Land & LIVE Story


My Palma Bay, Alaska


Plan for the worst and watch out for bears. By Trever Walker


M


Y COMPANY, WINCO POWERLINE SERVICES, was recently awarded a small job in Alaska. Getting there was no small feat. Getting back, it turns out, was a much larger feat.


Preparation As the pilot in command on this trip, I spent weeks preparing— setting up my eAPIS and DTOPS accounts with US Customs and Border Protection and filing a firearms declaration with the Canada Border Services Agency, to name just a few things on my to-do list. I was getting acronyms thrown at me that I had never


40 ROTOR SEPTEMBER 2023


heard of in my 28-year career as a helicopter pilot. Next step was survival gear. I thought long and hard about


what I and one passenger would need if we ended up stuck somewhere. On Jul. 13, 2023, my coworker and I loaded up near-max gross


weight and departed Oregon’s Aurora State Airport (KUAO) for Alaska. We made it to Anchorage in two days’ time. Te weather was beautiful. We had timed the brief Alaskan summer perfectly. On the way up, I noticed that we were not receiving the SiriusXM Aviation channel, but we were using ForeFlight extensively for


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