LUNDGREN:
Camp Sherman man
had a storied career
Continued from page 1
early days of aviation, when
pilots would fly into rural
communities, often landing
in a field near a barn, and put
on impromptu airshows. It has
come to designate an expedi-
tion that travels town-to-town
in short hops.
With Russia opening up to
the West after the fall of the
Soviet Union, it seemed that
it would be possible to barn-
storm from village to village
across the vast spaces of arctic
Siberia. It took years to bring
the project to fruition, but
in 1994, WIRED Magazine
got behind the idea 4 and
it became the first <online=
expedition, recounted on the
then-new World Wide Web,
as well as on the pioneering
magazine9s pages.
<It was chaotic to try to
organize that trip,= Lundgren
recalled.
Folks in Arctic Siberia who
had lived under the controls
of the Soviet Union were not
used to foreigners showing
up in Russian Atonov An-2
biplanes and pulling out giant
satellite phones. And <upload-
ing= stories and photos from
Siberia wasn9t viable for an
infant Internet 4 Lundgren
and his colleagues had to
work the old-fashioned way,
dictating the text of stories,
and entrusting digital photo
files to a businessman who
was returning to the United
States and offered to deliver
them to WIRED.
The adventure was wild
and woolly 4 but satisfy-
ing enough to do it again
the following year, this time
under the auspices of the
Smithsonian Institute9s Arctic
Studies Center, who wanted
to visit and chronicle the lives
of indigenous peoples in the
wilds of Siberia, from Yakutsk
to the Bering Straits.
During this time, Lundgren
had taken to carrying the
Explorer9s Club Flag #7,
an honor accorded to few
explorers. Lundgren9s Living
Legends of Aviation nomi-
nation notes that <carrying
the historic Flag #7 from the
Explorers Club across Siberia
led Shane to cross the paths
of historic early arctic pilots
George Hubert Wilkins and
Ben Eielson, who attempted
flying over the top of the
world in the late 1920s.=
Lundgren recalls that he
<got increasingly intrigued
with the idea of flying to the
North Pole.=
In 1997, he and several
other adventurers made an
attempt to reach the North
Pole in Lundgren9s Atonov
An-2 biplanes. They were
turned back by mechanical
problems. The unsuccess-
ful attempt was documented
by National Geographic
in a film titled <Antonovs
Over the Arctic,= which
can be viewed on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ZGc2KbB7HMc
In the film, Lundgren
says, <We could have made
the Pole, we just wouldn9t
have ever come back from the
Pole. And it9s just like going
to the summit of Everest 4
if you9re within a hundred
meters and you know you can
make it, but you don9t think
you can get down, what9s the
point? The point is to live and
to come back and to do other
things.=
The following year,
Lundgren and his team
returned for another shot.
The North Pole offers a
very narrow weather window
when a pilot can hope for suf-
ficient light to see where to
land and no fog to obscure
the view. For Lundgren the
window opened on April 13,
1998.
Landing itself is tricky,
since the North Pole is not a
land mass, but all ice.
<You have to find a piece
that9s big enough to land,=
Lundgren said.
Then the pilot must make
test touch-downs to make sure
the ice will hold.
Lundgren found his spot
and made his landing. He said
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
21
PHOTO COURTESY SHANE LUNDGREN
Landing on ice at the North Pole, Shane Lundgren led two attempts to make the pole in Russian biplanes.
it was -30 degrees, but beauti-
ful. The team left the engines
running while they took in the
moment 4 then they climbed
back in the cockpit and took
off.
The return flight was not
without adventure. Stronger-
than-expected headwinds
meant they had insufficient
fuel to hit their destination of
Spitsbergen, Norway, so they
had to divert to a Danish Air
Station at the top of Greenland
before making the Norway
leg.
Lundgren donated his
Antonov An-2, dubbed Polar
1, to the Museum of Flight in
Seattle Washington. To get it
there, in 1999 he flew across
the North Atlantic and across
the USA to its final home.
Lundgren lives in Camp
Sherman, where he served on
the Black Butte School Board
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for a decade from 2007 to
2017.
<Since I9ve been here,
its been raising a family and
being a developer,= he said.
He still has his hand in the
aviation world, as CEO of the
company he founded in 2015,
Metolius Aviation Capital,
which provides financial ser-
vices to the commercial avia-
tion market.
Lundgren is modest 4
almost abashed 4 about
being honored as a nominee
by Living Legends of Aviation
at a gala in Beverly Hills,
California, on January 21.
The event9s emcee was John
Travolta, and many actors and
other celebrities 4 such as
Harrison Ford 4 who have a
passion for aviation attended.
As its website notes, the
<Living Legends of Aviation=
are remarkable people of
extraordinary accomplish-
ment in aviation including:
entrepreneurs, innovators,
industry leaders, astronauts,
record breakers, pilots who
have become celebrities, and
celebrities who have become
pilots. The Legends meet
yearly to recognize and honor
individuals that have made
significant contributions in
aviation.=
<It9s celebrity-meets-avi-
ation, a little bit,= Lundgren
said. <It9s a nice mix of inter-
esting people who are genu-
inely interested in aviation.=
Lundgren9s exploits in
Siberia and the Arctic, and his
ongoing work in the field, will
place him with the likes of
Chuck Yeager, Bud Anderson,
Tom Cruise, and Harrison
Ford 4 and his father Kim
Lundgren 4 among the
Living Legends of Aviation.
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