.
When we had first arrived they showed us to our quarters.
There were four beds in shacks with a bathroom ...that is all.
Diesel heated....by the sweat of yer own balls.... flown in all day.
You were a "contractor" ...... second class. We were in no union.
The miners had their own room with phone and internet connection. And access to a library, pool room and a bar in a chalet ... a huge rock fireplace ... a french lady bartender .....
They were clean , well behaved and self policed. Well paid too.
The dining room was a thing of beauty .. the walls of which were adorned with the most exquisite airborne photographs known to mankind. By Captain Grant Webb. Killed in action , Bronson creek... a DC3 .... on his last flight , and he was heading home.
It is rumoured that his last words were , "Watch this!."
Even the more senior of the contractors, Hawkair , did not enjoy the priveledge of the single rooms in the main building.
We were knee deep in snow around the huts , most of the time. Early darkness , cold brutal wind and exhaustion drove us into these huts to collapse onto the bunk and regain enough energy to reach under the cot for the Scotch bottle. Not much had to be said to recount how tough it had been that day, Frustration was the order of the day.Whining ? Never .
Our new wing covers didn't fit properly and flapped wildly all night. The Herman Nelson crapped out. Runups weren't going well , no oil pressure on the guage. Burned out winch. Snow . Wind , frozen levers. We had brought this old girl from down South where the climate was moist and now it was twenty below.
The owner of the company was there at the beginning. Mike was his name. The dimensions of his cranium qualified him to be the Germanic man he was. Stubborn , tough , brilliant with his hands .. and mind too.
Then we met our future engineer. He was already in the camp . He was on the DC4 that crashed and had made it to shore along with the co-pilot , Dan.
His eyes were too close together and he drank too much. He had lots of DC3 and DC4 experience and immediately started solving some of our problems. We learned lots from him as in the case of the oil pressure guages. The oil was too cold and thick to make its way up to the guage through a thin line. The guage was unhooked and thin hydraulic oil was injected therein. Never had a problem with that again.
He hung about with the Bristol crew most of the time.
He was seen at closing time every night clutching three rum'n'cokes .. pig-eyed.
We hadn't flown for days. Heavy snow . We would shower and trudge to the mess hall. Huge , clean . cozy ... and the best food imaginable. Then to the Chalet with its huge fireplace and a cute lady bar manager. The miners were very well behaved and policed themselves. There was always an underlying tension in the bar between our crew and the Bristol guys.
But generally respectful of each other ... yes ..they had lots of talent .. so did we. Generally we remained in groups.
It was the very weather that kept us grounded that made maintainence a brutally painful task. We had no choice. Captains did not lounge about the mess hall.
There was always something to do.
Often during the day, especially if the wind died a little , we would drive down the road parrallel to the runway , down hill to the Iskut. To the windsock ....
Rock solid ..40 knots .. bareley a flicker .. its open gaping mouth facing up the Iskut .. up to the plateau upon which was the airstrip at Bob Quinn Lake , 2000 feet above sea level. The cold East winds up on the plateau all gathered together and sped up as they squeezed themselves into the steep sided , narrowing Iskut on their rush to the sea to meet the savage warm wet blasts of the Pacific.... freezing rain downstream. Turbulence ...
The truck trembled in the blast.
"Did you see that?" it had dropped a little .. maybe five knots.
We were too eager. Chill out ..
I could see that you had to have whiskers to fly here.
.
The outline of another truck appears in the driven snow ... they sit and watch the windsock too . It still doesn't move.
It is the Bristol crew... hunched over their coffees ...
They too , want to aviate.
But we drive back up to the ever humming camp .
There was an ingenious device for use by all that made engine maintainence cozier .. called a nose hangar. It was built by a bloke named Speers , he later went on to be a Westjet Captain .. he flew DC4 back then.
With corrugated iron bolted onto an angle iron frame it could be wheeled up to and surround an engine and even provide a catwalk. A curtain then zipped up and a Herman Nelson could be plugged in for comfy warmth.
It got to be a favourite meeting place.. like a secret society ...cozy. Mike had designed and built a tray system with rollers and a huge winch to lug the 3000 lb bags up the hill of the Super DC3.
We were eager to try it. And the diesel tank system too .. all plumbed , waiting for the inaugral flight.
And we were to be tested , yet ,too.
We wandered about , checking breakers for all the heaters plugged in ...around batteries , oil tanks and the cylinders.
The huge Bristol was all rugged up too.
Wing and tail covers were a beast to remove and put on in a wind.
They wandered aimlessly too. .the Bristol Crew.
It had been a week now. No let up.
The cooks would now start quizzing us as to the likelihood of a grocery trip .. running low, they say.
The miners quizzed us on the likelihood of a trip. They were running short of explosives.
Crew change day approached for the miners. Now things get interesting and tense. The miners want to go home , really bad. I understand how they feel , its been a long shift.
The weather is hopeless.....people wandering the camp start looking upwards .. at nothing ...just leaden skies.
If a rare blue hole above scurried by someone would run into the mess exclaiming, "Through to the blue .... its opening up"
It didn't.Even if we did take off , Wrangel was pooched .. freezing rain , thirty knot crosswind.
A mere sixty mile trip could subject you to thirty below temperature at departure , through a cauldron of turbulence , warming temperatures , freezing rain , slush , snow pellets , fog.
Only to do the reverse and take off in rain and fly a wet airplane into thirty below again ..
Yet we wanted to fly.