Alaska trip diary

Alaska trip diary:

Bill McNabb, a pilot friend of mine and I, have been planning a flying trip across the United States, up the west coast of Alaska, to visit Seward and Denali, then down through the Yukon Territory, across British Columbia, then back from Montana to Dayton, Ohio our starting point. After much planning and preparation we set out on our journey. Note that all times show below are hobbs meter time or engine running time not time in the air.

June 27, 2010 Sunday

(KMGY to KNCU 4.8 hours, KNCU to KLAR 3.9 hours)

Thunderstorms required a complete re-plan of our first and second leg, which caused us to be late getting into the air, not a good way to start. Our original plan called for us to fly to Des Moines, but the storm was large, so we had to go south first. We fly southwest to Chanute Kansas, bucked headwinds the whole trip. We have lunch at Grand Ma’s sub and yogurt shop down town, pretty quiet downtown on a Sunday. Next it’s North West direct to Laramie headwinds most  all the way. No transportation available so we hitched a ride with a traveling anesthesiologist from the airport, nice guy, from Steam Boat Springs. We have pizza at the hotel, 2 hour time difference so we hit the sack early local time.

June 28, 2010 Monday

(KLAR to KBOI 4.0 Hours, KBOI to KBLI 3.3 hours)

Beautiful day in Laramie, talked to a nice couple with five children driving to Yellowstone at breakfast. They were fascinated with our trip. Hotel manager drove us to airport. Her daughter, Heidi, is in Denali and maybe we can look her up. We leave on time and climb to fourteen thousand feet and the new oxygen system works great. Continental divide is spectacular so we snap a few images and we are cleared direct KBOI. We Land in Boise and its very hot, 33C in fact. Lunch at the Cracker Barrel, refuel and take off for Bellingham. We make a shallow climb to keep the engine temps. below red line. At the Cascades, Yakima is below, we run into clouds and turbulence. We miss the Mount Rainer photo op. and get a new clearance right over Seattle, but who would know, its solid clouds. We get ready for the instrument approach, but break out at about 2500 and after a little difficulty finding the airport we make an uneventful landing.

We secure the airplane, the FBO loans us an ancient truck and we are off to the hotel. After check in then it’s a sea food dinner at Anthony’s a local chain with a wonderful harbor view.

June 29, 2010 Tuesday

I wake up early and get up at 5:00 AM local with the intention of updating my trip log, but check the weather first. Oh, oh things don’t look good for the trip up the coast to Ketchikan. Low ceilings, icing level at five thousand feet with some high terrain to traverse are the biggest problems. Bill and I meet for breakfast and start looking at all the options. We consult with US Flight Services, look at the computer weather, call Sitka Alaska Flight Service and finally call Canada Flight service. We keep getting the same answer, lousy flying weather on the west coast of Alaska, too much risk, without reasonable ways out. We finally throw in the towel and start thinking about plan B. We ask Canada Flight Service about and inland route since Wednesday weather doesn’t look much better. The advice is encouraging so we start planning to essentially fly our return route up to Anchorage,  then we can decide if we rejoin our original itinerary on Thursday skipping Ketchikan or further modify our plans.  It’s worth a shot, so we get on the computer and start the planning which takes us into the early afternoon. We then discover we have no way of printing out our flight plans, so it’s off to Best Buy to buy a printer. Then of course we need to file an eapis departure and arrival with the TSA so we must go out to the airplane to get Bills passport. We finally finish, planning, cancelling reservations and making new reservations to stay in Whitehorse on Wednesday. Its 6:30 PM time for a break then off to dinner. Now we can go to bed and pray to the weather God’s for good weather tomorrow. It’s been a long frustrating day, hopefully Wednesday will be better.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

(KBLI to PAKT 4.0 hours)

Oh, how fickle Mother Nature can be. Last thing I did before I went to sleep was look at the icing forecast again. It showed the sever icing moving inland over our new planned route. In the morning this in fact was the case, so we went back to our original plan to fly to Ketchikan. We still had to deal with low freezing levels and IFR at our destination, but it looked feasible and we could always turn back, since Bellingham was clear and sunny. We climbed out over beautiful Vancouver Island and the waters of British Columbia but soon were above the clouds at ten thousand feet. Not much flight seeing, but we were on are way to Alaska. The clouds came up to meet us and we started to pick up some ice, so we got a clearance to twelve thousand feet. The freezing level was five thousand feet and the forecast indicated that there would be layers and scattered clouds at our destination. As we neared Ketchikan, the forecast held true and we descended under Anchorage Center radar, and caught a glimpse of the airport, cancelled the instrument approach and dove for the deck through a hole in the clouds. Breaking out Ketchikan Flight Services advisory started called out traffic and there were sea planes everywhere.   “Three Beavers over the channel, an Otter taking off, etc. etc. and a Cirrus on right traffic to the airport” The traffic call was constant as I made a steep right turn between the hills to line up for landing, with seaplanes maneuvering all around. Adventures have to have excitement, right?

