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Great … I had paid this guy up front to fly the four of us into the Coppermine. He had a DeHavilland Beaver and could do it in one flight he said. I had a couple of pakboats, folding/inflatable canoes that packed into hockey bags, and that would eliminate any external canoe loads. It was already past six o’clock when the plane finally arrived. When it arrived at the dock I noticed that the pontoons were under water. Every float plane has a red line maximum load indicator painted on each pontoon and these were well submerged, at least until Bushwhack Bob jumped on to the dock — all 280 pounds of him, smiling, cocky, unkempt, white shmutz crackling at the edge of his mouth. He flicked a cigarette butt into the lake. Five men clambered out of the plane, cursing, grabbing at their gear, making comments about the flight being one of the worst ever. Two men had to sit on top of the gear as there weren’t enough seats in the plane to accommodate everyone. They were heading straight for the bar.

Even with all their gear out of the plane, the floats were still mostly submerged. Then I noticed that the mandatory call letters on the side of the fuselage had been whitewashed over. Someone arrived in a beat up truck with a forty-five-gallon drum of avgas in the back; it was Bob’s assistant. He looked nervous and jittery and demanded that we help him pump the fuel into the plane. When we were finished, Bob and his sidekick jumped in the truck and took off. “I’ll be back in two hours … gotta get some sleep,” Bob said. “You guys can load ‘er up.”

We stood there dumbfounded, angry, hungry, and the sun was slipping over the horizon quickly. No reputable pilot ever lets the client load the plane on his own. Inside was a shambles; interior liners had pulled away from the fuselage walls, duct tape held the seats together, and on the floor beside the pilot’s seat was an ashtray overflowing with butts, and it looked as if old vomit had crusted on the floor. The aroma was thick with sweat and mold. After loading the plane with our gear the max-line indicators on the pontoons were under water. That can’t be, I thought … any other Beaver could carry this load and its passengers without a problem. The floats looked too small for the plane and were probably rife with leaks. After tracking down Bushwhack we told him that it didn’t look safe enough to fly in his plane; we had already made other arrangements to fly out the next day with Air Tindy. He agreed to leave my refund at the hotel when we returned to Yellowknife two weeks later. Only half of which was returned a year later.

After contacting the NWT tourism authorities it turned out that Bushwhack had been flying with a suspended licence. There were several lawsuits pending against him. But the tourism department won’t revoke his operating licence because, as I was informed by one of their senior agents, Bob “fills a void” in their marketing plan; that is, he operates an interior “eco-camp” and somehow manages to coerce top name photographers to base out of his remote facility. “It’s good advertising for us, for the territory. The photographs get around,” I was told. It didn’t matter that his website was misleading, that he was a liar and a thief … it was good business for the province. So what if he had a few dozen disgruntled canoeist-clients who got screwed.

The pilot didn’t look as if he were out of high school yet. He was nervous … I could tell by the way he was talking too much. He was sweating, leaning way too far forward and had a death grip on the controls. The floats on the Cessna 185 barely cleared the tops of the big pines that rimmed the higher ridges — too close for comfort. The hills were abrupt here, with sheer cliffs and deep gorges. It was foggy, and the ceiling steadily declining, but instead of putting down safely on a lake and waiting for the weather to clear, he pushed on. The base manager wanted to keep to the tight schedule as there was already a backlog of clients waiting to fly in. And this pilot was lost.

I could tell he had no idea where we were. I knew the area but it was even hard for me to get a site bearing with such a low ceiling. The plane wasn’t equipped with a GPS, not that it would have helped much, anyway. I opened my map and showed him where we were, already several degrees off course. Trees loomed directly in front of the plane and the pilot pulled back on the stick to clear the ridge. By the time we landed everyone had just about pissed themselves. By the end of the season this pilot would crash his plane into a three-hundred-foot communications tower, killing all four occupants.

The pilot was obviously stoned. Worse yet, it was nearly dark and we were in the midst of a terrific summer thunderstorm. I had made the radio call to the Natural Resources base office earlier that day to pick me and my crew up from Wakimika Lake, hopefully before the storms hit. No government planes were available and they wouldn’t have flown in this weather, anyway, I was told. The private charter company would pick us up instead. After ten days cutting trails we were all exhausted, bug-bit, and looking forward to getting out of the bush. We knew that the private airways would fly in just about any weather for the money. They had a reputation. They also had a reputation for hiring novice young pilots.

