[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by longtab

We had a family friend who was a missionary to Alaska before we lived in Alaska. He was hunting way up on the Koyakuk River about 400 NW of Fairbanks. When the pilot flew in to pick them up he had to leave the plane on the sand bar and hike in a few hundred meters to help the hunting party hump their kit back to the plane. When they got back to the sand bar they discovered a grizzly bear had decided to rip the wing skin off of the wing as a "joke" or something. To recover the bare wing they cut their canvas wall tent into strips, soaked it it the river, wrapped it around the wing frame, used liberal amounts of 100mph tape, and waited for the canvas to freeze. Once it "set" the pilot was able to fly the plane, but not the normal payload. They all got out after a couple trips and with the help of another airplane from the air service.

That's some impressive "outback" engineering!