Dave Krall CFII
Final Approach
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2005
- Messages
- 5,022
- Location
- Seattle WA
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Dave Krall CFII SEL SES, Cmcl HELI
Have been trying to fly over the North Cascades and out into the desert for a few weeks now and the continuing forest fire TFRs on my route did not abate at all recently, as our coastal rains did not make it over the mountains to put them out. Over 100,000 acres are burning in the worst fire, with 3 others nearby, generately IMC regularly and generally far less than ideal MVFR the rest of the time. The massive forests on fire often smell pleasingly like a distant campfire from the cold air aloft but this year's smoke is acrid with the punky, rotten wood and bodies smoldering in thousands of acres infested with pine beetles. We could fly over the top of the highest TFRs at 11,000 and get business done in town, then back through one of the mountain passes before sundown and into Seattle if the ceilings held. Icing in IMC was predictable with the freezing level at our Victor Airways' altitudes.
So, I realize I'll probably cancel the desert trip again for ice and fire but, call my safety pilot anyway for some flying recon, at least. Always the type to maximize total mission benefits, I also call one of my flight students to ride shotgun and camera, encouraging mom who's visiting the student from South Afrika to come along as well. It's nice, sunny WX when we taxi past the new Boeing Super Guppy that's just in from Taipae, sitting on the Bravo taxiway with the other huge tails straight up in the air on ships from around the World. We launch off of Boeing Field, the heat of the city raising the ceilings nicely for some good views of the city, so the mission's a partial success already.
We fly low and as fast as it will go to the NE snapping a few PIX of the MSFTopolis, just under the clouds that get lower and start bouncing us around in light rain as we get into the cooler countryside which also rises up to meet the thickening cloud bases in places. I'm generally on the heading for the desert and there's one leeettle blue hole up in the sky between some 6000 foot peaks that line two valleys in front of us. My safety pilot asks,
"Where we goin'?" as he looks at the scud closing in on the sides and in front of us.
"Up there."
I point to the little speck of wild blue-yonder. That's where we'd go if we really wanted to get above this stuff where it's clear, then head over the top and then down into the smokes as usual.
By now we're snaking through the etherial cloud wisps, up against emerald green slopes and purplish hazed granite cliffs and peaks. I take over flying from my safety pilot and head up a narrow valley route which I've used for this scenario over a hundred times. One rear seat PAX is snapping PIX while the 74 year old grandmom seems too be taking it all in. We turn back 180 from one valley when the scud goes to total IFR ahead. Backing up aways we tool around awhile where there's a little more breathing room and I then head back into and under the scud of a smaller valley that is headed in our general direction.
A small glacier appears shinning and fractured just below us, and alongside on the gray cliffs a couple of luxurious white mountain goats (really a type of antelope) sure-footedly leaping in their fluffy winter coats, appear for only a few fleeting seconds. We bank and turn constantly through the wiggley wisps in intermittent light rain. "Should we tell them we're not going over the mountains to the desert?" my safety pilot asks.
"No, let 'em sweat. They'll enjoy it more and it will mean more to them in the end." I briefly consider the benefits of even adding that 'we're lost' as I've convincingly done in the past (it never takes much, in fact usually I'm trying to convince PAX that we're NOT lost) but this time decide against it for some reason. Instead I'm blessed to gratefully taste again the cool, moist air living in these mountains -the freshest in the World- rather than smell and breathe a whole region's nasty funeral smokes composed of rotten trees, killed by now burning billions of barbequed pine beetles and enveloped in drifting borate bombs from the Catalina, DC 6s and assorted fire-choppers including a Sky Crane and Chinook.
We fly point turns just above a site on a rugged ridge where a friend had done some helicopter logging a few years back, the under growth has filled in nicely and soon there will be little trace to the casual observer from the air. I finally spot his cabin in the temperate jungle, bearly visible alongside an old mine shaft opening and the thread that is an ancient oxcart and skid road going straight up the steep slope until the rain-soaked ferns and silver trunked alders close in upon it and eventually obliterate it from our aerial view. The engine mixture's been leaned out for some time now in the high, moist, mountain air and my safety pilot richens it up for me as I do a mild canyon turn and dive down into a creek bed to follow it downstream with the treetops blurring abeam. The crick bed widens to a river that will be our meandering runway should anything untoward occur or, the safety net of thick alder tops on either side... choices, choices.
The thin, muddy brown of an old logging road appears sporadically winding alongside the rapids and it crosses over tiny narrow bridges a few times as the rushing flow builds to become a raging river when that side's steep granite becomes too formidable even for massive amounts of TNT and labor. We fly low and full speed under the scrud and over thousands of wisps of radiation fog or upslope fog or whatever it's called for a while, then climb up about a thousand in a larger valley where the ceilings become conveniently higher. I pull up alongside some massive dark cliffs, their tops obscured by clouds, just as they were when we flew through here in the other direction about 45 minutes earlier.
