Before Tori Hulslander was old enough to remember, her father took her flying. He was a pilot, and when Tori was a baby, he would put tiny Tori, in her car seat, in the cockpit next to him on his flights..
As Tori got older, all she wanted was to fly. It felt like becoming a bird. The more turbulent the flight, the happier she was.
As she grew up, she also saw what her dad had sacrificed for her. “He had a great career in aviation, working as a corporate pilot for a company he really liked,” Tori said. “And he gave it all up to be a single dad and raise me. And I’m thankful he inspired me to be a pilot.”
Tori has also sought out adventure for as long as she can remember—hunting, fishing, riding horses on her father’s ranch. She wanted to find the ultimate adventure: to go somewhere no one had ever been before. She knew it could be possible, thanks to her father. And thanks to her grandmother, her other great inspiration.
“She had such a wild spirit for a woman back in the 1940s and 50s.” She went duck hunting, caught the town’s record biggest bass with her bare hands, did trick water skiing on the lake. “She encouraged me to adventure when I was growing up. And she wanted to do them with me.
Tori went to college in Oklahoma to study animal science. Her sophomore year, she realized she could dovetail her passions for wildlife, the outdoors, and flying: she would become an adventure pilot. She got her pilot’s license in 2018, before she even finished college.
Now Tori is a photographer for Alaska Gear Company, which makes gear for adventures in the world’s harshest environments. She’s able to go on her own adventures in her plane, with her husband, and take her camera. She says that being a pilot opened up that wild expanse for her. “There are places in Alaska you can only get to with a plane, places where animals seem like they’ve never even seen humans before.”
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“One weekend we’re in the Brooks Range, and then the next we’re landing on a beach and camping underneath the plane wing, waking up to the ocean tickling our toes and the mountains at our back—just us and the Super Cub.”
She calls it the kind of freedom she’s always looked for. “You can only find it when you feel like you’re the only person in the world.
“It feels like the plane is your planet, and you are its sole inhabitant.”
Not that it’s all bliss. Tori has stories of bending the wing on a rough landing, of a savage wind nearly blowing the plane off of a ridge in the middle of the night while she and her husband slept in a tent nearby. She carries duct tape all the time now to fix broken parts and lines in the field. She always has a Plan B in case things go wrong. “I’ve never taken off in the plane without acknowledging the uncertainty, but I go with confidence and without fear, even though I’m not always sure where the path may lead. Sometimes we just need to go on the adventure and trust in God to handle the rest.”
“I’m still learning what it means to be a backcountry pilot,” she said. “There are so many women up here who’ve been doing this for fifteen, twenty-plus years, who have 10,000 hours in a Super Cub. Aviation just brings women who are hardworking and genuine. They inspire me every day to work harder and learn more.”
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Tori’s grandmother passed away before Tori moved to Alaska and fulfilled her dream. Tori thinks of her often. “I know she would have loved to have seen this.”
Tori Hulslander, @torirlee1
