Spring 2024 Southwest High Desert

 

When my wife told me she would be going to Spain to walk a portion of the Camino de Santiago in April, I started thinking about what I might do with that time. Not one to look forward to two solo weeks rattling around in our house, I thought of doing some sort of flying tour. April seemed like an ideal time to visit the southwest, after winter storms and before summer heat and monsoons. I settled on several national park destinations with additional scenic stops along the way and nothing involving more than a few hours’ flying on any day. I undertook the trip in a club-owned Dakota, N2337U (owned by One Niner Right, hangars on the Concord east ramp), basically a souped-up Piper Cherokee. With a 235 hp engine it makes 130 kts true airspeed (TAS) at least up to 12.5K – the highest I got – and is fairly miserly on fuel. I might have taken NRI’s 182 (348) with its new paint job, smoother engine and high wing better for sightseeing, but it needed some maintenance, so I went with the Dakota.

The fun quotient of this trip depended entirely on finding a chill traveling companion who would be up for long hours in the right seat, not afraid of the usual bumping around in a small plane (especially given the southwest itinerary with afternoon thermals) and up for hiking in the national parks. Fortunately, my semi-retired pal JT – who had previously joined me on a longish flying trip to visit a mutual friend in Port Townsend, Washington – was ready and enthusiastic for the adventure.

We planned an eight-day trip, adding a couple of extra days to the plane reservation for weather contingencies. This would be five days of flying and three days of visits to parks. We did need one of those weather days, and one of the flying days was short enough to give us two park days. We also mixed in some non-park destinations for breakfast/lunch stops in scenic spots. We did all of our longer legs earlier in the day to avoid the thermals, but in the event the weather for most of the trip was very benign and the temperatures moderate so desert heat and monsoon thunderstorms were never a problem.

The trip took us over the Sierra Nevada both going and returning. I have been “over the hump” seven times now. (One planned return trip had forecast winds higher than my comfort zone over the mountains, so we returned around the southern route, over Edwards AFB through the restricted area, which is often open on weekends –  hence the odd number of mountain crossings.) All seven trips have been over the Tioga Pass which has some 13k peaks nearby on the east side but has the virtue of being over a road and the wide-open Tuolumne meadow, as well as providing sights of Yosemite Valley. An alternate route for the same destinations is between the Friant VOR and Mammoth Lakes, but that one is wilderness all the way so has always struck me as a bit riskier. I fly the leg over the mountains at 12.5K and bring oxygen (which I used briefly outbound) but I haven’t found it makes much of a difference to how I feel (or to my sight).  Having skied at 11K and hiked at 14K I like to think my body can handle O2-sat in the high 80s without too much trouble but I might be fooling myself. The baro chamber experiments seem to show people getting stupid down around 65% sat. I use a fingertip pulse-ox monitor and keep an eye on my stats at that altitude.

We started early on Friday, April 19th. I picked up JT at 6:30 am and we were at the hangar around 7. AH had helpfully removed the rear seats from the Dakota, making it easy to load up our luggage and get underway. With light winds over the Sierras, we headed east towards Yosemite, climbing to 11.5K, then added an extra 1000 feet as we got into the mountains. Crossing the Tioga pass we descended towards Mono Lake and then made a sharp right to head south to Bishop, where we stopped briefly to refuel. At an elevation of ~4K at the northern end of the Owens Valley, Bishop has a high ridge to the east – the summit of the range is over 14K just to the north and the ridge to the south is over 9K. Fortunately there is a pass down around 6K just east of the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, whose large dishes are clearly visible. The climbout was slow, as the outside temperature was fairly high and it was difficult to keep the cylinder head temps low. Eventually we headed through the pass, through the Bishop and Saline MOAs, and on towards Las Vegas. There is very poor ATC radio coverage in the area (controlled by ZOA, ZLA, Joshua and further towards LAS by Nellis). Unless I’m misreading the VFR sectional, there’s even a rare zone of G airspace up to ~10K at the northern end of Death Valley. Controllers were good about letting us know where they’d lose radio coverage and telling us where to try the next frequency if we did lose reception.

We continued at 11.5K over the LAS B, a bit south of the field. Controllers there left us alone with no diversions around traffic. Over Boulder we took a slight left to continue over the western end of the Grand Canyon, then turned to the southeast for Sedona, where we arrived a little before 1pm. Winds were light out of the southeast, so landing 21 was favored. But the AWOS recording and the canyon walls favor landing from the south, so that’s what I did. It wasn’t a great landing, and we saw most of the later traffic land south, including medium sized jets, so that’s probably what I should have done. (We did see a jet landing south much too high on final go around, so it’s not necessarily easy.) The Airport Mesa restaurant by the arrival end of 3 is very pleasant and we had lunch watching the rich seekers-of-enlightenment-from-the-vortex come and go.

Sedona airstrip on the downwind looking west after departing runway 21.

Our next stop was GCN, a towered airport about ten miles from the south rim of the Grand Canyon, on the edge of the town of Tusayan by the national park entrance. We wanted to overfly the Canyon on the way, and decided to wait until the light was steeper and redder and the shadows deeper, so we did a walk around the airport mesa – there’s a hiking trail making a full loop just below the rim – before continuing. Taking off at 5, we flew east first to circle around the meteor crater near Winslow, then northwest past Flagstaff and over some cinder cones north of Humphrey Peak (12.6K), then crossed the Canyon twice, northbound in the Zuni corridor and southbound in the Dragon corridor. The GC is a “special flight rules area” (SFRA) where GA aircraft are excluded from large zones, permitted only in narrow, roughly N/S corridors at specific altitudes.

GCN has an FBO that mainly caters to the canyon tours, but they were friendly and helpful. The canyon shuttle service from Tusayan to the park only runs in the summer starting in May. The only car rental in the area is the FBO manager/owner who rents his own cars at an astronomical price. We found a place to stay and walked about a half mile north along the road into town to our hotel. The town is just a mile long strip of hotels, tour businesses and restaurants. The park entrance is a couple of miles further.

