Flying in Alaska during the winter is a beautiful, but daring hobby. It brings joy, but also risks, like ice building up on the wings. Ice can cause the plane to fall out of the air because it reduces lift on the wings. Last year, my dad and I had our fair share of flying. It was late January when there was a break in the cold weather for a few days. It gave us the opportunity to go ice fishing in the Chugiak Mountains by the Hanagita Pass, past Chitna near Silver Lake. The lake we went to is called Summit Lake. It’s a long narrow lake in a half pipe structure; there are mountains on each long side of the lake.

    My dad and I got all our fishing gear and lunches ready, loaded and secured everthing down in the baggage of the plane, and made sure the airplane had enough gas to get to our destination and back. We took off from Wygant’s runway and headed east towards Chitna, then we ran into some turbulence that was coming down the mountain side. After three miles, the wind started to get bad, bad enough to flip the plane to where the wings were vertical not horizontal. I was scared to death because I was pretty much looking straight down at my dad at that moment. My dad decided to descend to the Copper River and climb when we got to the fish-wheels. We finally made it to the lake, and scouted it for a soft and non- hazardous place to land. We got down and stopped, unloaded our gear and got set up where we wanted to fish. While I was getting the poles ready, my dad was drilling holes. After about 45 minutes of fishing, I caught two nice rainbows and my dad caught one.

    After that, the fishing got really slow and it started to get cold. My dad told me to pack up, because we might get stuck if the weather got colder. We took off and decided to fly down the Hanagita to see if there were any animals wandering around. A few minutes later we ran into some wet snowy weather, but not bad enough to make us turn around. We arrived back at the hangar, and landed on the big blanket of snow covering the field. We pulled the plane back into its tie down spot and called it a day.

     On one cold Alaska evening after school, our team was in the high school hockey shed about to get dressed out for practice. I was about to put on my usual gear when coach Knutson told me to stop because I was going to be goalie for the remainder of the season. He said, “Kegan will not be able to play for the season.” He asked, “Are you up for it?” I said, “Yeah” not knowing that there was a lot more to it than stopping the puck.

    That day at practice was about me getting to know the area between the posts and how I would perform practice before we played Glennallen. The next day Kegan was there to show me a few more tricks when moving inside the goalie crease. He gave me a thorough example of moving from post to post to stop incoming shots or wrap-a-rounds. He noted when dropping down into the butterfly position, my upper body shouldn’t move at all unless needed. “When getting down into the goalie stance, your back should be straight and your knees should be bent enough to get your butt down, but also keep that stick flat on the ice and catching glove up,” he said. During practice the team shot an enormous amount of pucks at me to get me ready for the game the next day.