Well, another season of "Flying Wild Alaska" -- the Discovery Channel's reality TV show about Bush pilots working for Era Alaska in some of the most remote parts of the Last Frontier -- has come and gone.
This second season had more storylines than the first, with Jim Tweto, Era COO, keeping tabs on a group of mountain climbers scaling an unnamed rock face in the Arrigetch Peaks, his daughter Ariel Tweto buckling down to pursue her private pilot license, and several deliveries to the winter-only sea ice runway at Little Diomede.
But the final episode of the second season featured more beginnings than endings: one pilot worked on upgrading his aircraft; Ariel took her first solo, a big step in earning her license; and other, long-term missions go uncompleted.
It's fitting that storylines beginning here don't end because that reflects the life of an Alaska Bush pilot -- a continuing struggle to do the job, to drop off passengers and pick up cargo while showing up every day, not knowing what's coming next.
We the viewers don't know what's coming next either. By the time the first season ended, the show had already been renewed for a second. There's been no such announcement yet this year, so this may be the last "Flying Wild Alaska" that we get to see if it isn't picked up for a third season.
With that, the finale.
Gear down, fired up
It's early summer in Interior Alaska, and that means several forest fires are blasting the area. Cue Era Alaska and its role in delivering extra help to fight the massive fires, which have already annihilated 230 acres.
Tony Marchini explains the role of the smokejumpers -- firefighters who parachute into areas where the fires are small, trying to snuff them out before they grow or mitigate their spread -- as footage of the firefighters leaping from planes plays.
Jim Tweto's working with forestry and the Bureau of Land Management to deliver extra help to Fairbanks.
"There's some big fires around Fairbanks, so we've been having a 1900 come in to help them out," Jim says. The Beechcraft 1900 is a 19-passenger aircraft they've been using to shuttle help to Alaska's second-largest city.
Era pilots Doug Stewart and Nick Stone handle the plane delivering firefighters to Fairbanks from Galena. After dropping their passengers and getting back in the air, they notice their landing gear warning light is down -- which means the gear isn't retracting as it should.
"Whenever you have a gear malfunction, it's better to just leave it down than troubleshoot it while you're flying," Stewart says.
They decide to return to Nome, but flying with the gear down will cut their speed in half. The landing is also going to be tricky, since they're not sure the gear is locked into the proper position or could fold underneath them as they touch down. "I really don't feel like having a gear-up landing, not today," Stewart says.
Is any day a good day for a gear-up landing?
Despite the worry, they manage to get on the ground just fine and have the aircraft towed into a hangar.
Once there, the mechanics check out the aircraft, jacking it up and raising and lowering the landing gear. The gear's fully retracting, but the light in the cockpit remains on.
Turns out the problem was a simple one -- the switch that detects when the landing gear is fully up has malfunctioned. After a replacement is installed, Stewart and Stone head back out, to finish what they've started.
Dead ends and U-turns
In Palmer, John Ponts -- until recently a Cessna 207 pilot based in Unalakleet -- is getting ready to take a run in the aircraft he hopes to qualify to fly next for Era, the Cessna 208 Caravan. It's a larger plane, flying busier routes than the runs out of Unalakleet, so he must be qualified to fly the aircraft.
Helping him is Bethel-based pilot John Dronenberg, a 208 veteran. They're getting ready to fly through Merrill Pass, named for famous Alaska aviator Russell Merrill, who is also the namesake for Anchorage's Merrill Field airport.
It's a new route for Ponts, and they sit down to go over the charts and plan their flight. After a while, Ponts is ready. "I'm totally unprepared to sit here anymore," he says. "Let's get the hell out of here."
They go outside to do a walkaround, and Dronenberg subtly messes with the plane to test Ponts' awareness. He opens a window, which Ponts catches. Ponts keeps wondering where Dronenberg is going off to, worried about what he's messing with.
It's strange to see Ponts so out of his element, being trained on something unfamiliar to him. Usually, he's supremely confident in his abilities.
Finally, they hop into the cockpit and Ponts taxis toward the runway after saying all the systems look good. "Maybe," Dronenberg says with a smile. The fuel gauges are sitting on empty, and Ponts hasn't noticed.
Finally, as they're getting prepared to take off, Ponts sees the low fuel levels, the result of Dronenberg interfering with the gauges' circuit breakers. He aborts the takeoff, and Dronenberg congratulates him on the catch.