Grand Canyon overflight

The next morning, we walked back to the airport to pick up our exorbitant car rental at the FBO. (We didn’t want to pay for two days at the ridiculous price.) We headed into the park, parking near the South Kaibab trailhead and hiking down to Tip Off point, where we rested & had lunch before returning up the trail. The elevation change is about 3,300’ and it was warm, so we were glad to have each brought about 1.5 liters of water, which we consumed entirely before getting back to the rim. On the way back up JT recognized the son of a friend on his way down – small world.

We got an early start the next day, back at the airport by around 8 to drop off the car and get in the air. GCN is very close to the GC SFRA, so we flew a few miles southwest and circled to gain altitude from GCN’s 6K elevation to the 11.5K required for the Dragon corridor northbound. Crossing the canyon again, we continued along the Marble Canyon sector (where the GC widens to a broad upper elevation about 2000’ below the rim with the river in a narrow canyon in the middle another 1500’ down). There is an airstrip up near the north end (L41) with a narrow bumpy runway and a cheap lousy restaurant across the road from the apron. I landed there with C a few years ago and didn’t need to repeat the experience. Instead, we continued to Page, getting good views of Horseshoe Bend and the Glen Canyon dam before landing at PGA. 

Horseshoe Bend

There are three FBOs at PGA. We stopped in at Classic for a top-off and use of the clapped out but functional crew car, which got us to both the Glen Canyon dam overlook and then to Horseshoe Bend, where we joined the throng on a one mile walk to the rim. It’s as dramatic in life as in the many iconic photos, with the river over 1000’ below the rim. 

Continuing east, we flew over Lake Powell, then on to Monument Valley straddling the Utah / Arizona border. The site of 1940s and 50s westerns, as well as images of the Marlboro Man, the eroded sandstone formations are instantly recognizable. Gouldings Lodge has an airstrip, restaurant and motel near the site. The airstrip is private, but they just ask for emailed proof of insurance before you land there. It’s north/south, lying just north of a mesa topping out 700’ higher, so you pretty much have to land south and depart north. After flying around the formations for a bit, we came in from the east to land. The airstrip is very narrow (40’ wide) and between unfamiliarity and the narrow-runway-height illusion I was pretty sure we were high, so I did my only go-around of the trip, landing comfortably on the second try. There is a paved apron at the south end, near the facilities, but they reserve that for tour planes, so we parked on the adjacent gravel. 

Airstrip at Gouldings Lodge, Monument Valley

From the airstrip it’s a short walk uphill to the decent diner with fantastic views. Returning to the plane after lunch, we pushed & pulled it off the gravel (to avoid flying rocks when we started the engine), then continued our trip toward Cortez (CEZ), in the Four Corners area near Mesa Verde NP. 

On landing, we picked up a rental car waiting for us at the FBO. JT had reserved a small SUV, but the rental co had “upgraded” us to an enormous Toddler Krusher™ truck, the sort where you can’t see anyone shorter than 5’ in front of the hood unless they’re fifty yards away.

JT with the Toddler Krusher™

We booked ourselves in at the Ute Mountain Casino, a tribal hotel/casino about 15 miles south of the town. The hotel had a nice pool and hot tub, both of which were great after the day of travel. They also had a single poker table, which on this Sunday afternoon was populated by four or five locals – all of whom knew each other and the dealers –  playing limit Omaha, high-low or high-only chosen by the button. The game was pretty wild with most of the table seeing most flops and often continuing to the turn and river with longshot hands. I played conservatively (I thought) and managed to lose about $60. JT won a couple of hundred dollars. The whole Ute reservation is dry. Wanting a beer with dinner we went back up to Cortez – late – and found most places closed but a decent Mexican place on the main drag open. 

Monday morning we headed off to Mesa Verde, an area of mesas and canyons with remains of long-deserted Puebloan settlements similar to those in Chaco Canyon and Bandelier – villages built in canyons and up the sandstone walls. The ones at Mesa Verde are particularly striking, with large clusters of stone structures set high into cliff walls. You can see them both from above, at overlooks along the mesa, or up close on a hike into one of the canyons from the visitor center. These things are in cliffsides hundreds of feet up from the valley floor and below overhangs. The people there must have had great quads and no fear of heights.

Mesa Verde

Returning to the hotel, we drank some beers that we’d smuggled in, carefully hiding the evidence, had another soak and played some more cards (hold’em, I lost again, JT won again). Then I started looking at the weather for the next leg. I wanted to stop in at Telluride (TEX) en route to Canyonlands (CNY). Telluride is the second highest airstrip in the country, at just over 9K. The airport is up on a mesa in a west facing canyon. It’s quite long (over 7K), so landing with a tailwind and high TAS is no problem. The weather looked promising for the next morning – light winds and moderate temperatures. 

Once again, we got an earlyish start. My log shows the airplane moving at 8:01 am. The flight was short, just 65nm. We climbed to 11.5K and cut the corner on the mountain shoulder that forms the southern edge of the Telluride canyon. One could enter the pattern here but given the nearby mountains it seemed like straight-in was the thing to do. Winds were light as predicted and there were no squirrely up- or down-drafts coming off the sides of the mountain. The view of the airstrip on the approach is dramatic, as it sits on a mesa jutting out from the valley floor to the east. Here’s the Google Earth view.

Telluride airport (Google Earth screenshot)

The folks at the FBO were friendly and helpful, and we got another crew car to go into town for breakfast. The town was quiet, as it was shoulder season between the lifts closing and the summer festivals. We were told that had we come two weeks earlier we would have found almost all the restaurants closed.

