A Pilot‑Scientist’s Summer Flights and Winter Dog Rides

The summer sun was bright over Alaska’s coast, and a small Cessna 185 traced a tight zig‑zag path above the waves. Inside, Martin Stuefer looked down through a special camera that could see hundreds of colors the eye can’t. He was measuring how ocean water changes when nearby glaciers melt.

Stuefer is both a pilot and a scientist. He works at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he leads a lab that uses this kind of camera. His love of flying started long before his career in science. When he was a teenager in Austria, he learned to glide without an engine and later bought a small acrobatic glider. Even then, he wondered how weather behaved over mountains.

His interest grew deeper when a friend, glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer, helped him buy a Piper PA‑12 in 2006. They flew together many times, even when Echelmeyer was ill. After the friend’s death in 2010, Stuefer kept flying to study Alaska’s environment. Since 2015 he and his team have mapped minerals, forests, smoke plumes, snow and ice from the air.

The camera he uses records light beyond what we see. It can tell tiny differences in water, plants and rocks that ordinary cameras miss. To get good data, Stuefer waits for a few clear days each year when the wind is calm and the tide is low. He checks the weather constantly, ready to launch his plane as soon as conditions are right.

In winter, Stuefer helps other projects. In 2011 he joined the Yukon Quest Air Force, a group of volunteer pilots who ferry supplies and vets to sled‑dog checkpoints. One cold morning he flew into Eagle, a village on the Yukon River where temperatures were minus 50 °F. A musher needed to move seven dogs to a town with road access.

The plane was parked on skis outside the village. Volunteers wrapped blankets around it and heated it overnight so it would start in the morning. The dogs, tired from travel, were gently loaded into burlap sacks that covered most of their bodies. Inside the plane, only their heads poked out.

The crew was surprised by how quiet the dogs were. No barking, no fussing. But as the dogs breathed, ice formed inside the cabin. Stuefer managed to keep everyone safe and landed in Circle.

After the winter chill faded, the sky cleared again. Stuefer used that short window to fly his plane over the ocean, recording subtle changes caused by meltwater. His work shows how flying and science can help us understand the planet, while his winter rides remind us of Alaska’s rugged spirit.