Category: Personal Narrative

If you climb Wolverine Peak in the Chugach front range, you might see the airplane wreckage just below the upper ridge as it turns east and leads to the summit. But it’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. About 30 or so yards downhill from the rocky path, the weather-darkened, welded airframe blends in with the surrounding slate-gray rock and lichen. Any distinguishing paint or markings have long since been sand blasted away by the Williwaws that scream down the valleys to the east.

Our Piper Super Cub finally reached the northern end of Lake Clark, still frozen and white, but bleeding dark patches of rotten ice on a sunny, late April day. We flew over a bare-but-budding Alaskan landscape.