May 6 ·
Made the first trip, after the Yukon River ice breakup, to Eagle today. Looking at the river, this morning, it was running small bits of ice so we felt pretty confident to take off. Did not get but about half way before we hit much heavier ice but the guys wanted to keep going (could have something to do with them running out of Copenhagen). As we got closer to Eagle, one of the many chunks of ice we hit broke the shear pin on the prop and it took a bit of time before we could find some gravel to land on to change it out. Once changed we continued on to Eagle. Landed in 1 of the only 2 places we could find for a landing site and a large chunk of ice came in behind us and stuck so in panic mode we made a mad dash for the post office and the store and quickly relaunched into heavier ice for the return down river.