After a stroll around the town, we returned to the airport and headed for Canyonlands (CNY), about 100 nm to the northwest. The takeoff roll at 9K was very noticeably sluggish, but with all that runway I wasn’t worried. Once airborne the ground dropped away as we came back over the western edge of the mesa. In the image above you can see the light gray square of arresting material designed to keep a failed takeoff from turning into a nosedive off the edge. After getting out of the canyon we turned further north to pass by Grand Junction and over the Black Ridge Canyon wilderness. This took us up towards a very rugged landscape northeast of Moab, where the Colorado and its tributaries have cut deeply into the terrain. The snow-capped Mt Waas and Peale form a striking backdrop to the stark scenery. I appreciated that I was using GPS as we flew past Mt Waas.

Somewhere east of Arches NP, looking south.

Approaching Canyonlands airport, we heard a jump plane announcing skydiving on the CTAF. We curved well to the south thinking that would provide plenty of time before we entered the pattern. After hearing the jump plane land I figured we were good to go. But when we were about 3 miles out the jump plane told us there were still jumpers in the air. I’m a little mystified at how he landed before the jumpers – emergency descent maybe? – but anyway we peeled away sharply, only to have him sheepishly come back on and say they were already almost on the ground. After that the landing was routine. We parked at the FBO, picked up another car and headed into Moab where we found a cheap but adequate hotel along the main strip. The town sits at the foot of a mesa running several miles NW-SE but only about four blocks wide. Like Tusayan at the Grand Canyon, it appears to be sustained almost entirely by tourism, though there is some odd project near the park entrance involving covering over uranium mine tailings.

Arches NP is more aptly named than I had realized. It’s a surreal landscape similar to Bryce Canyon (with its hoodoos), plus arches. Lots of arches. We had plenty of time for several hikes in the afternoon, and then a long (8 mile) one around Devil’s Garden the next day. “Delicate Arch” is on one of the standard Utah license plates. This is one park I would be happy to visit again, though not much after April. Even though the longer hike didn’t involve that much elevation, we still each needed well over a liter of water.

The FBO ramp rat had suggested that we visit Druid Arch in Canyonlands, which was tempting because druids: no one knows who they were or what they were doing. But it turned out to be almost a 2 hr drive to the trailhead, so we did Devil’s Garden in Arches instead.

“Park Place” at Arches NP

On Thursday morning we headed for Vegas. I’d been watching the weather forecasts which had been consistently showing a storm coming through California and Nevada on Friday. Now some of that weather looked like it might show up earlier. I was able to get minimum instrument altitude (MIA/MVA) maps from github, where some Bay Area flyer and programmer has posted python code and current FAA XML maps translated into KML. These can be imported directly into Foreflight, so I could pick out a VFR route that would allow me to get an IFR clearance if needed at reasonable altitudes (preferably below 12K). Our slightly indirect route headed most of the way back to Page before turning west towards Henderson (HND). We flew over the northern portion of Lake Powell avoiding some higher ridges to the north. There was cumulus around 12K or a little higher, with some virga. Cruising along at 10.5K we watched the autopilot constantly retrimming to maintain altitude as we hit up- and down-drafts. 

Delicate Arch, Mt Waas in the background.

Crossing into Arizona with the clouds getting thicker and after flying through some green and yellow on the Nexrad map, we saw an approaching wall of rain. I could probably have descended to keep ground visibility, but instead I got a pop-up IFR clearance to take us through what turned out to be a pretty mild (cold?) front. After getting through the rain, the sky was completely clear and I canceled IFR. Nearing LAS we were cleared into the Bravo and vectored around to the southeast. We stayed high until we crossed a ridge between Boulder City and Henderson (imaginatively called “The Ridge” and topping out over 5K), after which I chopped and dropped to get down to Henderson at 2500’.

A northern tributary of Lake Powell. 

HND is a busy GA airport with lots of jets parked on the ramp. I had been in touch with a ski buddy (SH) who lives there (working in what they euphemistically call “gaming”) and who came out to the FBO with his boss to meet us. The boss owns a C210 parked at HND and likes the café above the FBO so that’s where we had lunch. The boss was very interested in the aviation details of our adventure and shared his favorite destinations, which included Big Bear – a bit far from the Bay Area but one I’d like to visit. 

After lunch SH drove us up to the strip, where we’d decided to stay at the Treasure Island casino/hotel. It was fine. The crush of tourists and hucksters on the strip is not pleasant, but we found a hold’em tournament that afternoon, followed by our regular Thursday “home” game (online and with the help of zoom). We had planned to return home the next day, Friday, but the forecasts had been showing lousy weather that day, with rain, possible thunderstorms and possible lower-level icing. The forecasts stayed consistent, and Friday morning – despite a strong temptation to get out early (before the worst of the storm hit) and take a southerly route around the Sierras – the combination of predicted strong surface winds and possible T-storms motivated us to wait a day. Below is what we saw on weather radar early in the afternoon while we played in more hold’em tournaments and cash games. SH met us that evening and took us to a reasonable and very good bbq place in an alley across from Caesar’s.

Weather radar on Friday the 26th

By Saturday morning the storm had moved through, the weather was clear, winds over the Sierras were again light, and our tie-downs still secure. We took off, almost retracing our route from Friday a week earlier. On climbout from HND we got a Bravo clearance without asking, but were then immediately given an urgent turn and eventually a 360 by the controller when we had apparently turned into one of the arrival paths. After that minor excitement the rest of the flight was routine, past Death Valley, Bishop, Mono Lake, over the Tioga Pass and Yosemite. Except for some slight adjustments near Bishop, we stayed on the programmed route and the AP handled everything. All I had to do was keep the fuel balanced, monitor the CHTs and occasionally change frequencies. But the scenery is spectacular and I wasn’t bored. We crossed back into the central valley and were on the ground in Concord before 1pm. The 3.5 hours of flying used only about half the fuel aboard. Drinking neither coffee or tea before we launched helped too.

Total trip: 9 days, 2365 miles, 17.5 hours on the tach. 