The airport at Ketchikan is interesting in that it has three levels, runway, terminal and parking. The levels are connected by a ramp that permits you to taxi down or up to the next level. The tie downs are concrete blocks that are brought to the plane by fork lift after you have parked.

We unloaded, caught the ferry to the town side of the channel and checked into the hotel. A quick lunch and we rented a car and headed to a place where sometimes bears can be seen catching salmon. We saw plenty of eagles and salmon but not a bear. We then visited the old section of town and then drove out to the Totem Park, which was very interesting. The afternoon was punctuated be intermittent rain showers and after one more look for bears we called it a day.

Checking the weather, it looked iffy for our trip to Seward tomorrow, so maybe we would still see the bears.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

(PAKT to PAYA 3.7 hours, PAYA to PANC 2.4 hours)

I got up early and started checking weather and situation normal for Alaska in July low freezing levels and cloud layers with light rain. I thought we could fly low and stay under the ice over the water so we wouldn’t have to worry about terrain clearance on our way to Yakutat, our refueling stop. At breakfast Bill had the same thought and we laid out a revised route to let us stay low. Seward weather looked questionable and has no instrument approaches we filed our second leg with the alternate of Anchorage. Anchorage looked good except for strong gusting winds and wind shear later in the day. We were now scrambling to make our 10:00 AM departure and haste does make waste. Bill forgot his jacket and we had to go back to the hotel, which caused us to miss the ferry causing us to lose an hour. We finally are off and climb up to six thousand and we are in the clouds but not picking up in ice. We get cleared to a little higher and our out of the clouds for a while. No flight seeing, except an occasional hole where we can see islands or the coast to our right. As we approach Yakutat, the clouds break up a little, but we make an instrument approach into, what turns out to be a fishing lodge with a big airport. We have lunch in the interesting old fishing lodge at the airport, pump our own self-serve gas and we launch for Seward in the rain and low clouds. We get up on top at six thousand feet for a while. Wow, sticking out of the clouds to the right are some big and beautiful mountains. Turns out we are going to see a lot of mountains sticking out of the clouds on this leg. The clouds climb up to meet us and we plow through clouds for about an hour, without ice. We check with Anchorage Center on Seward weather and it doesn’t sound good, and further more Anchorage radar coverage isn’t good enough to let us down, which makes the decision, we divert to our alternate. There are mountains all around sticking up through the clouds and McKinley off in the distance as we make our decent into Anchorage. There is lots of traffic and we are vectored around in the clouds as we are lined up for a visual approach to run way 14. The winds are as forecasted with airlines reporting 10 to 15 knot loss of speed on final. It’s a huge runway with a bunch of airlines waiting to take off as we make our decent, a little bumpy but we land and begin the 20 minute taxi to Signature Aviation. Signature gives us a ride to the main terminal and good old Hertz gets us into a SUV and we are off on the three hour drive to Seward. This turns out to be a bonus, since the scenery is spectacular.  We travel along the bay, then into the mountains, with mini glaciers, meadows, swamps, rivers, streams and forest the whole way into Seward. We pass the Seward airport as we enter town and have a laugh. It’s situated at the end of a fjord with mountains at either end with ribbons of mist covering the approach there was no way we would get in and it would  be tricky on a VFR day, good decision.  We check into our hotel, which turns out to make a Holiday Inn look like the Ritz, but it works. Halibut Cheeks for dinner on the dock and we start planning our next day. Bill wants to go fishing and I am interested in seeing the glaciers up close and personal. We hit the sack having finished a very interesting and oh yes it’s an adventure with a little bit of excitement.

