De-icing the wings

I'm on my way back to NZ. Watching through the cabin window at the plane's wings being de-iced, before taking off from Fairbanks, was a rather surreal sight!

It's going to be a 'four flights' flying day for me, so I thought I'd blip about our last hours in Kaktovik; will be a longer blip than usual for me.

The last day there was fraught, being at the mercy of the elements. For our plane to fly we needed the wind gusts to be below 38 mph, plus another airport needed to be open for emergency landing. We were on standby and weather watch for 10 hours, with one of our extremely capable leaders even organising a flight for us with another airline. We'd already been bumped by the original airline the day before. Finally, after all day waiting we heard that the plane was coming for us, from Deadhorse. Bundled up with all our gear on, it was rushing out to the airport to sit and wait, only to receive an email saying Deadhorse was having fuel loading problems. So back to the Waldo Arms, a quick bite to eat, then heard that the pilot was in the cockpit, about to fly. Back to the windswept snowy airstrip and waiting anxiously for the plane to appear. Waiting and waiting. Was there something wrong, had he turned back, or even had something happened! The relief when those plane lights finally appeared through the darkness above Kaktovik was palpable. The plane had had a hard time battling towards us, against the winds.

We had a smooth enough flight in the Twin Otter back to Deadhorse, but the percussive strident banging of ice on the fuselage was unnerving. So good to step out into the icy tarmac once we'd landed.
And then we drove 5 hours down the Dalton Highway to Wiseman, arriving in the wee small hours. After 2.5 days waiting we'd finally managed to depart from Kaktovik - but we'd always remember it, yearning to return; an intriguing destination.