Over the Sierras to Mammoth Lake

 [September 2023]

We made this trip to June Lake in NRI's fixed gear 182, newly upgraded with a Garmin AP, which makes travel so much more relaxing. I've only ventured over the Sierras when the winds are light. One of my instructors - I can't remember which - suggested 20kt as an upper limit for winds aloft across the summit. Any more than that and the turbulence and potentially downdrafts start to get unpleasant. 

On this trip we went over Yosemite valley with El Cap off the left wing, then up past Half Dome to Tuolumne meadows and the Tioga pass. Those wiggles in the route going over the summit are mostly about avoiding the higher terrain. Having done this trip now three times I think I could do it without GPS guidance, but I still preferred to program the GTN with all the waypoints, which I figured out in Foreflight using Waypoint/Radial/Distance off of FRA and KMMH. In total there are 7 waypoints going over the top., for which I had us up at 12.5K for terrain clearance of at least 2K. Once you get to the Tioga pass itself you're going from terrain with 13K peaks around you to looking out at Mono Lake far below at 6K.

Mammoth Lakes has a single runway, no tower and a hospitable little FBO. We gathered all our stuff, got a ride from the line guy to the car rental counter, where we ran into a problem of my making, trying to save on the car rental by rebooking at the last minute, only to find when we got there that reservations with less than 48 hours lead time are not guaranteed.

After getting the car situation straightened out we headed over to the town of June Lake where we stayed in a comfortable motel-ish lodge. After settling in, the next order of business was heading over to Wild Willy's Hot Spring, just southeast of the airstrip. It's an open site about a 1/4 mile down a boardwalk from a parking area at the end of a gravel road. There were lots of people there, but the semi-natural pool we chose for our soak wasn't too crowded. Surreptitious parting photo below. 

The others there were mostly young people who'd just finished a marathon-length trail race in the mountains. They were mainly Europeans plus one American, coincidentally from Jackson Hole and who knew people who knew Anna. The Europeans were from Italy, Romania, France, Norway, Finland and I can't remember where else. The Mammoth run was the last of an annual series of races, the first two of which were in the Alps, the third in Colorado. Next year they said the group that puts these on will be adding two more in Asia somewhere - probably one in Japan and one somewhere else.

Next day we went for a somewhat strenuous hike up to Gem lake, about 6 miles total out & back. Then another visit to Wild Willy's, followed by dinner in Mammoth at a very good Cuban-Puerto Rican place called Dos Alas. 

Day 3 was the return flight. I wanted to get up to 12.5K again for the mountain crossing, but at about 10K, as we buzzed along near the mountains we'd hiked the day before, I found that I couldn't get the plane to climb. Our track shows the groundspeed dropping to ~90kts with no climb. I had the plane very nose high as the speed bled off, before I finally realized that we were just caught in a fairly strong downdraft from the ~20kt winds over the summit. Turning away from the mountains for a bit fixed the problem. The rest of the return flight was pretty routine - at any rate I no longer remember anything about it.

Trip to Grand Canyon & Sedona

[December 2021]

Route: KCCR - KBIH - KFLG - L41 - KFLG - KSEZ - L71 - KCCR

With Catherine, who supported my taking up flying and is now paying the price, we loaded up N21348 and set off for Flagstaff, AZ, for a long weekend visit to the Grand Canyon and vicinity. This was by far my longest trip yet and tested the limits of my endurance and our bladders. Our plan was to fly to Flagstaff on Thursday, drive to the Grand Canyon on Friday for a day hike, fly over the GC to Marble Canyon airstrip on Saturday, then head home with a stop for brunch in Sedona on Sunday. Lots of spectacular scenery, a few days in the hip outdoorsy college town of Flagstaff and a lot of flying time. We had perfect weather, and I didn’t mind that there was no opportunity to use my shiny new instrument rating.

I had originally planned the outbound leg around the south end of the Sierras through the Trona Gap (a 4 mile wide corridor between two restricted airspaces), in order to avoid too much high altitude mountain flying and the associated turbulence, rollers and need for O2. (There was no way to avoid a lot of mountainous terrain on this trip, but none of it requires altitudes over 11.5K if you don’t go over the Sierras.) However, as the trip got closer and I started watching the weather forecasts, it looked like the winds would be extremely benign over the summit, and I switched to the shorter and much more scenic route over Yosemite and the Tioga Pass. I arranged with Mike C. to get the club’s oxygen bottle (which apparently hasn’t seen use for a long time and whose accompanying plastic tubing has decayed to near unusability), got it filled at PSA and figured out how to jerry rig a connection to my cannula. (I had one for my wife but she chose not to use it.) I’ve hiked at over 14K in the last decade so I wasn’t too worried about my ability to function, but also didn’t want to take needless risks. The first stage of my planned route was over Hetch Hetchy (and the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, so making this trip a Grand Canyon twofer), Tuolumne Meadows, navigating the Tioga Pass at 12.5K, then descending to Bishop for refueling and a picnic lunch.

The departure day was forecast clear but with tule fog sticking around until fairly late. In the event the field was VFR by 9am. With delays for picking up the oxygen and figuring out how to hook it up, we took off around 10:30 and climbed to 11.5K eastbound across the central valley. I started watching my oxygen level and as it hit the low 80s I turned on the supply, which quickly took me up to 99. (I can’t say I felt any different.) The route was pretty direct until reaching Tuolumne Meadows. Approaching the high country we climbed another 1000’ which gave plenty of clearance, though there are nearby ridges and peaks at over 13K. Going over Tuolumne Meadows we watched a faster plane zoom past 1000’ below, dodging and weaving to avoid terrain. We lost sight of him and he might have gone through Buckeye Pass to the north. The first photo below shows the view towards Half Dome and Mt. Starr King from over Tuolumne Meadows. Somewhere around here Oakland Center lost us on radar & cut us loose.

After Tuolumne Meadows, we made a couple of sharp turns to get through the Tioga Pass. (I had programmed those into the GTN with VOR/radial/distance user waypoints.) The photo below shows the east side of the Tioga Pass from the passenger seat, with Mono Lake in the distance. You can just make out the road on the north side of the canyon. Just after this spot we turned right to drop down that canyon. 

