From The Airplane En Route To Mt. Logan Airstrip, Yukon
Gallery / Current Painting
Acrylic on Canvas
48” x 48”
This flight was scary but very awesome for two artists who had never had the experience of flying in a small aircraft before. Looking down on what seemed to be too-close mountain peaks and sometimes being navigated through what seemed to us as too-narrow channels of rocky terrain gave much credit to our pilot.
This flight was scary but very awesome for two artists who had never had the experience of flying in a small aircraft before. Looking down on what seemed to be too-close mountain peaks and sometimes being navigated through what seemed to us as too-narrow channels of rocky terrain gave much credit to our pilot.
Credit for this Curator’s Statement goes to Gallery Manager and Curator Valery Monahan of Yukon Art Centre in Whitehorse, YK in the late 1990’s - early 2000’
The Arctic Institute of North America, Mt. Logan Airstrip
This trip to the Mt. Logan airstrip was an adventure never to be forgotten. My artist friend, Tania O’Donnell, and I were privileged to be taken to this rarely experienced mountain top airstrip by our generous Kluane Research Centre host, pilot Andy Williams, who at the time was the Manager of the Centre.
Upon our arrival at this airstrip in Andy’s small aircraft to the starkly vast and snowy expanse of flat terrain, at the top of a mountain and with the iconic rounded peak of Mt. Logan in plain sight with only a solitary quonset hut as the sole sign of human presence, the area seemed harshly uninhabitable, even though we soon abandoned this thought when, surprisingly, a big and happy black dog (the staff’s mascot)came bounding up to the plane to greet us!
Soon after our plane landed, Tania and I took a short hike up the mildly mountainous terrain close to the left side of the camp. It was exciting and enjoyable, until the thin mountain air took its toll and forced us both to sit and relax in the snow until my dizziness and nausea was under control. (Mt. Logan is the highest mountain in Canada at 16,000 ft. and the temperature hovers around -45C (-49F) in the winter and near freezing in summer with the median temperature for the year around -27C (-17F).
The researchers who were stationed at the site welcomed us with a short tour when we returned from our ill-fated hike (I didn’t admit to our hosts that I’d suffered the humiliation of dizziness and nausea from the high elevation and lack of oxygen!) We were invited into the warm haven of the quonset hut for a lunch of homemade soup and freshly baked bread. Delicious, and so appreciated!
The following photo is of Andy Williams, who was the Manager of the Arctic Institute at that time, and is the owner and pilot of this reliable little aircraft that took us safely up to the Mt. Logan Airstrip site.
