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, an airline pilot, remains deeply fascinated with Alaskan aviation despite a previous failed attempt to fly his personal Stinson 108 to the state due to engine trouble.
During his airline layovers in Anchorage, he rents Cessna 172s to explore local airspace and undertake scenic flights, including trips to Talkeetna and the Knik Glacier area.
Although these rental experiences heightened his desire to fly his own aircraft in Alaska, a subsequent in-flight emergency with his Stinson has shattered his trust in its engine, jeopardizing future personal Alaska flight plans.

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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).