The flight down the east side of the mountains, past Mammoth Lakes to Bishop was uneventful. There was a light breeze from the north, so I took us around to land on 30. We sat by the FBO and ate our picnic lunch. (There’s a Thai restaurant on the field but it was closed.) I then had my first go at self-fueling, and after a couple of miscues got the plane topped up for the next, longer leg.

The next segment took us south of the restricted areas, over the northern end of Death Valley, and eastward towards Vegas. We took off from Bishop paralleling the mountains on the east flank of the Owens Valley, gaining enough altitude to turn southeast, then crossing the MOAs. The desert looked pretty harsh & forbidding, but at least there was no shortage of flat-looking areas for emergency outs. 

I had trouble getting flight following in the area. I was able to reach Joshua Control, but they said they had no radar coverage at my altitude (9.5K). Eventually I got in touch with LA Center about 50nm west of LAS. Soon after, approach asked my intentions and gave me a Bravo transition unasked. We flew directly over KLAS and headed for the Hoover Dam. Unfortunately that took us right into the arrivals, and approach turned us to the south and kept us high, so we weren’t able to get a closeup look at the dam, though it still looked pretty impressive from altitude. We continued northeast along the edge of Lake Mead, then turned southeast to cross the western end of the Grand Canyon. The sun was already low so we got spectacular colors on the canyon walls. You can just make out the Colorado at the bottom of the inner canyon here.

The sun went down before we made KFLG, and I had a little reminder of the difficulty of finding an unfamiliar field in the dark. Between the airport’s beacon and the moving map with the pink line for visual approach, though, it wasn’t a real problem. KFLG is a class D field and as far as I could tell it was the same controller on the radio for both tower and ground on all four interactions we had. He was, uh, not a micromanager. (He didn’t want me to bother him on the ground frequency once I got off the runway, and three days later he didn’t really care how I left the area.) 

We parked at the FBO (Wiseman Aviation) where the fuel is expensive but the linemen are helpful and friendly. The kid on duty helped us with our luggage, then took us on his cart on the roundabout route over to the main terminal where we’d arranged a car rental. 

The next day was on the ground: we drove up to the Canyon & hiked down the South Kaibab trail, a bit less than half way to the river (about 2200’ vertical). That got us just below ONeill’s butte, the fin sticking up on the lower part of the ridge in the picture below. It’s a spectacular hike, easily doable in a few hours down & back on a mild day. Just to give an idea, the first marked stop on the trail is called “Ooh Aah Point”. I think the experience of seeing the Canyon can be summarized by saying that it’s mind boggling even if you expect your mind to be boggled.

After the hike back up, we strolled along the rim until sunset watching the light and colors change, then got on the road for the 90 minute drive back to Flagstaff. Just before we got to the town, Catherine had been looking out at the now pitch dark sky and exclaimed first “that’s weird” then “whoa, what’s that?” then “stop the car”. I pulled over, got out & looked up to see a line of SpaceX Starlink satellites crossing the sky. They looked something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzAVq9amZSI&t=0s. It was very surreal - impossible to tell how high or how fast they were moving, but they were pretty unmistakable and very bright. No wonder the professional astronomers working with the billion dollar telescopes & looking at faint ancient light are upset…

Day 3 we got an early start – up at 6:30, quick breakfast, then off to the airport. I wanted to fly up to Marble Canyon (L41), a paved strip down below the rim of the Canyon, and Catherine wanted time later in the day to visit some terrestrial attractions in town. We got to the airport by 8ish, only to find the plane covered in frost. Having just finished my instrument training, I was duly concerned about the effects of even a bit of frost on the wings & control surfaces, so we spent a half hour with paper towels and ladder cleaning off the wings & tail. About the time the sun was finally warming the surfaces above freezing, we got in & tried to get going. No dice. The engine wouldn’t start. After about 10 tries where the engine would turn over a few times & seem to catch before quitting, we finally got help from a lineman who brought over a preheater, which worked sort of like a little jet engine blowing hot diesel exhaust at the air intakes. After fifteen minutes it started right up. So, an hour or so later than planned, we headed off to cross the Canyon & then land in it. 

The GC has its own FARs, mainly for commercial tour operators, but also for GA, on where you can fly and at what altitude. The sectional shows north/south “corridors” where you can cross, with self-announce on entry & exit. We took the Dragon corridor north at 11.5K, then dropping to 9.5K as we continued up the Marble Canyon Sector. L41 is up at the northern end of the National Park area at 3600’ elevation, well below the Canyon rim at around 7K. The flight rules in the area allow planes to descend below 3K AGL “within 3 miles of the airport”. That’s not a lot of room for a normal descent. Instead, I got more or less over the field then did a wide spiraling descent. Here’s the track log. That jog at the start was to try to catch a good view of the famous Horseshoe Bend oxbow just to the north. Turns out I was off by one oxbow & the one I was looking for is further to the north. 

This was the view from the right window as we descended below the rim. 

The airstrip is narrow and gave us a good spine massage on landing. The “ramp” is a wider paved area at the north end, near a motel, restaurant and tourist shop run by local Navajo. Here’s our worthy steed after shutdown.

We crossed the road to the restaurant and had lunch. While we were there another plane landed & this was what we saw when we left.

The owner had just bought this very pretty Cirrus SR50 & finished his type training a few weeks earlier. His most memorable comment: “the runway was bumpier than I expected.” 

We got back airborne, circled once to gain required altitude then took off to the south, returning to Flagstaff through Zuni corridor at 10.5K. Even in the off season there was a steady stream of helicopter tours whizzing along far below.

Back at the field we buttoned up the plane again and headed off to check out the Museum of Northern Arizona, which has some nicely put together displays of cultural artifacts and informational panels about the past and present of the natives of the Four Corners area (Navajo, Hopi, Ute and Zuni). Worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.

