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There was plenty of flying to go around. Days were short in the middle of winter so the backlog of con bags grew rapidly. Over two thousand bags to go .. two airplanes carrying three bags per trip each ... months for us.
Now throw in some sh*t weather and lots of breakdowns.
Just when you thought things couldn't get worse ... it does.
It was like living in an aviation biosphere.
It was supposed to be a remote mining camp but a camp it was not. More on this later.
There were no roads.
Aviation was its life link.
If you braved the biting , stinging wind and the driven snow you could walk down the side of the airstrip , past the crashed hulks to a temporary hangar that housed a hovercraft. It was built in my home town in Australia.
Four huge turbo diesels propelled this Banshee wailing behmoth at a great rate of knots downstream to a drop off point down by the power station at the confluence of the Stikine and the Iskut. 30 bags at a time... wow!..nothing could compete with it. Nothing.
It scared the living sh*t out of any animal that dared live within its aural range of terror. I think it was the Native community who finally were rewarded by its withdrawal from active duty. It sure was an impressive beast.
But there it sat idled in its own hangar and cloaked in politics.