Alaska Wild in a Cessna 185

George Mandes

Monday, July 15, 2013 at 05:51 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

An adventurous couple flew two Cessna 185s into Alaska's remote Brooks Range for a Dall sheep hunting trip, navigating over 600 nautical miles of challenging terrain.
The expedition involved overcoming significant obstacles, including severe weather changes, turbulence, difficult landings on primitive strips, and an arduous high-altitude camp in fresh snow.
Although they did not harvest a Dall ram, the couple considered the trip a successful and memorable Alaskan adventure, rich with wildlife sightings and flying challenges.

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Last summer, my wife and I wanted to visit the Brooks Range in August to hunt Dall sheep. For those not familiar with it, the Brooks Range is a mountain range stretching about 700 miles from western Alaska across the state east to Canada’s Yukon Territory. From where we live in South Central Alaska, it is more than 600 nautical miles north of us, and just getting there, in a light airplane across central Alaska’s mountainous terrain, can at times be challenging. The month almost got away from us, but we finally saw a promising weather window in the last week of August.

Dawn Departure