Finally, on Sunday we planned to make a later start, waiting until the frost melted and hopefully we wouldn’t need to have the FBO pull out its expensive hot-air-blower to get the plane started. Arriving at the field around 9am, the frost was indeed already mostly gone, and the engine caught on the second try. Cleared by the tower for a downwind departure from runway 3, we set off for the short downhill flight to Sedona. (Ground: “say direction of departure”; Me: “southbound”; Ground: “roger”. Me after runup: “Tower, N21348 ready to go, requesting downwind departure.” Tower, same guy: “Runway 3, cleared for takeoff”. Me: “Do you want me on a left or right downwind?” Tower: “That’s entirely up to you”.) 

Sedona is just 18 nm to the south, so it was a very short hop. KFLG is at 7000’, while Sedona is at just 4800’, so I only climbed to about 1500’ AGL, leveling off briefly before the descent. Sedona is in kind of a wide blind canyon, with high mesas and cliffs on three sides. Here’s the view off one wing on the approach. 

The airport is itself on a mesa several hundred feet above town, with the runway ending in cliffs at either end. The Foreflight airport information page shows pattern altitude as being 7000’ (2100 AGL) which I thought was really weird, but what do I know? Turns out that’s only for jets. Had I looked more carefully I would have noticed the little right arrow next to the 7000’ giving a popup showing “Light Aircraft: 6000 MSL”. Anyway, it wasn’t a busy day and my unconventional descent through the pattern (more or less continuous from cruise) worked out ok. This strip is known for its unusual visuals and its downdrafts on short final, but the winds were benign and I made my only greaser landing of the whole trip. We had breakfast at the Mesa Grill, just off the ramp. 

Here’s a view of the airstrip as we left. The red rock formations of the area are spectacular & our piddly phone camera photos can’t do them justice. 

The return flight was much less inspiring than the outbound one. Winds over the Sierras had picked up and were over 30kts at 14K. I had in any case planned for the southern route, figuring that like when we came back from Joshua Tree in the spring, the Edwards AFB restricted area would be open on a Sunday cutting off a good chunk of detour to the south or the complexity of navigating the Trona Gap. Crossing the California border, I asked the Center controller whether I’d be able to transition R-2515. He came back quickly in the negative saying it was “hot” all the time. Something about his reply made me suspect that he hadn’t actually checked. But I turned slightly to pass to the south of the area. A short while later, I had a different controller and asked her the same question. She immediately replied “that will be no problem”. So I turned back to a  more northerly heading and a bit later with Joshua Control got “cleared through R-2515, maintain at or above 7000’.” Just high enough so you’d need a really good camera to get a good photo of the super-secret planes they’re testing there to try to break the sound barrier. On the far side of the restricted area we stopped at California City Muni (L71) just at the foot of the Tehachapis, filled up on cheap gas for the last leg and had a bio break.

Leaving L71 we paralleled the mountains there ‘til we were able to climb enough to get over the ridgeline, which rises steeply over 5000’ from the airport elevation. We crossed the mountains at 8.5K pointed towards home. Crossing into the central valley, we looked down at solid white, broken only by the Sierras rising up to the east and a faint smudge of coastal mountains far to the west. The overcast (tops around 2000’) remained until we were nearly home. METARs showed IFR to LIFR all the way up. (There was a fatal crash of a Bonanza leaving KVIS IFR a few hours later.) Not much to see, though we did catch a “glory” off the right wing at one point. Stiff winds cost us about 20kts of ground speed.

Getting back with Norcal and close to home, we started getting bossed around again. (“Skylane 348, begin your VFR descent. Remain at or below 4,500.”) Back on the ground at KCCR, total Hobbs time for the entire trip: just over 13 hours. It was a lot of hands-on flying in a few days and pretty tiring. But Northern Arizona is spectacularly beautiful, Flagstaff was charming and had decent food and lively street life, and the trip over the Sierras was one I’ve wanted to do since getting my PPL. Highly recommended.

* Most photos were shot by Catherine on her iphone. A few by me on my non-iphone.

Trip to Washington state, the Olympic Peninsula and the San Juans

[Trip dates August 26-28, 2022.]

Full route itinerary: KCCR - KLMT - 0S9 - KORS - 0S9 - KOLM - KRBG - KCCR. 13+ hrs on the Hobbs.

With Catherine back East for a week, I decided to embark on a longish trip to the Northwest corner of the lower 48 – an area I’ve long wanted to visit, but with weather that I wouldn’t have ventured before getting my instrument rating last fall. Joined by poker pal JT, I set off for Port Townsend and Olympia, Washington, to visit mutual friends, Bay Area transplants we’ve kept up with over the years. The full track over the 3 days is to the left, over a VFR sectional. 

We left around 9:30 on Friday morning in N21348, a C182, enjoying the recently installed G5 and the luxury of not having to reset the DG every 15 minutes. We headed slightly NW from CCR on a route taking us past Mt Shasta, and on to Klamath Falls/Crater Lake for refueling, bathroom break and lunch. If you look closely, you can see some wiggles in the flight track around Redding, where I was giving JT slow flight and stall lessons. 

Klamath is a class D with a lot of military training, though none was happening while we were there.

Leaving KLMT we turned back to the NW, passing Crater Lake and skirting the edge of a fire-fighting TFR. We were initially at 10.5K, but popped up to just under 12.5 for a little while to get above a layer of cumulus and mountain turbulence. I had my pulse oximeter going & could see quite a drop going from 10.5 to 12.5, so we didn’t stay there very long. After passing south of the TFR, we turned more northerly, passing Eugene, Corvallis and Portland on the left and getting great views of the Cascade volcanoes to the right. 

I had been watching the weather intently during the previous week, hoping to get a clear day for a low altitude flyby over Seattle on the way north to Port Townsend. Trying to figure out how to make sightseeing around the SEA class B work, I benefitted from Cunningham’s law: “the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer”. I posted a proposed route on reddit and asked for feedback, which came quickly: my idea was stupid, it would never work, and here’s what I should do instead. I also discovered that the Boeing Field controllers have a “contact a controller” link on their facebook page & asked for & quickly got details about transitioning through the BFI airspace. 