 Friday, July 2, 2010

Looked out the window and guess what, it’s raining. I get on the phone and reserve space of a boat tour of Reserection Bay. I take Bill to his fishing charter then have breakfast at the Marina, where lots of boats are leaving for fishing. I have decided to see Seward, and the first stop is the Alaska Sea Life Center. Great display and it’s a very interesting aquarium. Proved that I was right in doing only warm water diving, more comfort and more species. I tour the town and then get ready for the boat trip. Seward is not big, but the town is bustling with Fourth of July tourist, fishermen and a big running event scheduled for the fourth. The boat trip is O.K. and I get to see some glaciers, wild life and chat with some very nice people. This was a good way to see the area and I think I have Seward pretty well figured out. Bill caught his limit of halibut and we have dinner after a full day. Tomorrow, the plan is to drive back to Anchorage and fly to Talkeetna, to see Denali (Mount McKinley).   We will see what Mother Nature serves up, but firsts a good night’s sleep.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

We look at the weather and it looks doubtful that we will fly from Anchorage to Talkeetna, besides we need the rental car. By the time we turn in the rental car, preflight and fly to Talkeetna we will be there driving, plus it raining and it looks worse as we head north east. Good decision, we probably could have made an approach, but not a sure thing and we make it fine to the Talkeetna Alaska Lodge. Nice place and a real contrast from the dump in Seward. After checking in and lunch we head to down town Talkeetna. This place definitely has not been over hyped. They said it was a block long and in fact was a block and a half. Quaint, but if you have seen one tourist shop you have seen them all. It’s raining off and on and generally dreary, which has been Alaska so far. We head back to the hotel for some R&R and Bill competes for the self-serve laundry and gets aced out until the wee hours. We have dinner, which is good and then I hit the hay since it’s a 6:00 AM departure for the drive to Denali tomorrow.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

We hit the road after picking up our box breakfast and some coffee for the two and a half drive to Denali National Park. Guess what it’s raining and cloudy again and this is supposed to be the dry part of Alaska. We get there and find out that the tour that we wanted has only one seat left, so I tell Bill to go for it. Seeing Denali is one of his prime objectives. He leaves on the bus for his 6 hour tour into the park. I am limited to the paved road which goes back 18 miles so I drive into the park in the light rain and reach the stopping point at Savage River. There’s a hiking trail and I hike along the river and find some good photo subjects. I head back and stop at a number of vista locations but its low clouds. Finally I stop at the park visitor center. There are ranger presentations and a great movie on Denali, so I play tourist and learn a lot of neat things. They have some great exhibits and I visit the gift shop, looking for a good picture of the great mountain. As I pay for the picture, I ask the cashier if there is a person named Heidi working there and he says yes, but it’s her day off. Just then the phone rings and he hands me the phone and it’s Heidi.  I chat with the daughter of the lady who gave us a ride to the airport in Laramie and she is pleased that I passed on her mother’s hello. Small world and sometimes the coincidences are downright scary. I then buy a sandwich and drive back to one of the mountain viewing spots because something strange has happened, I actually saw the sun and some patches of blue sky in Alaska. Nice lunch communing with nature, but no mountain. I take in another lecture at the visitor center and learn that the Park is the size of New Hampshire and a lot of other interesting stuff. It’s time for Bill to return, so I pick him up, and two and a half hours later we are back to the hotel. Dinner, laundry for me, I’m luckier than Bill, and tomorrow its back to Anchorage and then fly to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. 

Monday, July 5, 2010

(PANC to CYXY 3.6 hours)

Up early, and it’s not raining that’s something new. I go out to check out and look out of the lobby’s glass front and there is Denali. I’m now in the minority, two thirds of the visitors never see the mountain, and the reason is it’s so big it makes its own weather.

We drive to Anchorage and get our briefing and file our flight plan as we drive. Somewhat similar to our other Alaska flights with layers of clouds and freezing level a six to seven thousand feet. We top off the TKS, preflight and we are on our way climbing up to eleven thousand feet. We fly airways which take us between mountains and we seem to be between layers and didn’t pick up any ice on the way up. It’s the most sightseeing from the air we have been able to do, and it’s spectacular.  Mountains, tundra, glaciers, rivers and lakes as far as you can see. The other new experience is we have a tail wind so we make good time. We make a rather hairy instrument approach into Whitehorse but break out at five thousand feet and negotiate the 15 gusting to 25 knot winds to landing, and then the difficult part of the trip starts. First, we gave customs the wrong time because of a time change and they punish us by making us wait for 45 minutes. Bill brought a shot gun for survival purposes and it takes him another 45 minutes and $25 to register the gun. Now we find that the fuel is self-service at the other end of the field we taxi over and find that our credit cards are denied in the self-serve pump. It seems that the credit card company thinks that a $250 purchase at a gas pump in a place like Yakutat is unusual, give me a break. The FBO accepts my American Express and we are finally topped off. This takes over an hour and we are out in the wind, although the temperature is much warmer than what we left in Alaska. We then go through a long process to rent a car and determine that it took more time to get through arrival chores and formalities than it did to fly to Whitehorse. Hotel Check in is not too bad and we have a nice dinner at a place that the hotel recommended. Things are looking up, so maybe with a much needed night’s sleep we can explore Whitehorse tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Weather is pretty good with high clouds and temps in the 60s. After breakfast we head to the Whitehorse Game Preserve which is eighteen Km out of town off the Klondike highway that turns off of the Alaska Canadian highway going north.

