, I pushed west and flew along the eastern slope of Sleeping Lady occasionally visible in the frequent flashes of lightning. I learned, in this kind of storm, there is a spot near the base of the mountain where the air is pushed upslope and gave a little visibility and some calmer air. Not sure of the truth of that information, but if true over to my left a little it had to be hell squared.

I took off with full tanks of fuel, and it equates to about six hours of flying at cruise speed. I expected a forty-minute flight. I now well into two hours and well south and west of where I wanted to be. Due to many direction changes, dodging around thunderheads fuel would be an issue soon. In the darkness, I lost sight of the mountain. I concentrated on needle and ball, and airspeed: basic instrument flying. I held a course on the compass I hoped would keep me east of the mountain and tried to use the lessons I learned nearly thirty years ago to keep the plane airborne.

The average pilot lasts only minutes after losing bearings and not trusting the gauges. With no artificial horizon because I lost electrical power to the panel. John, an Air Force vet, installed a battery-powered red light I reached with my left hand and turn on, so I could see my instruments. In this storm, it took all my efforts to keep them in range, but flying blind, I also kept an eye on the altimeter. I calculated my position somewhere south of Mount Susitna, with no idea exactly where, but I knew the area started to gain elevation. Climbing remained out of the question, but at this low altitude, it was only a matter of time before I found solid ground.

“Flying is easy and never kills anyone,” the instructors said. “It’s the sudden stop that kills you.” I prayed and explained to God I needed to tell my wife goodbye. Yes, you pulled my butt out of the fire in Mexico, but please don’t make this my last flight. The cabin shrank to an eighteen-inch circle of red light on the control panel.

I saw a flash of something pass the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t look for fear I would lose control. Then, ahead and to my right, a distant flash of lightning revealed weird-shaped clouds whipping around my Cub. Too late I realized they weren’t clouds but instead trees!

My right wing stopped as if grabbed by a giant hand as my head and body shifted violently to the left side of the cabin, but she fought loose. I regained level flight only to slam the left wing hard into a tree. The plane swung hard that way and the sensation reminded me of the Batman ride at Six Flags being jerked from one side to the other as you suddenly change directions, and momentum drove my head into the door-side window.

Chapter Two...

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