The Stalking Wolf

By Christopher Hooten

This story is inspired by true events...

Carl was an inexperienced pilot and the assignment he was given was beyond his abilities. He was to fly two young teenagers through Merrill Pass in the middle of a spine of tall mountains known as the majestic Alaska Range. Mistakes were made, fatal mistakes, and the unforgiving nat

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas Sisters Press, LLC
• Release date: Mar 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781952041730

Christopher Hooten

Christopher Hooten was born and raised in the Hill Country of Texas and worked in various media outlets including radio, television and newspapers. He served in news director positions in both radio and television and as a slot editor for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal while attending graduate school at Texas Tech University.Learning to fly at fourteen, Chris has spent most of his adult life in Alaska and as a "bush" pilot has accumulated thousands of hours of backcountry flying experience. His first children's book, Pasel and the Forbidden Garden, won the NABE Winter 2021Award for best juvenile fiction. Additional Pasel Rabbit stories for children are planned in the near future.Chris lives with his wife, Tracy, in a remote off-the-grid cabin in bush Alaska. Their nearest neighbors are two bald eagles, George and Gracie, who raise their eaglets in a massive nest fifty yards south of their cabin. Snowmachine and boat, seasonally, are their only mode of transportation to the cabin.

Book preview

Chapter 1

It was a misty day. Low clouds draped over Anchorage in a veil of grey. Mom was a slow driver, always fearful of the highway, and it had taken more than an hour to get to Merrill Field from the north side of Palmer. The forty-five mile drive had been uneventful with traffic light in the early morning hours. She decided I needed to eat a large breakfast before my flight so we pulled in at Peggy’s Restaurant and I stuffed on pancakes and over-easy eggs. Peggy’s crew knew how to fill your belly and it was crowded with men whose girths proved they ate there often. Peggy’s was filled with a mixture of sourdough types and others in coats and ties dressed like an office building was their destination.

We were to meet Carl, a friend of a friend of my Dad’s, who was a substitute pilot for a flight out to the rugged back country almost due west of Anchorage. My Dad is a big game guide and his hunting camp is located near Whitefish Lake on the western side of the mighty Alaska Range. Frankly, I didn’t like the look of the weather this morning but I kept my thoughts to myself. Mom was a skittish type and any mention would set off her worry alarms. And to cap it all off, I didn’t know anything about the designated pilot I was flying with this morning. I was positive my Dad didn’t know about the pilot change. We would be going through Merrill Pass, one of the trickiest passes to get through, especially with questionable weather. The pass entrance was littered with old carcasses of aircraft that had failed to make it through. I had been through the pass several times riding in the backseat of my Dad’s Piper PA-18 Super Cub. Dad I trusted. This Carl guy was another matter entirely.

While I was watching Alaska Aviation Weather last evening, presented nightly by the local public television station, I had taken a call from John, Dad’s best friend, and he told me Carl would be flying me out today. John ran a real estate firm and pressing matters had him tied up so he was a no-go. He was a great pilot, same as my Dad. I, of course, couldn’t disagree—and even if I had—it wouldn’t add up to much. I was going out to the camp to help Dad out and I knew, for certain, he was in need of help with a larger than normal number of hunters. Jim was his assistant guide yet eight hunters and two guides wasn’t a good ratio.

My job would be a camp swamper—a flunky would be a more accurate term. Dad did provide a cook, Millie, and she was excellent and served tasty food but she was kept busy trying to feed ten hungry men whose appetites doubled in the physically challenging environment of a hunting camp in bush Alaska. The fall air was cool and crisp and seemed to invigorate hunger—not counting the increased exercise required in hunting the ever-elusive and usually fast moving caribou. Even my appetite increased in Dad’s camp but that was from manual labor from dawn to dusk.

After breakfast, we drove around to the east entrance of the fenced Merrill Field. It is one of the busiest smaller airports in the world. Hundreds of flights daily launch from here going to distant points where no roads exist. Alaska is a monster of a state sporting more than 586,000 square miles and most of it difficult terrain. Few roads exist and with good reason. Mountains rule supreme here. There’s an almost constant roar this morning as aircraft are warming their engines, taxiing to the runways, and subsequently departing the airport. We drive around to the southwest end of the field and I watch airplanes, my favorite pastime, as they prep and ready themselves for another journey into a vast frontier appropriately known as The Last Frontier. The whole process is intriguing to me. Though the clouds hover over the field barely six to seven hundred feet above me, the activity hasn’t slowed on the ground. I see hunting rifles, packs, equipment of all sorts and sizes, being crammed into the tight spaces of various light aircraft. It’s hunting season and Alaskans take hunting seriously. Most of the cub-plane-types have large, oversized balloon tires for the bumpy terrain of the outback. These are the airplanes that venture where no airports exist. Like where my Dad is. The oversized tires, by the way, are called tundra tires and for good reason. They perform beautifully in rough ground conditions where rocks and hummocks are common.

My family home is next to our private airstrip with only two planes parked on it—both being my Dad’s. The strip is 1500 feet long and works perfect for a Super Cub. I keep the grass mowed on the airstrip during the summer months and last summer, after turning fourteen, I left the ground by myself piloting one of Dad’s cubs and soloed alone. Dad watched and clapped his hands when I taxied back to him as he waited. Our house is next to the strip so we tie the airplanes down within chunking distance of our back door. Sure makes it handy to go flying.

