DGrant Gibson

I man I revered and respected through books and adventurous writings when I was a teenager, Bud Helmericks, a pioneer, highly skilled bush pilot, master guide and writer died January 28, 2010 in Wickenburg, Arizona at the ripe age of 93. Born January 18, 1917, Bud is today considered one of Alaska’s most famous bush pilots himself. He holds the Award of Merit, Territory of Alaska, for “Special Service in the Arctic Regions.” He couldn’t tell you exactly how many Alaska flight hours he had, because he tired of adding up his flight hours after logging more than 27,000 hours. In well-worn seats of his small aircraft, one of which was his Cessna 170 named ‘Arctic Tern’, he crossed thousands of miles of mostly uninhabited wilderness on wheels, skis or pontoons. He established a flourishing commercial fishing operation, became a renowned big-game guide (Alaskan Master Guide No. 4). Known for his Arctic knowledge and experience, Bud became a consultant for Eastman Kodak, Eddie Bauer, and other companies working in cold-weather regions. He was an industrial guide for northern Alaska’s early oil exploration, starting with guiding Northern Transportation Co.‘s barges loaded with Sinclair drilling equipment and supplies from the Mackenzie River across the Arctic Ocean into the Colville River. He was also a consultant for British Petroleum during its early push into the Prudhoe Bay region.
In 1969, I worked for the summer holidays for a small float-plane air charter company at Ft.Simpson, NWT, on the Mackenzie River, for a company called Arctic Air. Barges went up and down the river on their way to and from Hay River with supplies for the northern posts from Great Slave Lake right to the Arctic Ocean. Some of these barges, unbeknown to me, were going to eventually land at Bud’s Colville River drop off location. I am lucky for being at Ft.Simpson that summer and watchng the barges heading towards a man I greatly admired through the romance of his writings!
He was a man at one with himself and his environment, not ever requiring anything like a TV to entertain him. Alaska offered him the gift that was precious to him and his family, freedom. Freedom to live his life his way, at his pace, with the sounds he wanted to hear in the arctic silence, the eyes to only see what he wanted to observe in nature. An audio interview done with him in his Fairbanks home in 2003 at the age of 86 revealed a man at one with himself, with a lot of wisdom for anyone wanting to hear. You can listen to him reveal a small portion of his life HERE.
I was saddened to here of his death as he meant a great deal to me as teenager reading his north country arctic adventures through the picture stories of his writings. Until the next WebLog, GG