Alaskan Dinosaur Expedition

The Journey to Nuiqsut

Now I'm intrigued. The plane is about to take off, a small Frontier Flying Service plane. The briefing card in the seat pocket in front of me says that I'm in a Beechcraft N75W. The problem is the plane I'm on holds nine passengers, not the 15 shown on my card. So I have no idea what I'm flying on. I can feel every bump in the runway. And I must have really turned 40 on my last birthday, because the pilot and copilot look to me like they are collectively 40. But, being airborne, I have little to say about it now…

We are flying over the Brooks Range. Until these past several minutes it had just been a place on the map to me. By that I mean, how naïve I must have been. Given all the work that has been done in this range, there must still be a lot of geological exploration to be done. This place is enormous, with no sign of any human activity. There are no roads. No trails. Nothing, horizon to horizon. It's a wonderful sight to see…

We are clear of the range now. Therefore I am certainly above the Arctic Circle. In some ways, I feel the intense kind of excitement expressed by William Clark on seeing the Pacific Ocean in his perfectly succinct and famous entry; though of course my thoughts are, "Oh joy - Arctic in view!'' Even though that may not be his quote precisely, I think he'll forgive me.

Upon reaching the Prudhoe Bay airport:

This is a pretty nice facility, but the last thing I ever expected was to walk into an airport at the top of the world and hear ABBA playing over the airport stereo system. It kind of makes me want to scream.

We've had some bad weather, and we'll need a bigger plane to get through it. We should be taking off in a few minutes. It's now time to fly the last leg and start fieldwork. I find myself wondering what's going to happen in Nuiqsut. I have a mental image, based on a photo, of four government buildings.