I started today as I have many times with a quick round trip to Metlakatla with freight and passengers. The rest of the day I was scheduled to take passengers to the George Inlet Lodge for flight seeing and all you care to eat crab.
On my first trip to ”George” I departure west and made a 180 degree turn to fly out the west channel. I cleared the Class E airspace at the east end of Pennock Island then turned left to Mountain Point. The tour continued past Mahoney Lake and waterfalls to the end of the inlet where I turned around and headed back toward the lodge. I was finishing the tour, passing the lodge on my down wind leg, when I saw a pod of Orca whales. They were following the coast on the opposite shore from the lodge, heading north. I turned base leg and saw another pod on the opposite shoreline heading toward the lodge. There were at least 12 whales in all. It was exciting watching them swimming powerfully and breaching every few seconds for a breath of air as their fins cut through the surface of the water. I continued on final, reducing power to land. Just then a whale breached right in front of me! I powered up and went around. There were two airplanes following me so I got on the radio and warned them. They aborted their landings and we circled trying to figure out where and how we could land without hitting a whale. I can see the accident report now, “Beaver collided with whale while landing.” It looked like the center of the channel was clear so I set up my approach and made an uneventful landing. It was a long slow taxi to the dock while the whales continued to amaze us with their presence.
I took some pictures with my iPhone but, unfortunately, they didn’t turn out. I was reminded that the last time I worked here I had to make a go-around because I would have been landing on top of a humpback whale.
What an amazing and unique place I live in!!
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| This whale was spotted off Taquan's dock (please double click to enlarge, then zoom in to get a better look) |
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