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The Caribou Mountain incident
I had flown west through Merrill Pass on my way from Anchorage to the Stony River country. I needed to set up a tent camp on one of the small gravel bars along the Swift River, a tributary of the...
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11 questions for Alaska bush pilot Mort Mason
Here’s another in our series of Air Facts questions for aviation community members. Mort is a longtime Alaska bush pilot, now retired and living in Florida. Mort is the real deal when it comes to bush...
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Devil Canyon Christmas
During the month of December, I had to make several flights from Anchorage to Tanacross, Tok Junction, Eagle, and other villages in that part of Alaska near Canada’s back door. Business had kept me...
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New year’s adventure: clearing a runway with one snowshoe
It all happened deep down in the frigid winter lockup of 1957. Things had settled down somewhat after November’s blunder at Nugget Bench. My mother had come to Alaska for a short visit by then, and we...
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The rockets’ red glare: a July 4th landing to remember
I was at Lake Tahoe, California, at the time. My telephone rang and, when I answered it, the caller identified himself as John Robinson. He told me that he had heard that I had a few flying hours in...
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It wasn’t my fault – an unusual Alaska accident
I swear there are some days when a pilot ought to just stay the hell in bed. That was certainly the case with the pilot of an ill-fated Grumman amphibian G-21A, Registration Number N741, at Unalaska,...
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Really low on fuel in a thirsty Super Cub
Early in September of 1977, a fellow Alaska Registered Guide asked me to fly some avgas to a hunting camp he operated on the west side of the Alaska Range. On the morning of Wednesday, September 7, I...
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An unusual first solo, Alaska-style
It was on a Friday the Thirteenth, in April of 1956, that I soloed out at Lake Hood Seaplane Base in Anchorage, Alaska. I had waited for several months for this date, as I had, for some misguided...
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An upside down landing on a remote Alaska strip
I had already circled the snow-covered strip at Mills Creek two times. It looked as though the snow cover was somewhere between eight and twelve inches deep, but I wanted just one more look before I...
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The most inherently dangerous of all flying techniques
I’m opposed to “scud running.” That’s the art (certainly it’s not a science!) of VFR contact flying in clearly IFR (IMC), or worse, weather. Most of us who fly the Alaska bush have become masters at...
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Pilots really are made, not born… I’m proof
The canvas golf club bag I was carrying was pretty heavy for a lad as small as I was at that time. I was caddying at the local country club on weekends in order to pick up a little extra money. During...
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A white knuckle flight – even for an Alaska bush pilot
After having flown the Alaska bush country for more than 35 years, and racking up more than 18,000 hours of such foolishness, the mountains and almost consistently terrible weather had inured me to...
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Are you ready? Flying the Alaska bush
Editor’s Note: Mort Mason has been a popular Air Facts contributor for years, sharing his harrowing stories of flying in Alaska. He recently released a new book, What It’s Really Like: Flying the...
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Saying goodbye to a beloved airplane
The flight was supposed to be pretty much a routine trip, though not really a happy one. I was relocating my turbocharged 1984 Cessna TU206G amphibian from West Palm Beach, Florida, to St. Cloud,...
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A weekend on the beach – this time in a Super Cub during a blizzard
Oh, sure, I’ve seen my share of blizzards. Anyone who has lived in the Arctic or sub-Arctic for more than 15 minutes surely has. I’ve seen plenty of williwaws and Chinook winds, too. My first...
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Making an air drop from a Champ on floats – only in Alaska
It was on a sunny Tuesday, August 18th, back in 1957, that I was ready to set up a sheep hunting camp in the Chugach Mountains of the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage. These sheep, kin to the Rocky...
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Robbing two pieces of luck from my box of experience
I was really looking forward to this winter hunt for ptarmigan and snowshoe rabbits. Cold? You bet, at about -25 degrees F, but that’s pretty much what one quickly learns to expect of interior Alaska....
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The old, bold pilots of Alaska
We’ve all heard it, and most of us have said it: “There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” I’m here to tell you that such purported wisdom isn’t very wise at all. Not...
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Poor planning, poor choices, and poor airmanship
The following incident occurred deep down in the Alaska winter of the mid-fifties, during the last century. I just love saying that! In truth, it was back only as far as 1957, now more than 60 years...
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A Tri Pacer is not an Alaska bush plane
It was a really lousy Sunday morning, weather-wise, when our telephone rang with an alarming insistence. The caller was a tearful Peggy Brown, the wife of my good friend George Brown. A little tangent...
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