I'm looking again for a ragged ravine, flying through which will yield a cedar and heather trimmed alpine cirque and its crystal clear lake, at once both mirroring and forming the pretty picture. A rich ivory veil rolls gently in constant motion just over the ravine, and we will not be seeing its inner beauty on this flight. So instead I fly alongside the face of the eastern mountains that form the now widening valley, close enough to the slope to make the PAX wonder if the right wing will hit some of the nearly endless points of green that carpet the slopes but, this time they don't actually ask. Another particularly long, wispy veil appears. This time I do a left point turn on it for PIX because it is not another cloud but a long and undulating cascade of slender, liquid lace, shimmering softly into a pure pool of icy water from the glaciers and slopes fresh with the first light snowfall, trimmed sparingly with brilliant scarlet maple leaves that are bright with floating spray and accented with fleeting, miniature spectral bands of colors on each turn.
It is picturesque I'd say, so reversing the point turn, plant the scene steady as she goes under the middle of the starboard wingtip while everything else whirls around it. I point below to turn heads away and surreptitiously scarf from my pocket, a freshly picked cherry tomato which bursts warm in tastes both sweet and slightly tangy -it has been flown in here at considerable expense for my lunch. It is paired with the spoils from summer's long battles with bands of bold, citified raccoons just barely held at bay with everything from chicken wire and re-bar encapsulations to multiple varities of electronic counter measures to anticipatory grasps of my spear. It is no less than the very last, small ear of sweetcorn from the patch waiting to be next, a few bites of juicy light yellow and white kernals are eaten raw then re-wrapped in their own husk to be finished later, at which point the flag should be lowered to half mast.
Pointing below to the falls and making the shutter snapping sign with one hand to my PAX, one of which acknowledges but plainly shows there will be no more pictures taken by her right now. What could be viewed as miserly hoarding of the small ear of corn and few cherry tomatoes by me turns to benevolence as clearly, food should be far from passengers' thoughts at this point in the series of tight, aerial circuits. Granted, it can look unsettlingly wierd when the ground starts wheeling around the opposite way through the viewfinder in those point turns, so we mercifully plot a course under the scud and west to Seattle, waiting long enough for our position report call to BFI so that the most convenient clearance for them will be to vector us over downtown and the football stadium on final.
The diametrically opposed change in scenery and straight, sea level flight revives one PAX and my safety pilot (both of which keep returning to fly with me after nearly a decade) and the PIX resume with vivid steel and glass skyscrapers indeed appearing try to scrape us from their sky. I let my safety pilot take the rugged Sk'awk's yoke, he calls to dump in all flaps, and then handily bounce us in for landings on 13L at just under full gross for both our practice, and to successfully end another fantastic flight into the mountains that I'm fortunate to call my back yard, one more time.
So, I realize I'll probably cancel the desert trip again for ice and fire but, call my safety pilot anyway for some flying recon, at least. Always the type to maximize total mission benefits, I also call one of my flight students to ride shotgun and camera, encouraging mom who's visiting the student from South Afrika to come along as well. It's nice, sunny WX when we taxi past the new Boeing Super Guppy that's just in from Taipae, sitting on the Bravo taxiway with the other huge tails straight up in the air on ships from around the World. We launch off of Boeing Field, the heat of the city raising the ceilings nicely for some good views of the city, so the mission's a partial success already.
We fly low and as fast as it will go to the NE snapping a few PIX of the MSFTopolis, just under the clouds that get lower and start bouncing us around in light rain as we get into the cooler countryside which also rises up to meet the thickening cloud bases in places. I'm generally on the heading for the desert and there's one leeettle blue hole up in the sky between some 6000 foot peaks that line two valleys in front of us. My safety pilot asks,
"Where we goin'?" as he looks at the scud closing in on the sides and in front of us.
"Up there."
I point to the little speck of wild blue-yonder. That's where we'd go if we really wanted to get above this stuff where it's clear, then head over the top and then down into the smokes as usual.
By now we're snaking through the etherial cloud wisps, up against emerald green slopes and purplish hazed granite cliffs and peaks. I take over flying from my safety pilot and head up a narrow valley route which I've used for this scenario over a hundred times. One rear seat PAX is snapping PIX while the 74 year old grandmom seems too be taking it all in. We turn back 180 from one valley when the scud goes to total IFR ahead. Backing up aways we tool around awhile where there's a little more breathing room and I then head back into and under the scud of a smaller valley that is headed in our general direction.
A small glacier appears shinning and fractured just below us, and alongside on the gray cliffs a couple of luxurious white mountain goats (really a type of antelope) sure-footedly leaping in their fluffy winter coats, appear for only a few fleeting seconds. We bank and turn constantly through the wiggley wisps in intermittent light rain. "Should we tell them we're not going over the mountains to the desert?" my safety pilot asks.
