This week’s episode of “Flying Wild Alaska,” the Discovery Channel’s show about bush pilots working for Era Alaska, is all about two pilots -- Luke Hickerson and Jim Tweto.

This means it mostly sticks around those two pilots’ respective bases, Barrow and Unalakleet. Of course, there are trips to Wainwright, Point Lay, Anchorage, and a few off-airport landings in the Brooks Range thrown in for good measure.

Whaling season

In Barrow, Luke Hickerson is helping the community out by flying around several whaling captains to survey the sea ice and determine a flat location for them to set up camp in hopes of landing a whale. It’s still minus-5 out, but the spring whaling season is vital for those who rely on subsistence hunting.

“Most of the food is gathered and caught in the fall time,” Luke says. “Freezers are full going into the winter time, but it’s a long winter.”

Luke notes that the ice this year is extremely rough -- blue veins run where the ice has fused, and long stretches remain open, prime locations for whales to come up for air. From the air, much of the surface looks flat, but the darker lines indicate the true roughness of the sea ice. They eventually spot a flat surface where one whaling captain predicts they could safely land a 50-foot bowhead whale.

Later, while the whaling captains are getting prepped to head out to the newly-scouted whale camp, Luke flies a student on spring break from Ilisagvik College -- meaning “a place to learn” in Inupiaq -- to Point Lay to see her daughter. Luke, who is himself the father of a 4-month-old, can’t believe it when the woman says she hasn’t seen her daughter for four months.

As they approach Point Lay, Luke gets word the wind is blowing hard in Point Lay, and although it’s marginal, he decides to go for it.

“Gets your adrenaline pumping a little bit,” he says.

He makes the landing no problem, and the young woman is reunited with her family as Luke heads out.

“Leaving your family’s never easy,” he says, “but at least they can get on a plane with us and in an hour, be back home.”

Back in Barrow, the whaling crews are hauling a bowhead onto the ice near their camp, and a crash course in subsistence living begins. Sun shines through the baleen of the whale as the crew sets to work butchering it. Steam rises from the freshly-cut flesh.

It’s a gorey scene, and the cameras don’t shy away as they cut out the heart and the toungue. The narrator tells us that a whale this size could provide 20 pounds of meat per family.

“It’s a wonderful blessing,” says whaling captain Ned Arey, Sr. “We’re proud of it.”

Luke swings by one of the captain’s houses, where numerous villagers are working inside, divvying up the tough muktuk with ulu knives. Luke leaves with a “goody bag” of sorts, replete with parts of the whale’s intestines, tongue, and liver.

“I’m hungry and it’s time to chow down on some muktuk,” Luke says.

Climbing the unclimbed

The rest of the episode follows a lengthy portion of flying for Jim Tweto, chief operating officer of Era Alaska. Corey Rich, a mountain climber and photographer, is looking to head toward the Brooks Range in Interior Alaska to find a peak that’s never been climbed before -- and then to climb it.

But to do it, Jim needs to first drop off his trusty Cessna 180 in Anchorage and pick up another one equipped with skis. He’s leaving his plane with his mechanic, who is going upgrade Jim’s engine, swapping it out for another one with 70 more horsepower.

Before he heads out to the deep snow of the isolated mountains, he makes a run with his mechanic’s 180 to refresh his ski skills. The skis are controlled by a manual lever in the cockpit, allowing the pilot to raise or lower the skis to vary between wheel and ski landings. Jim takes off from what looks like the gravel strip at Anchorage’s Lake Hood for nearby DeLong Lake.

The skis hang up at first as Jim pumps the lever to lower them, but with enough persuasion, they slowly work their way dowm.

“Little air in the system, it looks like,” Jim says.

Soon, he and Corey are on their way to scout out steep mountain faces in the region of the Arrigetch Peaks. Corey spots an unnamed one, south of the 7,000-foot-tall Xanadu, that he thinks could work.

“This is what it’s about,” Corey says.