Winter Camping

Even though May is almost here, the island is still in the midst of a solid winter out here. Jeff and I decided to revisit the seal hunting camp that is pictured towards the beginning of this blog. That pitcutre was taken last September and it was great to come back on the tundra when it was solid. We loaded up another teacher's 4-wheeler and left on a sunny Saturday afternoon expecting to camp out 8 miles south of the village at the shack. Unfortunatley, we discovered that after getting all of the way out there, one corner of the shack had a big hole burned in it. The place was filled with 4 feet of snow and obviously uninhabitable . We'd heard of a another camp about 3 miles further south along the coast so we decided to press on. It was the best impromptu camping decision I'd ever made. On the way to our new location, we came across the remains of true Cold War relic. In June of 1955, a Lockeed Pv-2 Neptune with 11 Navy airmen onaboard was shot down while on a reconnassaince mission near the international dateline some twenty miles west of here. The nearest runway was in Gambell so the crew struggled to make it there falling short here in the tundra. All of the crew survived thanks to the quick efforts of the Gambell Army National Gaurd. The following picture details the tail boom of the big twin engine airplane.
Note the burned out hole on the corner of the shack.