"No, let 'em sweat. They'll enjoy it more and it will mean more to them in the end." I briefly consider the benefits of even adding that 'we're lost' as I've convincingly done in the past (it never takes much, in fact usually I'm trying to convince PAX that we're NOT lost) but this time decide against it for some reason. Instead I'm blessed to gratefully taste again the cool, moist air living in these mountains -the freshest in the World- rather than smell and breathe a whole region's nasty funeral smokes composed of rotten trees, killed by now burning billions of barbequed pine beetles and enveloped in drifting borate bombs from the Catalina, DC 6s and assorted fire-choppers including a Sky Crane and Chinook.
We fly point turns just above a site on a rugged ridge where a friend had done some helicopter logging a few years back, the under growth has filled in nicely and soon there will be little trace to the casual observer from the air. I finally spot his cabin in the temperate jungle, bearly visible alongside an old mine shaft opening and the thread that is an ancient oxcart and skid road going straight up the steep slope until the rain-soaked ferns and silver trunked alders close in upon it and eventually obliterate it from our aerial view. The engine mixture's been leaned out for some time now in the high, moist, mountain air and my safety pilot richens it up for me as I do a mild canyon turn and dive down into a creek bed to follow it downstream with the treetops blurring abeam. The crick bed widens to a river that will be our meandering runway should anything untoward occur or, the safety net of thick alder tops on either side... choices, choices.
The thin, muddy brown of an old logging road appears sporadically winding alongside the rapids and it crosses over tiny narrow bridges a few times as the rushing flow builds to become a raging river when that side's steep granite becomes too formidable even for massive amounts of TNT and labor. We fly low and full speed under the scrud and over thousands of wisps of radiation fog or upslope fog or whatever it's called for a while, then climb up about a thousand in a larger valley where the ceilings become conveniently higher. I pull up alongside some massive dark cliffs, their tops obscured by clouds, just as they were when we flew through here in the other direction about 45 minutes earlier.
I'm looking again for a ragged ravine, flying through which will yield a cedar and heather trimmed alpine cirque and its crystal clear lake, at once both mirroring and forming the pretty picture. A rich ivory veil rolls gently in constant motion just over the ravine, and we will not be seeing its inner beauty on this flight. So instead I fly alongside the face of the eastern mountains that form the now widening valley, close enough to the slope to make the PAX wonder if the right wing will hit some of the nearly endless points of green that carpet the slopes but, this time they don't actually ask. Another particularly long, wispy veil appears. This time I do a left point turn on it for PIX because it is not another cloud but a long and undulating cascade of slender, liquid lace, shimmering softly into a pure pool of icy water from the glaciers and slopes fresh with the first light snowfall, trimmed sparingly with brilliant scarlet maple leaves that are bright with floating spray and accented with fleeting, miniature spectral bands of colors on each turn.
It is picturesque I'd say, so reversing the point turn, plant the scene steady as she goes under the middle of the starboard wingtip while everything else whirls around it. I point below to turn heads away and surreptitiously scarf from my pocket, a freshly picked cherry tomato which bursts warm in tastes both sweet and slightly tangy -it has been flown in here at considerable expense for my lunch. It is paired with the spoils from summer's long battles with bands of bold, citified raccoons just barely held at bay with everything from chicken wire and re-bar encapsulations to multiple varities of electronic counter measures to anticipatory grasps of my spear. It is no less than the very last, small ear of sweetcorn from the patch waiting to be next, a few bites of juicy light yellow and white kernals are eaten raw then re-wrapped in their own husk to be finished later, at which point the flag should be lowered to half mast.
Pointing below to the falls and making the shutter snapping sign with one hand to my PAX, one of which acknowledges but plainly shows there will be no more pictures taken by her right now. What could be viewed as miserly hoarding of the small ear of corn and few cherry tomatoes by me turns to benevolence as clearly, food should be far from passengers' thoughts at this point in the series of tight, aerial circuits. Granted, it can look unsettlingly wierd when the ground starts wheeling around the opposite way through the viewfinder in those point turns, so we mercifully plot a course under the scud and west to Seattle, waiting long enough for our position report call to BFI so that the most convenient clearance for them will be to vector us over downtown and the football stadium on final.
The diametrically opposed change in scenery and straight, sea level flight revives one PAX and my safety pilot (both of which keep returning to fly with me after nearly a decade) and the PIX resume with vivid steel and glass skyscrapers indeed appearing try to scrape us from their sky. I let my safety pilot take the rugged Sk'awk's yoke, he calls to dump in all flaps, and then handily bounce us in for landings on 13L at just under full gross for both our practice, and to successfully end another fantastic flight into the mountains that I'm fortunate to call my back yard, one more time.
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