Leaving Tikigag: the flight from Point Hope to Barrow

As always happens, the time soon came when I would have to leave Point Hope and it came earlier than I wanted or would have planned - were it not for the Era schedule. Era is the only air carrier that links Point Hope and Barrow and they only fly twice a week - Tuesday and Thursday; $410 for a one-way ticket. This will give you an idea how expensive it came be to travel about the Arctic Slope.

I wanted to stay at least through the high school graduation on Friday but I needed to be in Barrow no later than Monday, so I had to go Thursday.

At nighttime before I left, I saw Jesse Jr. walking home. 

He and his brothers would now get their room back.

Many decades separate us, but Jesse and his brothers all felt like friends now.

On May 5, immediately after taking the picture of the Tikigaq Harpooner Three-Peaters, I barely caught a ride to the airport in the truck of a man who runs a little on-demand-cab service. If someone needs a ride to the airport, or anywhere else reached by the villages very limited road system, they can call and he will come and pick them up.

So Krystle called for me.

The cab was full of his family.

I thought I wrote down the names of everybody, including the dog, but I can't find them. Still, if you find yourself in Point Hope and you need a cab to the airport or someplace else, just ask anyone and they will direct you to the driver and then he and his family and his dog will come and pick you up and give you a ride and then when you ask how much he will answer, "whatever you want to pay."

Be as generous as is practical for you. His fares are not like those of a city cab driver, but come only sporadically - mostly when an airplane lands.

The cab driver's daughter, the little dog and the airplane. 

Once airborne, we passed over the Lisbourne, the last bumps of the Brooks Range, which themselves are the final northward extension of the Rocky Mountains, which come to an end just before they reach Point Hope and fall into the sea. 

Pans of ice floating in new ice forming below.

We landed for a brief stop in Point Lay, to drop off one passenger, plus this four-wheeler and to pick up a couple more passengers.

And here we are, landing in Barrow.

Some new readers who have come over as a result of the piece in the Lens blog of the New York Times may be feeling a little confused right now to find me flying in someone else's airplane instead of my own.

What the Times said about me being a bush pilot is true, all right, but for some reason they chose not to mention the part about how I crashed my airplane in Mentasta and, for now, anyway, must fly in other people's airplanes.

Originally, I had intended to blog my time this trip in Barrow pretty much the same as I did Point Hope and I have every bit as much material to work with. However, I had also intended to have the whole package complete at least three weeks ago and here I am, still muddling along.

Realistically, I do not have time to do a decent edit of the Barrow pictures right now, although in time I will, for other purposes than this blog. I think what I will do is, on Monday, after returning this blog to Wasilla over the weekend, I will just put up anywhere from one to half-a-dozen images from the Barrow portion and then get back to blogging the present, but only briefly most days, as I have tons I must do this summer, so, even though in my mind I have no higher priority than developing what this blog has begun, for now, I must put the huge bulk of my time elsewhere.

Thanks for traveling with me!

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Seabirds, passing by Tikigaq

As we wait on the ice edge for whales, seabirds come passing by - including these three murres and an eider.

Hoping to finally finish my Tikigiq series and move on to Barrow, I pulled out 26 pictures for today's post, but that took all the time I have. I must move on to other things.

So for today, these birds are all you get to see.

But the photos are now selected. Maybe I will run them all tomorrow, or maybe over two days, three days.

I am in the midst of a huge task that must be done soon and I really have no time to spare for this blog right now.

So don't be surprised if it takes me at least two more days to post those pictures - maybe three.

Jobe's goodbye to Lisa; Back to Tikigaq, where a bowhead passes and a boat goes into the water

The whole family and Charlie - who is family - came out yesterday to throw a belated Happy Mother's Day party for Margie, since she had been in Arizona on that date. As anyone who knows me would suspect, I took a good many photos of the kind I usually do when I am with my family - including many fun pictures of Kalib and Jobe.

The problem is, I in no way have time to edit and post those pictures, so I decided I would post just one. But which one? 

As I was loading my take into the computer through Lightroom, I suddenly experienced one of those little computer glitches that happen all too often. Lightroom ceased loading the pictures well before they had all been transfered and said, "I'm done, that's all, there is no more."

This was the final picture that Lightroom had loaded. So I decided to chose it. I then started over and made Lightroom download the pictures it had left behind the first time.

After the celebration, Lisa was the first to leave. She had to get back to Anchorage so that she could see her cats and her boyfriend. As she drove away, she waved goodbye to Jobe.

"Damnit, Auntie Lisa!" Jobe shouted after her. "Why do you have to leave so soon?"

And then off she drove.

Now, back to Tikigaq:

When I left off, we were returning to the Rock camp from the site where Isaac Killigvuk had just landed his bowhead, so I will restart there - on the journey back to camp.

As we travel, Rex Rock Jr. locks his eyes onto something a bit further out into the Chukchi, off portside.

Bowhead!

But it is far out and there are further preparations that must be made before the crew can hunt again.