The game reserve is run by the Yukon Government to promote conservation and features most of the herbivores in the Yukon in their natural habitat.  We have a great guide and see elk, caribou, mountain sheep and goats, musk ox, mule deer, wood bison, moose, a pair of lynx, an artic fox and lots of prairie dogs. Our guide gives tons of information and a great appreciation for the wild life biology. We get some pretty good images of the animals so the visit was very worthwhile.

We drive back to town and visit the S.S. Klondike a shallow bottom stern wheel boat that was built in 1929 to serve in transporting people and cargo, during the gold rush, which sunk in 1939. The boat was raised, restored and sits on the bank of the Yukon River. It gives a glimpse of an exciting time when Whitehorse was the transportation hub for the gold fields centered up river in Dawson.  After lunch at a local deli we visit the McBride Yukon History museum. We have covered Whitehorse and call it a day and start thinking of tomorrow’s flight to Smithers and then on to Golden in BC. Weather looks pretty good and after reviewing the route and approach’s we are prepared. We have dinner then pack again, check the weather in the morning; file and we are on our way south.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

(CYXY to CYYD 3.3 hours, CYYD to CYGE 3.3 hours)

Weather looks good with icing level at ten thousand feet and we are filed at eleven thousand feet, but clouds are few and we should be O.K.  After breakfast and turning in the rental car we load up and get our clearance at around 8:30 local time. We climb out with mountains all around and are cruising below a layer at twelve thousand feet with a great view of beautiful mountain scenery. Underneath are snow covered bowls with avalanches showing, high lakes, meadows, streams and forest below the timber line. This is rugged country, but we can see the highway winding its way through river valleys. To the west is the Alaska Range separating us from the west coast of Alaska, probably a clear day today. When we get to Dease Lake the clouds subside and we have a clear day, making the site seeing even better, it’s unforgettable. We are now in uncontrolled airspace and they can’t see us on radar and the highway goes east and we are going south. Another aircraft calls us to make sure we are separated since we are heading in the same direction. We chat and speculate that he just wants someone to talk to, because there is no doubt we are alone and on our own.  We finally get Vancouver center on the radio when it’s time to start our decent and we let down for Smithers in British Columbia. We land and get out and its seventy two degrees and an absolutely beautiful place, in a valley surrounded by peaks. We fuel up and have lunch and chat with a couple of airline pilots who know the area and our next destination Golden. We get a briefing, file and take off. We are in the clear, with occasional scattered clouds, as we cross a broad plain, punctuated by rivers and lakes. We are cleared to an intersection and then direct to Golden and can see the Canadian Rockies in the distance. We know Golden is in a deep valley and are prepared, but it is more exciting than we imagined. We pass maybe a thousand feet over snow covered rocky peaks until finally we get past the last snowy ridge and down in the canyon eighty five hundred feet below is the airport. We turn down the canyon and make a long approach and land. After a self-service gas fill-up and tying down we call a cab and are off to the hotel. We chat with the meteorologist at the airport and she indicates weather is going to be good for the next two days. This is great since its sight-seeing then we return to the U.S. on Friday and there is no way we can get out of Golden IFR.  We have dinner at the hotel and make our plans for tomorrow.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