It was raining hard when the Beaver aircraft landed. I didn’t know this pilot well, just the fact that he hadn’t worked long for the air service. He seemed inordinately cocky last time I flew with him and nobody on board felt comfortable at all. Now, when he got out of the plane after mooring it along the shore, he started cursing as he loaded our gear, tossing it any which way into the stow behind the rear seat. It wasn’t just the rain, there was an obvious tension protracted from a disturbed pilot with some kind of grudge. He never stopped talking once he landed; only it wasn’t the usual chatter between pilot and client, it was a long string of declarations and grievances, groaning and whining about his life and his job and how everything sucked. Lightning seared the now barely visible landscape around us, obscured by pelting rain and waning evening light. The storm showed no signs of letting up. The pilot didn’t care — he was switched on and bemused by his own ramblings, intoxicated and unpredictable. We were afraid to say anything, afraid to get in the plane. But we had little choice but to carry on with this macabre scene.

“Yeah, this is my last flight,” the pilot blurted out. What the fuck did that mean? Was it everyone’s last flight? I tried talking with him but he wouldn’t let me get a word in. I asked him what he meant by what he said.

“The prick fired me this afternoon … said this was my last flight then I’m done for the summer.” Another barrage of obscenities. Great — a pilot with hostilities, and he’s looped out, and we’re flying through a thunderstorm. We sat motionless in our seats, afraid to say anything lest the pilot turn on us. For the next half-hour I thought we were all going to die — not from the threat of being hit by lightning but by the acrobatic antics of a man possessed with nothing left to live for. “Watch this,” he’d say, letting out a shrill hoorah and we’d drop into a vertical nose dive earthward, and then pull up in a steep ascent, nearly stalling out, fanning out in a half-spin. All this with two canoes strapped to the pontoons. This was crazy. Even if we complained to the owner it would be to no purpose — this pilot was history, anyway. By the time we reached town the pilot had settled down, ranting changing to half sobs about losing his girlfriend to a buddy back home. Silence: except for the drone of the engine as we taxied in to the airways dock.

Next day there was a fresh young pilot, full of smiles, loading gear onto the plane. He was to fly the Cessna 180 until he felt comfortable with the Beaver. Two weeks later, on a windy but perfectly clear day, he crashed the Beaver into the side of a steep ridge, the plane bursting into flames, instantly killing all four aboard.

I made a satellite phone call to the air service in Yellowknife to pick our group up at Lynx Lake near the headwater of the Thelon River in the Northwest Territories. They would pick us up just after six in the evening. It had been a tough trip, wind bound for over a week, extreme late summer weather causing us to change our itinerary and abandon descending the Thelon River. Instead, because we were unable to paddle, we trekked the open tundra in search of muskoxen and tundra wolves, hiking kilometres each day, the wind never letting up until the very last day. Even though we experienced a part of the beautiful headwater region of the Thelon that few people ever see, we all felt a little disappointed that the river adventure was thwarted, and for some they knew they would never be back again.

I called again when the plane was two hours past the scheduled pickup time. Lucky that evening could last up until midnight out here on the tundra. I wasn’t too worried. The Cessna Caravan landed on the beach at ten o’clock — four hours past due time. It was a three-hour flight back to Yellowknife and the pilot was anxious to get us out of there. We had to help him unload two forty-five-gallon drums of avgas for another air service. These had to be carefully rolled down the pontoon steps onto the pontoon, and then skidded down planks into the water. One of the drum bung-caps was loose and fuel spilled out (also letting water into the submerged barrel) and we quickly rolled it up onto the beach out of the lake. It was mayhem. There was now an oily fuel slick running down the steps of the Cessna and branching out into the bay; people slipped as they climbed the greasy steps and found their seats. The smell of fuel was thick inside. I helped the pilot load the gear into the back of the plane. He looked nervous.

