News Photo by William Kelley Mountains, glaciers, and the confiner flats are seen on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska in July 1971.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the 32nd in a series of stories adapted from William Kelley’s unpublished book, “Wind Socks, Grass Strips, and Tail-Draggers.” Last week, Kelley and a friend got lost flying back from visiting another friend near Mount McKinley.

At any time, I expected to hit the mountain, because the trees seemed to reach higher whenever I could see them.

The clouds were lower and so were we.

At times, we flew in the base of the clouds. I switched to flying on instruments, what few there were.

What an idiot.

Fifty minutes after leaving Talkeetna, we approached Cook Inlet. We were on the west side of it. That couldn’t be. The mountain was quite a ways from us. We had to be lower than I realized.

That must be some low pressure driving that front into Anchorage.

I remembered, “When flying from a high to a low, look out below.”

Great.

Confusion replaced reason. Darkness. Clouds. Low to no visibility. Tree tops close, the hills created severe pucker on my seat. Anchorage couldn’t raise us on radar to verify our position. Cabin heat couldn’t cure my chills. All this time, my friend strained out the window at the darkness.

The clouds seemed to ascend at the inlet. Actually, the terrain dropped away to sea level. A short distance ahead, over the inlet, clouds and sea met. That was the fence we could not penetrate. There was no place to go. It felt like sticking one’s head into a sock. Not only is it dark, but suffocating.

A light appeared out of total darkness. There wasn’t a great deal of ceiling over the inlet, but visibility had improved once over the water. That is, until we ran into the cloud fence.

I had been on the radio with Anchorage Flight Service for the past several minutes. There was nobody else in the sky, so I had their full attention. They still couldn’t locate us on radar. When I saw the light, I told them.

Suddenly, I realized it was a rotating beacon. On the horizon, as far as we could see to our left, it rotated. One white. One green. A civilian airport. I called Anchorage and told them where I thought we were. They still could not find us on the radar screen .

We were headed for worse conditions at Anchorage than were at our present location, but there was no place else to go until we saw the beacon. I turned the 140 and waited.

The beacon was on the opposite side of Cook Inlet. We were low. Water was just beneath and clouds bounced off the top of the cabin.

We crossed 10 miles of ocean before reaching the origin of the beacon. Had I known it at the time, I might have felt less secure and totally puckered the seat.

Another attack of deja vu as we circled the airport. I told Anchorage where I thought we were. My friend said I was wrong. He recognized the area we circled, because he had once lived there. He told me it was Birchwood.

I called Anchorage. As I talked on the radio, they picked up our blip on radar and confirmed our position.

I asked the controller to cancel my flight plan, but he recommended I wait until secure on the ground. As we approached to land, the controller came back and told me how lucky we were.

That airport opened only six months before.

The sky closed around us. There was not much more time before the area would be instrument flight rules, meaning visual reference would not be safe. There was no time for indecision.

It was land now on the airport or forget it.

Too much adrenalin and anxiety had been invested to just neglect duty.

We entered the pattern and landed. The ground was wet and dark from the rain, and the dirt strip was hard to see. The 140 was nearly level when I drove it onto the runway. We bounced several feet into the air. At that moment, I knew why the controller wanted to wait on closing the flight plan.

Finally, we were down and under control.

Before shutdown, I tried to raise Anchorage, but to no avail. We tied the plane and looked for a phone. There were none at the airport.

Check The News next week for the next installment. William Kelley was a teacher for 32 years and has been a pilot since 1966. He lives in Herron on the family farm where he was born and raised.