Northern Exposure: Indulging an Obsession With Alaska

With biking, hiking, fishing, driving, paddling, one can never be bored in the 49th state.

Sam Weigel

Tuesday, April 08, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

An autumn excursion up the Knik River Valley provides a spectacular sampling of Alaska’s marvels. [Courtesy: Sam Weigel]

Key Takeaways:

The author's personal quest to fly his Stinson 108 to Alaska was initially thwarted by engine failure, postponing his ambitious journey to 2025.
As an airline captain, he frequently flies to Alaska for work, where he immerses himself in the state's vibrant summer energy and pervasive aviation scene during layovers.
He utilized these layovers to rent a Cessna 172, successfully undertaking local scenic flights to destinations like Talkeetna and the Knik River valley, which both deepened his appreciation for Alaska's beauty and increased his risk aversion to single-engine piston aircraft.
Despite his growing desire to bring his own plane, further in-flight engine emergencies with his Stinson 108 have now shattered his trust in its powerplant, creating new uncertainties for his future Alaskan flying plans.

See a mistake? Contact us.

I have spent a remarkable amount of time over the last year thinking about Alaska, writing about Alaska, and trying to fly a small plane to Alaska. You could say that the state in general and Alaskan aviation in particular have become a bit of a personal obsession. If you don’t share my fascination with America’s Last Frontier, well…apologies. I’m about to spill several more pages worth of ink over it. This will be the last time for a while, though, I promise.

In November’s Taking Wing, I recounted the woeful tale of how my wife, Dawn, and I finally embarked on our long-planned journey north in our Stinson 108, only to break a rocker arm on our old Franklin engine on the second day out. By the time we scrounged the rare part in northern British Columbia and hunted down a technician to install it, much of our time and confidence in the engine was gone, and we ignominiously beat a retreat back south, vowing to repeat the attempt in 2025. To this end, we planned a full year of flying to test the engine and rebuild trust in it, starting with a long cross-country home to Minnesota to take my nonagenarian grandmothers flying (see Taking Wing, in FLYING Issue 954/January 2025).