"With new airplanes, you're overwhelmed with everything that's going on, and you're just trying to fly the airplane," Ponts says. "You don't know where all the instruments are and you don't have the muscle memory for all the switches and gauges and all that."
They eventually get off the ground and into the midst of Merrill Pass, surrounded on all sides by mountains and canyons, with Ponts unsure which way he needs to turn to get through safely. They're flying lower than necessary to simulate low cloud cover, despite the clear weather. The idea is to avoid getting into a situation in the tricky canyons and smaller passes that come off of Merrill Pass.
Especially worth avoiding are the boxed-out canyons, aviation's equivalent of a dead end. To get out of a boxed-out canyon in low cloud cover, a pilot has to either pull a U-turn, risking collision with the canyon walls, or pull up at the dead end, risking a stall if the climb is too steep.
Ponts finds himself in one of these canyons, but fortunately it's wide enough to turn around without too much of a problem.
"It's really easy to choose the wrong one," Dronenberg says. "Really, really easy."
Ponts checks his chart and asks Dronenberg for help.
"Is that the pass?" he asks.
"I dunno," Dronenberg lies. It would be even harder during the winter months, I imagine, as any telling rock features would be lost in a sea of solid, indistinct white snow.
Eventually, Ponts finds the correct route and they touch down safely back in Bethel.
Ariel takes a solo
When Ponts left Unalakleet, Ariel lost her flight instructor a good portion into her pilot's training. To compensate, Era pilot and Unalakleet native Luke Hickerson, a lead pilot based in Barrow, flies down to do some training with Ariel.
Ariel's had her fair share of setbacks, but she's improved noticeably in her time in the cockpit. She still tends to forget certain tasks, seemingly overwhelmed by the sheer number of things to remember. She's approaching the time for her first solo, unaccompanied flight, and Luke is there to refine some of her skills.
"The decision to let Ariel solo is not one to be taken lightly," Luke says.
They don't waste any time, heading out to do some touch and goes. Ariel dips the right wing at takeoff, and the first landing is a little rough, but Luke gives her some pointers and she nails the next couple of runs. Luke seems to be a better teacher than Ponts, who would get frustrated with Ariel, but Luke is inheriting Ariel when she's further along in her training.
"This is my chance to prove to Luke that I'm ready to solo," Ariel says. "I have to be 100 percent confident and 100 percent sure of what I'm doing in the airplane. If I make a mistake, it's over."
Luke must think she's ready, because the next time they go out to fly, he won't get in.
"You're not coming?" Ariel asks.
"I'm not coming on this one," Luke says. "You're on your own." And just like that, Ariel's about to take her first solo flight.
She runs through her checklists and taxis down the runway. Just then, Ferno, Ariel's mother, pulls up with Era pilot Ben Pedersen in a truck.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" She asks Luke.
She doesn't seem to happy that Ariel's going to be taking her first solo, but they watch her take off and it's smooth as any she's done, as is her first landing. She similarly nails the second touch and go.
As she's looping back around for her final touchdown, the wind suddenly shifts direction and kicks up to a gusty 27 mph. Now even Luke looks nervous, and Ariel feels it in the air.
"Woah, bumpy," she says.
"This is kind of scary," Ferno says. "She's gonna try to make a landing in this crosswind, huh?"
It wouldn't seem Ariel has much choice. She's forced to do a goaround when the wind blows her way to the right of the runway, and she loops back around to reassess her approach.
She goes for it.
Ariel is actually crabbing it in, turning the plane into the wind so as not to be blown too far off course. The trick is to straighten out at the last minute, bringing the plane in straight. Otherwise, Luke tells us, the plane could easily flip over.
Ariel winces as the plane dips suddenly as she gets within a few feet of the runway. The plane lands hard, but Ariel turns it at the last second -- she's had worse landings in better conditions. Ferno and Luke shake hands and Ferno appears to be shaking all over with relief.
Ariel taxis to a stop and hops out.
"I finally did it!" she cries with her arms outstretched.
"Back in the terminal she recounts her first solo flying story to Jim and Luke, and they both laugh at her greenhorn nerves. They cut off her shirttails, a common tradition for a new pilot completing their first solo flight. It makes Ariel the final member of the Tweto family to complete a solo.
"We end up with what we work for, and it's nice to see that my girls have dreams and they go for it," Ferno says. "Scary as it is."
"We made a choice to come out here and live in the Bush," Jim says, "and where else can you go and do these things that most people can only read about in a book?"
"We're one flying family."
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com