Mt St Helens, I think (might be Mt Adams)

In the event, on Friday morning the weather in the Seattle area was forecast to be not great, with several cloud layers and low stratus starting around Portland. I filed an IFR plan before we left, starting from a waypoint abeam Mt. St. Helens up to 0S9 (Jefferson County International), planning to activate it only if we had to. When we got close to Portland it was evident that it would be necessary – the area had solid undercast and we could see lots of puffy clouds ahead, so I picked up the clearance from Seattle Center. They routed us up the west side of Puget Sound where I got some rare time in actual IMC. It was mostly quick hits, in & out of cumulus and only a little bumpy. Not too many sights to see on the last leg, at least for me, though JT was enjoying looking at the islands passing down below when we could see them.

Seattle kept us at 8K before handing us off to Whidbey Approach just a few miles short of the field, denying my request for lower. JeffCo has only one approach, the RNAV-A, which is aligned with runway 9 and has a normal descent angle (though it’s labeled “N/A” for some reason), so I assume it’s circling-only because it doesn’t have the right runway markings. (I’m asking for another round of Cunningham’s law here I think.) The controller gave me “direct JAWBN, direct YAYUB, cross JAWBN yadda yadda cleared approach” when we were just a few miles out, leaving me scrambling because JAWBN is not a waypoint on the procedure, though it is shown on the approach plate as a feeder fix off an airway, which we were not on. With some minor missteps, we got aligned with the transition & headed down to the procedure turn at the IAF in plenty of time. (Our friend CK, out at the airport to meet us & watching our flight path on flightradar24 was a bit mystified and thought we were mistakenly heading for Port Angeles, an hour’s drive down the road.) We broke out around 2000 feet, well above the FAF, so despite all the IMC I don’t get to log the approach for currency.

After our Port Townsend friend CK was finished critiquing my landing (“If you’d landed in the touchdown zone you could have made the first taxiway!”) he took us to a very pleasant pub in the old “lower” town by the harbor, where I made quick work of the pint I felt I’d earned. According to CK, the town was the original harbor for the Seattle area but quickly lost out to Seattle/Tacoma when the railway ended there instead of coming all the way out the Olympic peninsula. It has a waterfront area about which you read the same kinds of stories as from SF’s Barbary Coast days (e.g., drunks waking up on a boat to Shanghai) and a “respectable” churchy uptown on the bluffs with some nice old mansions of the local gentry, which now include CK and his wife KK.

The Salish Sea (the name of the whole watery region) has maybe more microclimates than the Bay Area. Saturday dawned with low overcast in Port Townsend, and a very variable forecast for the rest of the day, but mostly clear up towards the San Juan Islands. The three of us (me, JT, CK) decided to try our luck flying up to Orcas Island for lunch. We found the airport lot nearly full – there’s a little restaurant on the field (the Spruce Goose) that’s supposed to have the best pie in the area.

Somewhere in the San Juans

I got a clearance from Whidbey Approach to get us going up through the low stratus (a few hundred feet thick with a base around 1K), found more puffy cumulus above, and quickly got into clear air as we headed north. Even though Orcas is in the US, the airspace is controlled by Victoria Terminal (which should be the name of a character in a William Gibson novel). After the handoff from Whidbey, we quickly cancelled and dropped in to the strip at the north end of the island. So I can now say I’ve talked to a Canadian controller (who politely didn’t correct my calling her “Victoria Approach”).

A short 20 minute walk got us to Eastsound, a harbor town on the south side of the north end of the island (shaped like a ש  with the bottom to the north). After lunch, checking out the farmers’ market and snacking on all the ripe blackberries growing along the path, we got airborne again & had a 30 minute tour of the San Juans before heading back to JeffCo. The direct route across San Juan or Lopez Island to the Olympic Peninsula crosses about 20 miles of open water, so I took a land-hugging route along Whidbey Island through the Naval Air Station’s class C. On Friday I’d heard other GA pilots being told to stay out of the Charlie, but I guess there’s less happening on the weekend, and I got no peep when I headed for the shoreline. The islands are amazingly beautiful. CK does a lot of sailing in the area and was really enjoying the 182’s-eye view from above. He showed his appreciation by offering praise for my landing back at 0S9: “Nice. But aren’t you supposed to land straight?”

Sunday dawned mostly clear in Port Townsend, but the east side of Puget Sound down to Olympia had a broken layer, nixing the idea of a Seattle flyby on the way south. CK dropped us back at the field and I filed another IFR plan, this time picking it up in the air. By the time we got close to Olympia, where our other friends live, it was CAVU, but I flew the approach anyway. The jagged Olympic range was a spectacular contrast with the network of islands, inlets and waterways on our route. 

After second breakfast with our Olympia friends BW and RW we launched for the last long legs home. We made one stop in Roseburg for bathroom break & refueling then quickly got going again. Best gas prices on the trip, in case anyone’s headed up that way. South of RBG we passed a TFR and a towering column of smoke from a fire in southern Oregon near the California border. The next 50-odd miles were pretty murky. Our route took us over terrain up to almost 8K and it started getting bumpy at 9.5k. Climbing another 2000 feet smoothed things out for the rest of the ride and got us above a lot of the smoke. Somewhere in there over rugged terrain we picked up an ELT signal on 121.5, which I relayed to the controller.

We soon passed the Trinity Alps off to the west and could see Shasta again off to the right. Another 90 minutes had us back in Concord. Total distance ~1400 nm. 13+ on the Hobbs. Not a cheap outing, and a lot of time in the seat, but lots of fun.

Thanks to JT for the photos.

From now on this is going to be a Flying Blog

Mostly a place to keep a record of interesting places to go, good routes and Stuff that Happened.

