Must read: Out in the Great Alone »
Flying through the pass was — how can I put this — awesome. I mean in the sense of inspiring genuine awe. You are a dot moving among white clouds. White cliffs break through the clouds and you fly beside them… For much of the crossing the snow makes it impossible to tell where the ground is, and then when you spot it, it’s crazy, striations of ice and rock like the inside of a marble. It doesn’t seem to exist in any measurable relation to where you are. (Even crazier: the occasional glimpse of mushers and dog teams moving against this background, upside-down i’s crossing a sheet of crushed-up paper.) Little canyon-like channels go wriggling off the main path. I don’t know what to tell you… it’s like passing into another world.
