March 1, 2021 snowing, snowing, snowing

The weather app shows visibility in Anchorage at 1426.7 meters, and McGrath at 3 miles. Not good enough. It must be at least a mile in both Anchorage and McGrath simultaneously or the little planes don’t fly. So we wait. In the tiny shed of a terminal. There are 6 of us, plus the pilot and one helper. The pilot is Mike Reeve, owner of Reeve airlines. The plane waiting in the hangar is a shiny King Air that normally seats 10 passengers, but on this trip, 4 seats have been removed. Three of the passengers weigh over 250 pounds, precluding the normal passenger load. From around 1:00 until 3:15 the pilot monitors the weather. Suddenly, visibility is 1.1 miles in both places, and we quickly board and race down the runway. For the next 20 minutes visibility is near zero as we climb just over 19,000 feet where the sun appears. Thirty minutes later the process is reversed until McGrath appears with just 3,000 feet of descent remaining. In the terminal Deb stands beneath the wolverine, smiling brightly. I see good times ahead.

By Terry Miller