Soon, they are back at camp. The umiak is in place.

Eiders fly by by the score, the hundreds, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands... over the season... millions.

Butch Lincoln makes a cell call from atop a perch of ice while Rex connects from the ice edge. I was off-network in Point Hope with my At&t plan and I could only connect from up on the ice, where Butch is, but could not send text from that spot.

Butch, who hails from Kotzebue, is a famous Alaska basketball star. He starred at Kotzebue High and then became the first Alaska Native to earn a basketball scholarship when he played for the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Butch is short like me, but was blessed with talent, desire and drive and successfully took on the tall guys.

The umiak, with harpoon and darting guns ready.

The landscape.

The migratory bird...

Ripley watches for a whale.

A seal pops up and checks out the boat and hunters.

A bowhead blows. 

Another bowhead comes. The boat is launched.

Hunters, in pursuit of the bowhead.

The hunters paddle into the reflected glare of the sun, but this was not the bowhead that would give itself to the crew. 

Even as his crew continues to paddle through the water in search of the whale, captain Rex Rock Sr. arrives on his snowmachine, bringing with him the new harpoon shaft that had been working on.

The crew returns to the ice.

Later, after the sun took a short dip below the northern horizon, I noticed the image of an old ice man with an icicle beard. 

Next up, belugas will come swimming by.

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Tikigaq: Journey to the Killigvuk whale

The snowmachine and sled ride depicted in my post of two days ago took us to the whale camp of Rex Rock, Sr., where we would transfer to the umiak for the trip to the whale taken by Isaac Killigvuk and crew - as soon as the harpoons and darting guns were made ready. The weapons would not be used on this trip, as a "cease fire" was in place until the Killigvuk whale was landed.

Just before we boarded the umiak, some belugas swam by.

This was the first time not only on the ice and at whale camp but certainly in an umiak for Al Sokaitis (left in white) and Mike Hajdukovich (right in black) of Challenge Life Alaska. The boat rocked a bit when we launched which caused Mike - who in his college days was one of UAF's 10 all-time lead scorer at basketball, to shout out in slight panic. Even when it rocks, an umiak is a very stable boat and there was no real danger that it would tip over.

When the hunters go after a bowhead, they paddle the umiak but this would be a long ride with no hunting be done, so the boat was powered by a small outboard motor.

In addition to his work with Challenge Life Alaska, Sokaitis is the head coach for the Post University men's basketball team in Waterbury, Connecticut. He has also coached at Western State College, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Southern Maine, and North Adams State College and he coached the Alaska Dream in the ABA for one season.

Eider ducks flew past as we cruised through the Chukchi.

That's Rex Rock, Jr. His father had things to do onshore, so Rex was in command.

We came upon a seal...

...and a male eider duck swimming.

A bowhead blew and then glided through the water not far off starboard.

Rex Rock, Jr., surveys his country. The Rocks have replaced the bearded seal skins that once covered their umiak with fibreglass.

Shorefast ice.

Another bowhead, in the distance, beyond the eiders.

Eiders over the ice.

In time, we reach the landing site. The bowhead is still in the water. The block and tackle have been attached to its tail. Isaac Killigvuk, the successful captain, is the second person to the right of the paddle. The man standing next to him in blue is Popsi Tingook, captain of the first Point Hope crew to land a whale this season.

Preparations to pull up the whale have been made. The skin-covered Killigvuk umiak is pulled up onto the ice.

Those present join together and pull and pull on the block and tackle, until the whale is pulled onto the ice. For a large whale, this process can take many hours, even a day. This is a small bowhead and comes up quickly.

The whale is landed. Isaac is joined by his wife, Sally. They are very happy to have this whale give them the honor of taking its flesh to feed to their community. They haveprayed for the whale. Of all the many sources of food natural to the Arctic - caribou, beluga, seals, walrus, ducks, geese, fish, berries and such, the bowhead is the most important in every way that one can imagine - food, nutrition, spirit, identity.

Year round, the activities of life focus first and most importantly upon the bowhead.

The flag of the Isaac Killigvuk crew.

We stayed for the early part of the butchering, but with the whale landed and the process of cutting and dividing it well underway, the hunt would soon begin again. So Rex Jr. took his boat back to the Rock camp and I followed.

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From a boat off Point Hope, a little less than one month ago

Finally, I did run all the pictures from my last trip to the Arctic into my Lightroom editor and began to prepare the series of pictures that I was unable to post while I was traveling. There are many pictures in that take to sort through and I also have a major project that I must get proof ready in less than two weeks, so I gave myself just two hours to do a bit of editing.

When I started, I decided that whereever I was at in the editing process, I would stop right there once I had been at it for two hours. This is the photo I reached, right at the two-hour mark. I took it in the umiak of Rex Rock, Sr.

Tomorrow morning, I will continue the editing process for one to two more hours and then I will stop again, so that I can get back to my project. Probably by sometime this weekend or maybe Monday I can actually start posting the series.