Selected portions of this story appear in a book by Blake W. Smith, entitled Warplanes to Alaska — the story of a World War Two military supply lifeline to Alaska and Russia through the Canadian wilderness.
"I swung my rental truck off the Alaska Highway onto a heavily rutted dirt service road, dodging small boulders and a score of other obstacles—mindful that every inch gained up this rugged hillside was one less inch to be gained on foot. Finally the road had transformed itself into little more than a rocky trail and my wheels could carry me no further.
I double-checked to make sure I had all the usual safety and survival gear one would normally take on any hike alone, especially back into the rugged mountains of the Wolf Range in Canada's Yukon Territory. I slung my pack over my shoulder and jabbed a half-dozen rounds into my vintage 30-30 Winchester lever-action rifle and set out on foot toward a gleaming 7,000 foot high mountain peak. This was a hunting trip of sorts but not for grizzly bear or mountain sheep so prevalent in the area but for a long-lost wreck of an American P-39 Airacobra fighter plane that had crashed upon one of these distant mountain ridges 55 years ago."
More:
Yukon Cobra Rediscovered!
"I swung my rental truck off the Alaska Highway onto a heavily rutted dirt service road, dodging small boulders and a score of other obstacles—mindful that every inch gained up this rugged hillside was one less inch to be gained on foot. Finally the road had transformed itself into little more than a rocky trail and my wheels could carry me no further.
I double-checked to make sure I had all the usual safety and survival gear one would normally take on any hike alone, especially back into the rugged mountains of the Wolf Range in Canada's Yukon Territory. I slung my pack over my shoulder and jabbed a half-dozen rounds into my vintage 30-30 Winchester lever-action rifle and set out on foot toward a gleaming 7,000 foot high mountain peak. This was a hunting trip of sorts but not for grizzly bear or mountain sheep so prevalent in the area but for a long-lost wreck of an American P-39 Airacobra fighter plane that had crashed upon one of these distant mountain ridges 55 years ago."
More:
Yukon Cobra Rediscovered!
