More Bush Flying

Right after takeoff

Thunderstorm off to the west

Approaching the tundra area.  We're looking for an opening up ahead to enter the mountain range and look for gravel strips to land on.

Rain at 2500' MSL

That's John.  He's got the revolver, I have the bear spray.  We had to walk the entire distance of the strip in the rain before we could taxi back and take back off.  It poured rain the whole time.

After Departure from the gravel air strip, we exited through a pass back toward the valley and started looking for our airport (PATK), to land.

I headed down to PATK at 4:00 as we had arranged.  On arrival there, it was raining really hard and the visibility was questionable.  Lance was working with Kelsie in the shop on planning for her first Cross Country.  Kelsie is up here from Idaho for the summer.  It's her second summer here.  She works two jobs, one at the Lodge and one at Nagley's store in town.  She takes lessons 3 times a week. Below is a photo of Lance and Kelsie in the shop area.  Kelsie is figuring out her log sheet for her first Cross Country Flight.  It was to be to Palmer, AK.  The weather stopped it from happening.  Nav-Log sheets are a lot of work and it can be very frustrating doing all the calculations for the flight.  I remember it is exhausting work.  You can do it all on computer now but as a student, you have to do all calculations manually.

John, Lance, and I debated whether John and I could take off for the foot hills of the Talkeetna Mountain with the weather the way it was.  It now is thundering and the rain is pounding.  We walked through the rain to Talkeetna Air Service.  An Otter (about an 8 passenger turbo powered plane that takes people to the glacier) had just returned from Mt. Mckinley.  We asked the pilot what he thought of us heading up to Dollar Creek, in the foothills of the glaciers.  He said it was fairly clear up on the mountain but many of the passes were cloudy.  Another Pilot from Talkeetna Air Service, that had just returned, confirmed the same.  After some debate, we decided to head out and see how far we could get.  If one pass was closed, we could try another, and the thunderstorm was moving out of the area of PATK so we could always turn around and fly back to home base.  I took several pictures and several movies.  I cannot get the movies to load but will share this experience in pictures with you now.  It is indescribable and the pictures do not do it justice.

Gotta Go!  I'll update more details about the first landing in the mountains and my experiences today later on.