Mom pulled up to a metal hangar where we were supposed to park and a man walked around the side of the hangar and approached us. He was a younger fellow probably mid-thirties I’d guess and he introduced himself as Carl Gentry. He told Mom he would be the one to take me out to the hunting camp and explained John was sidelined with real estate closings. She certainly understood the necessity of closings as she, herself, sold real estate in the Palmer/Wasilla area. I picked up my pack out of the back seat of the car then shook hands with Carl. He was a smallish fellow with bright red hair and a tight grip. Getting a closer look, he was much younger than the mid-thirties, probably mid-twenties. I wondered if he’d ever been over Merrill Pass? I also wondered what kind of plane he flew. It had to be a cub of some sort with tundra tires. The landing strip at Dad’s hunting camp wasn’t smooth and it was quite short. It could be a tricky strip if the winds were up.

Mom smiled, gave me a peck on the cheek, and drove away. She had a house to show somewhere in the Big Lake area. Carl looked me over noticing, I suppose, that at fifteen, I was significantly larger than he was. We walked together around the backside of the hangar and I spotted the plane we would be riding in. It was a Piper PA-12. Dad called a PA-12 a nearly Super Cub for its performance, takeoff and landing distance. It couldn’t match the Super Cub in flying agility but it was close. They were a less expensive plane to buy and had to be highly modified to even get close to a cub’s performance. It had a wider backseat and slight angle differences in wing attachments but it was still a good, so-called, bush plane. Carl took me around the plane showing it off. It had Super Cub tail feathers, extended flaps, the Super Cub’s fuel system, heavy duty landing gear, and a borer prop. The borer prop is longer and thicker than a normal factory cub propeller. They also cost a couple of thousand bucks each. It was really a tricked out PA-12 and Carl had recently re-built it. It smelled new. I could tell he was really proud of it and I can’t blame him. It was showroom quality.

I’ve spent almost a year rebuilding this plane, he said proudly rubbing his fingers along its smooth fabric surface. I had the hardest time picking a color to paint it. I finally decided to go with forest green and cream trim. I really liked the looks of it. I would feel guilty about putting a drippy, bloody, moose meat sack inside it. My Dad’s planes were always dripping blood next to the tail wheel with the loads of drippy hunter’s meat he carried inside it.

Sometimes Dad labeled me as too nervous but it’s just a personality trait of mine, I guess. The PA-12 was, indeed, a beauty—it was the youthful pilot I worried about. So as I was thinking my spooky thoughts, I saw a young girl walk up from the other side of the hangar. She was a smallish girl leaning towards skinny carrying a knapsack of some sort. Carl seemed to be expecting her, which surprised me, and he quickly walked over and greeted her. I was putting my pack in the rear storage compartment of the PA-12 and didn’t hear their conversation. When I turned around, she was right beside me waiting to do the same with her knapsack. I was surprised by this action. Surely, this skinny little gal wasn’t coming along.

Eli, this is Lori, she’ll be riding along with us today, Carl said matter-of-factly.

I couldn’t believe my ears and didn’t say a word in reply. I stumbled back out of the way and let this skinny kid stash her knapsack in the cub with no help from me. What the heck, I thought, barely able to comprehend the situation. Honestly, my first thought was to just abandon my Dad’s request and simply not go. This would cause quite a backlash from my Dad but I seriously considered it anyway. I realize the PA-12 has a broader back seat capable of carrying two backseat passengers with ease but having this wisp of a girl along somehow offended me. Why, I don’t know, but it scratched me in a place that wasn’t itching. Was she some friend of Carl’s and wanted to ride out and back for the sake of sheer entertainment? Surely she wouldn’t be staying at my Dad’s hunting camp. That wasn’t possible, was it?

I stood beside the cub staring off into the distance while listening to the bustling activity of Merrill Field. My personal space of sitting solo in the cub’s back seat had now been invaded. I was to sit beside this little female and pretend to enjoy the ride. Sitting back there talking small talk about her finishing her eighth grade year in some large Anchorage junior high school and giggling about her intimate, silly friends had no appeal to me. I had no interest in small talk at the moment and especially with a little chick who didn’t have any business, whatsoever, in riding along. I was contemplating mutiny when Carl yelled for me to come on and climb in. This Lori girl was already inside sitting smugly, watching me, and tightly buckled up. And here I was to clamor in like everything was normal and with a brotherly smile crank up an intelligent conversation with this little gal—I don’t think so!

Carl looked at me with a quizzical expression as I stalled for a few moments. I was busy running flimsy excuses through my mind for why I decided not to come along. Perhaps Mom would understand but it was an entirely different matter with Dad. To him it was pure business and the best business decision was for me to arrive in camp and become the go-to gofer. I may just be a camp gofer but to Dad I would play an integral role. He would be highly perturbed by my refusal to fly to camp—and his being perturbed would have significantly more consequences than my being too perturbed to sit beside this skinny gal for the duration of the trip.

I paused a moment longer and, with some effort, consoled myself into slipping beside this little interloper for the two hour flight to my Dad’s camp. Carl checked our seat belt attachments and slipped into the front seat handing Lori and myself headsets so we could converse and listen in on his conversation with Merrill Tower. He immediately broke radio silence.

Merrill ground, this is November 5165 Foxtrot, ready for taxi to runway 270, Carl spoke into the mic.

Merrill ground control immediately answered. 65 Foxtrot clear to taxi. Contact Merrill tower at 118.5 before entering runway.

Roger, Carl said.