“We have four more people to pick up,” the pilot told me. What … we already had a full load with ten people on board? Four Norwegian canoeists had decided to come out early and had made the call to the air service to come and pick them up. They never had a GPS with them and were lost in the labyrinth of lakes about one hundred air kilometres west of our location. They were told to light a smoky fire so the plane could spot them. The air service would also double their money on the back-haul by loading these guys on to our flight manifest, saving big on the fuel costs.

We spotted them after flying ever-tightening circles around the presumed location. There was no smoke to indicate the fire from a distance but we did notice the flames as it was now past dusk and near midnight, the sun having set about an hour earlier. We landed and I helped the pilot get the four men and their gear and Pakboats on board. There was a ton of gear and they were all big men. Huge duffels were piled down the middle aisle, infused with smoke which now blended with the smell of spilt fuel and old sweat.

“This is crazy,” the pilot whispered to me before we climbed in off the float. I didn’t answer him. I could see he was nervous. We still had a two-hour flight back to Yellowknife and the sun had long since departed. Only the Norwegians chatted amongst themselves, elated that they were plucked out of the wilderness and were heading home.

We landed without incident. The result of the spilled fuel barrels at the beach on Lynx Lake where avgas was dropped off for another air service, ended up in a nasty lawsuit. The fuel barrels had taken on water through unsecured bungs. The other air service was never notified of the potential spoiled fuel. When their plane went in to retrieve our canoes and refueled with the spoiled avgas the engine had a “flame-out” on take-off and had to put down roughly on the windiest section of lake. For two days, the pilot and his assistant tried desperately to keep the plane from crashing into shore rocks, meanwhile staving off the threat of hypothermia in near freezing temperatures.

High gravel banks oozing from once frozen permafrost lined both sides of the Coppermine River in Nunavut. There was nowhere to lunch as the shore was a scrabble of rock and course willow; eating in the canoe was an option but we wanted to get out and stretch our legs. Fifty vertical feet up, out of view, the tundra heath spread out endlessly; there was usually enough level moss matt to spread out and eat lunch on. We randomly selected a beaching site for the canoes, grabbed the lunch pack, and scrambled up the steep bank. What we saw at the top was disturbing.

Out of sheer coincidence we had chosen the exact site of a Cessna 180 crash site. The burned out fuselage and wings were a grim testimony of a flight gone awry. Pilot error or mechanical malfunction, bad weather or just bad luck, there was a story here that demanded an explanation.

Flying in to the trailhead is often part of the adventure and, for the number of flights made, there are few accidents. Getting in to a remote start point quickly by air can cut days, sometimes weeks of travel time off the schedule but there are enough close calls and deaths to warrant some trepidation when it comes to selecting an air service. Just as there are many reputable air charter services, there are as many operators and pilots who fly by the skin of their teeth. Just like guides, pilots can make poor judgment calls and there have been times that I’ve witnessed the pilot’s ego framing the potency of his ability to appraise situations and put everyone at risk. There really are no old, bold pilots as the saying goes. Northern charter services conscript young pilots who are eager to chock up air mile time — to the owner, rookie pilots come cheap and are expendable. There’s no shortage of fly boys available to commandeer any number of aging floatplanes out there. A few noticeable traits that you may want to be wary of when you slide in next to the pilot with the hangover from the night before, or the pilot who just got jilted by the bosses daughter:

1. The pilot suddenly slides forward on the edge of his seat.

2. He grips the steering controls too hard.

3. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead on a cool day.

4. He curses while manoeuvring.

5. Pilot asks you where he is.

6. He keeps clearing his throat but doesn’t speak.

7. There is duct tape holding things together.

8. A roach-clip is stuck to the flight log.

9. There’s a mickey of rye in the door pocket.

10. There’s oil dripping from the engine cowling.

11. The pilot pumps out floats on takeoff and landing.

12. The pilot asks you to load the plane.

I’ll keep flying even though I’ve seen it all. I am more selective now, though, and I’ll ask the charter service how many hours flying time my pilot has, especially if it looks as if he hasn’t started shaving yet. And when I’m up there, heart racing a little faster than normal, I sometimes forget that I’m not a religious man and I utter a silent prayer. So far so good, I say to myself when we land. The hard-pack trail looks better than ever, and the pitch of the canoe over the waves is comforting and earthly.