Exploring the North Country: Not for the Faint of Heart
by Author and Filmmaker Walter Yates
Reincarnation. Were this possible, I would come back as an eagle. They soar above the mountaintops and drift over the rivers filled with salmon, from which they find their subsistence. I have watched as an eagle dipped down to catch a salmon, struggling to keep airborne with a fifteen-pound fish in its claws.
As a pilot, I tried my best to mimic the eagles as I flew over sites seldom seen by man. Starting in 1973, I began living my dream of exploring the North Country, first by small Piper airplane, and later by helicopter. I glided like an eagle over remote areas of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, sometimes even venturing north of the Arctic Circle. Can you imagine the sites I saw? Incredible wildlife, majestic scenery, abandoned ghost towns, and mining camps from long ago.
Although I piloted alone, I felt the presence of those hardy souls who had traversed the North Country on foot decades earlier, homesteading in such a desolate land, with only donkeys to carry their supplies. I flew over their old mining sites and now-crumbling shacks—ghost towns that had not seen a soul for over fifty years. I would sometimes set my helicopter down and explore these sites, never disturbing the ruins. I felt the ghostly eyes of the prospectors warning me not to disturb anything.
My childhood dream of exploring the vast North Country came from reading stories of those hardy souls who came before me. In fact, I felt guilty to be able to glide over the harsh terrain so easily with the aid of my aircraft. I thought of the many trials and tribulations those old-time prospectors and sourdoughs encountered on foot, struggling for weeks to cover the ground that I covered in minutes. I vowed to someday search for gold as they had.
So I did. I spent nearly ten years searching for that precious yellow metal all over Alaska and the Yukon Territory. It is said that there is more gold to be found in the ground than already has been found. And just think, those early prospectors did it all for gold worth only $35 per ounce. Today, it is worth over $1,600 per ounce.
Yes, I found gold. Not the mother lode, but enough to keep me interested. When you stop to clean out your sluice box, it’s like an Easter-egg hunt! If you are lucky, a few nuggets will appear, and lots of fine gold dust. I was living the life of the old timers and will never forget the thrill of a nugget showing up in my pan. The greatest find in my sluice box was a nugget that weighed thirteen ounces. That was the day I realized I was a true gold miner!
Although the years I spent in the North Country were some of the happiest and most fulfilling of my life, exploring the North did not come without its perils. In 1978, traveling home to Austin, Texas, after a gold prospecting trip, my helicopter crashed and burned in the harsh, muskeg wilderness of British Columbia. For fourteen desperate, painful days—with seven broken ribs and a crushed vertebra—I had to find a way to survive, praying that Canadian Search and Rescue would find me.
I survived the crash by sheer willpower, and a refusal to give up hope that I would be rescued. This was the biggest mental and physical challenge I’d ever faced. Four times, rescue planes passed right over me. Can you just imagine how a man could feel, lying there beside the wreckage, and see a rescue plane go by? They passed so close I could see the number on the plane, but they did not see me. Talk about the lows a man could sink to, knowing the rescue planes would probably never return again. I had to rely on my willpower, some scavenged wild cranberries, and one ill-fated frog to survive. Though I never gave up, I did accept the fact that I might die.
My thoughts went back to my family, my children, and my childhood; time began to fly by.
By the tenth day of my ordeal, I decided that if the rescue planes were ever to return, I must do something to help them find me. Somehow, in my severely weakened state, I found the strength to move the severed two-hundred-pound tail section of my helicopter to a clearing in the forest one hundred yards away. It took two exhausting, excruciating days to move the tail section, inch by inch. I feared my broken ribs might penetrate my internal organs, but it no longer mattered—this was my last chance. I refused to accept fate as it stared me in the face.
The unbearable effort saved my life. On the morning of the fourteenth day, against unbelievable odds, a rescue airplane returned and spotted the tail section in the clearing.
I have trouble explaining how I felt at the moment I realized I’d been found. I shouted out, “Thank you, God! I am saved! I am saved!” Tears flowed down my face, and the physical trauma I’d endured over the last two weeks hit me all at once. I slumped to the ground, limp and weak, with no power to move.
I was airlifted out of the forest and returned home to my loved ones to recover from my broken bones, trench foot, and hypothermia. My prayers were answered.
Shortly after I was allowed to leave the hospital, I bought another helicopter. Give up exploring? Good Lord, man. That’s my very life!
The gliding eagle still soars over the North Country, keeping watch. Yes, if I could come back as an eagle, I would be there with them.
To learn more about Walter Yates and his memoir Breakaway, visit yukonyates.com or find his book on Amazon.
SPECIAL!! The e-book version of Yates' memoir, Breakaway, will be available for .99 cents on Amazon and Barnes & Noble the week of January 22nd-29th, 2012.
All photos courtesy and copyright Walter Yates