Not even the near-sinking of their float plane could deter a crew of caribou hunters from the Northwest Territories hamlet of Behchoko.
The group of eight were in a plane taxiing out into the middle of a channel at the north end of Great Slave Lake on Wednesday when they noticed something was amiss.
"We noticed that we were on top of rocks. We heard some squeaking, scratching," said Russell Drybones, 34, who was making his first trip in a float plane.
A startled Drybones asked other passengers if the sound was normal. "So he said, ‘We're sinking.’ I said, ‘What? Come on!’ I got, I got scared."
The aircraft’s right pontoon was punctured and it was taking on water quickly. The two pilots got the plane back to the dock, but by then the float was under water by a few feet. Everyone evacuated the plane.
Drybones said the pilots had never flown into the channel before, but general manager Trevor Wever of Air Tindi, the company operating the flight, maintained they had. Wever said the water was murky and the water level in the channel fluctuates.
Air Tindi said it will conduct an internal investigation, but it anticipated the plane would be repaired and back in service by Friday.
The scare wasn't enough to keep Drybones from his mission. He was back on another float plane Thursday with his group to pursue his goal of bringing home a caribou from eastern N.W.T.’s Barren Lands.
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