First post - my new favorite route from Concord to Half Moon Bay. I found this via a youtube video but haven't seen it described anywhere in detail. Yet based on controller familiarity it seems to be well known. [Correction: this is the SW Bay Flyway shown on the SF FLY chart.] From Concord, the route goes through the Oakland Charlie directly over the field, then the San Mateo bridge midspan, through the SQL Delta and then a climb over the peninsula ridge before descending to HAF. It's pretty much the shortest route outside the SFO Bravo. If you're programming it into your navigator, it's KCCR - OAK - VPMID - KSQL - KHAF.  The OAK waypoint is not exactly right - the instruction will be to cross the Coliseum then head for the 30 numbers (assuming, as is essentially always the case in nice weather, that OAK is landing to the northwest). I now have those spots set up as VOR/radial/distance waypoints in Foreflight. But you're navigating VFR, so you can adjust as needed without the programming.

Unusually, the first call leaving CCR is to OAK tower (north, the GA one), not NorCal. My habit is to climb to 3K out of CCR [update: 2.5K is sufficient] and listen on the OAK tower frequency as soon as I'm clear of the CCR Delta. You can only hear the pilot side until getting above 2K and within about 15 miles. Once you hear the tower, call them up. They'll descend you to 2K approaching the field. Nearing the coliseum they'll switch you to the south tower which will send you over the 30 #'s, descend you to 1.4K & send you to the midspan. Before reaching the bridge, they'll ship you to SQL for that transition. SQL's D goes right up to the B shelf. My personal custom is to ask for the transition. It's never been denied. I suppose worst case if they refuse entry you could turn south and go through the gap between SQL and PAO airspace.

The B shelf is at 1.5K along that stretch. Very likely you'll cross under SFO arrivals, often two landing in parallel on 28L & R. If they're not too busy, SQL may offer to switch you to NorCal, but by the time you cross over there you're nearly at HAF so I no longer bother. Leaving that B shelf, you can now climb to 2.5 or 3K to cross the ridgeline. 

Lots of altitude changes but very scenic. Here is a recent track log.

I'm Not Worried About the Drought

With an El Niño year looming I'm optimistically looking forward to a great ski season. Though the drought may be over shortly, we've still been doing our small part to reduce water use, cutting our yard watering by 40% since 2013. There's a lot of brown out there now. Other Californians now have about 30 gallons per day more from our common supply. You're welcome.

Just today I read a story about the impending disappearance of the Ogallalla aquifer east of the Rockies, due to the fact that plains farmers have been pumping water out of it 10 times faster than its natural recharge rate. That's just the latest in a regular drumbeat of scary stories about how, thanks to the tragedy of the commons (where no individual farmer has any incentive to conserve, because his neighbor's pumps will drain the same water source as his), the aquifers of the West will soon be gone. The other day someone brought up the seemingly outrageous amount of water used by almonds, and the fact that California farmers in some areas are still planting new trees, even as others have to let theirs die.

Someone else asked me recently whether I was worried. I'm not. It's a commonplace observation that urban users account for only 20% of the total water used in California. And much of that goes to water peoples' yards in the hotter inland areas. The densest urban areas account for a small fraction of the state's total. So we're really not at risk of running out in the parts of the state where people want to live and where most of the economic activity happens.

What might happen (unless the farmers can get past their libertarian principles and work together) is that some farms will be abandoned and some foods will get more expensive. Probably not by much, though. (Although California is now the almond capital of the world, it didn't used to be, and I don't remember almonds being unaffordable when they were part of my regular snack supply as an impoverished grad student in the early '80s.) But even if some items get much more expensive, for most of us and for most of these items, their cost is just not that big a part of our budget. (I know there are lots of food-insecure people out there. I don't think they're mainly buying almonds and local beef. There are many places in the world that can produce caloric staples cheaply, and we can import all that stuff. I'm pretty sure I read a year or two ago that much of our cheap ground beef already comes from South America.) If parts of the plains turn to desert and the western side of the Central Valley has to be abandoned for farming, so be it. Bummer for those independent-spirited farmers, but I don't see why urban Californians should be concerned, other than in the general sense of being sympathetic about someone else's misfortune.

People have this notion that we must "do something" about the drought. Well, in principle a long enough drought would make the urban areas uninhabitable. But we're pretty far from that scenario. In any case there's little we can or need to do about that long term right now -- we don't even know if it's coming. Urbanites can cut back on their water use, but that won't help the farmers. And if the farmers refuse to work together to make efficient use of their collective groundwater resource, they're the main ones who will suffer the consequences. Although California has new laws that will eventually limit and manage groundwater use, lobbying by agribiz produced legislation that doesn't fully take effect for another 25 years. If the primary victims of the drought don't want to work together to solve their problem, that doesn't make it my problem.

So my main worry is that the El Niño won't materialize, and it'll be another crappy ski season. Please don't hit me.

A eulogy for Tammy

In her classroom. Photo by Jennifer Kelleher, one of her students.

When Tammy was a baby, I played peek-a-boo with her and got big laughs. In memory, her laughter was already outsized.

When she was 3 she wanted to be a ballerina. I gave her my red plastic fireman's hat and told her that if she wore that she'd be even better: a ballerina clerk. She wore it for days.

Don't ask what it meant. It was just early days of brotherly torture. But she wasn't defenseless. When she was 9 or 10, I got on the phone extension while she was talking with a friend. She responded with one of the most devastating insults one could deliver in our house: she said I was just like Nixon because I bugged people on the phone.

I told her she should credit me for her great sense of humor on the grounds that she had to have one in order to survive being my little sister. But that was just more teasing. Even in the last year, as she fought the disease and suffered the effects of the treatment, she'd reward a phone call with laughs and without complaints.

Witnessing the outpouring of love and affection she's received over the last few months reminds me of a lesson of that great 20th century american philosopher, The Wizard of Oz. As he told the Tin Man: Your heart is judged not by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others. (He also said that hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.) Tammy's small frame held a huge heart.

Rest in peace, Tammy.