I called the rental car company and Ed brought the car out and agreed to take us to the airport tomorrow, so we are good to go sight-seeing. We head up the trans-Canada highway into the mountains, with our first stop Emerald Lake. We stop at an information center and learn we just passed the lake and go back to see Natural Bridges and the lake. Beautiful mountains with snow caps and rushing streams and on top of that it’s a perfect day in the 70’s. Emerald Lake is beautiful and snow fed from Emerald Basin, which creates a great photo op. We head up the highway toward Lake Louise with a stop at Kakakkaw falls, which are the highest falls in Canada.  The falls are impressive and after more image making we head farther up the highway, which parallels Kicking Horse River and winds through towering peaks on both sides of the road. We cross the river and head up to Lake Louise where a lot of tourists have congregated. The lake again sits in a bowl which is snow covered at the end and surrounded by high timbered mountains on either side. We stay for a while and then visit the last Lake in the area, Moraine Lake, which again is crowded and conforms to the same bowl shape and natural beauty. We then head for Lake Louise Village by the highway and stop for lunch. We sit down and the restaurant is suddenly filled with a large gang of Chines tourists all chatting loudly in Cantonese. This emphasizes the point that we are a little way from home and we are now starting to talk about the return that starts tomorrow. We make the roughly hour drive back to Golden, tour the town, which takes about five minutes and are back at the hotel. It’s time to go over the flight plans for tomorrow and do the necessary things to re-enter the U.S. We work out when we will arrive and cross the border then call US customs to give them our arrival time and go on line to file the EAPIS arrival report. Having dealt with the U.S. bureaucracy we can relax, have dinner and get a good night’s sleep before our home ward journey. It turns out we make a great choice for dinner at the Kicking Horse Grill, where Martijn Dujitjts, from Utrecht Holland has established a fine dining establishment. Definitely, the best meal on the trip and it’s nice to meet a true restaurateur in a very small town in Canada, following the prior evening that was basically awful at the hotel. The out of U.S. experience ends on a high note.

Friday, July 9, 2010

(CYGE to KGPI 2.1 hours, KGPI to KPIR 4.3hours)

We are at the airport by 8:30 for a 9:30 take off so we will meet our scheduled 11:00 A.M. time at customs. We wait until 9:15 A.M. to start up and call for clearance through the RCO and get put on hold. Finally, we get the clearance and Bill, who is handling the radio has to read it back four times, because the Canadians use a term for pass at or above that we aren’t familiar with. The female controller is a real pain and finally she explains and we are off. She wants us to shuttle climb to fourteen thousand and fly over the mountains and we planned to fly down the canyon at eleven thousand, oh well, anything to get going and make the lovely little lady happy. We arrive at Kalispell Mt. within the time window then wait 30 minutes for customs. Officer Martinez is a good guy and gets us through with a minimum hassle. Kalispell airport is very busy with lots of airline and private traffic in addition to a two seat P-51 and a Pitts giving rides. To make matters even more interesting with light winds the tower is alternately, landing on runway two and twenty as well as twelve. ATIS said landing runway two so I mentally set up for that runway, then tower says twenty which is down wind and fortunately Bill caught the change. We land without incident, but it underscores the value of two pilots in the cockpit. We grab a to go sandwich and get back into the air, and of course they don’t have our flight plan that Bill filed while I was getting refueled, so we elect to fly this four hour leg VFR, which works out just fine. After flying over the last range of mountains for the trip, the terrain turns into brownish green bad lands for a couple of hours until ranches and farms start to appear. We have a tail wind, which is good and moderate chop, which is bad, most of the way. We set down at Pierre SD. and tie down then grab the bus to the motel and get some dinner. A check of the weather shows good weather for our last two legs home tomorrow.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

(KPIR to KMLI 3.0 hours, KMLI to KMGY 1.9 hours)

Up at five A.M. and check the weather and it looks great. Some thunderstorms to the north east, but we should pass to the south. We get to the airport early and are in the air by 7:45 A.M. which should get us home ahead of schedule. A little bit of get-there-itis going on but the weather is good, so it’s on to Moline. During the three hour flight its farm Land but we notice that all most all of the farm houses have a grove of trees planted to the northwest, I think the wind blows in the winter. We land, and guess what, the Met Life Blimp is tied down, but we make the fuel stop in 30 minutes and are in the air, when it dawns on me that the Quad City Open is being played in Moline this weekend. We have two hours to get home and except for some scattered build-ups, things look good. We are cruising along and I do my instinctive scan and oops, the ALT1 light is on steady. So we go through the emergency procedure and sure enough ALT 1 has failed. We inform Chicago approach, and shut down Battery 1 and Alternator 1 so that we will have enough battery to get the flaps down for landing. For some reason this leg seems longer but when we turn the battery back on we get flaps down and make the last landing of the trip. Clearly, it wasn’t an emergency since Bill took his normal mid-flight nap and everything worked out fine. This was the end of a great adventure of almost 50 hours of flying across many states and three Canadian provinces. To have the trip end with a quasi-emergency was perfect; it was an adventure, right?