Treacherous Terrain

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Display name:
Adam Zucker
What is the most treacherous terrain that you have flown over? The kind of place where if the fan or fans stop the results upon re greeting the earth are not likely to be good.

Two that come to mind for me are West Virginia on the way to and back from Gastons. Nothing but peaks and steep valleys with rocks and trees. The second is actually on departure from KPNE, a class D surrounded by Brick Row homes and buildings.

The Florida everglades and the cumulo granite in South Western Montana seem like particularly undesirable places for the engine to crap out.
 
NYC
Philly (PNE)
Teterboro NJ
Grand Canyon
Desert SW
Rockies
Everglades
Atlantic Ocean
Gulf of Mexico

This is a quick list...
 
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Really can't even worry about the motor quitting.

If it happens, it happens.
 
Florida Everglades.
North Georgia Mountains (lol)
 
I'll take pointy rocks over cold water any day.
 
Check out my map below.

My guess would be flying up the inside passage from Washington to Ketchikan. No real place to land for 550 NM. Landing in communist canada was not a good option. They mandate insurance, IFR ticket, carrying a long gun, ****ed off about handguns. I just didn't need the drama of some socialist deciding I was doing something wrong and spending 6 months in jail the Marine in Mexico. :mad:

My greatest fear in flying international CC is being detained for something. Weird **** happens when you fly international. I would love to fly around the world tomorrow, but morons keep me from going. Not money, airplanes or time..... I would be glad to be co-pilot. :D

YMMV.
 
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A few mountain ranges have definitely been low option, the entire western desert is for the most part unforgiving (that's why I chose to own twins), flying pipeline there were a few stretches that would have been unsurvivable.
 
MAKG1 said:
The north pole?

Olympus Mons?
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Both correct, unless of course at some point Mars and Earth were in the correct position and OM's summit was pointing directly at Earth - and not being a Marsographer, I'm not sure if that's even possible.

But I have landed in and flown in the airspace of the 48 contiguous in PA28/PA24, so I've pretty much flown over everything. Sierras, Cascades, Rockies, Appalachians, Adirondacks, all the Great Lakes outside of glide distance of land, Everglades, Mojave, Sonora, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific (though probably would have made it back to shore), Atlantic, the list goes on...
 
The Everglades. The Beartooth Range in Wyoming. Coal country in E. KY and WV. The Badlands. The edges of the Cumberland Plateau. Western Carolina along the Tennessee line. The Appalachians at night.

Along the Outer Banks, I stayed in gliding range, 1/2 mile or so at 1500 agl.
 
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Oh, man, the thought of dragging my busted ass out of Okeefenokee or the Glades or The Great Dismal Swamp does not promote he warm fuzzies. Hit cumuli granite, you die. Go down in a swamp, you might live, suffer a whole lot, get bit by a hot snake, then die.
 
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I've flown the Alaska highway,the Everglades,my most treacherous is usually over NY city,no place to go except the river or the beach.
 
It so depends on what you are flying, how high you are above the terrain, and how familiar you are with it. Some of the combinations are not obvious.

I'll never be comfortable doing the VFR corridor up and down the Hudson. Lose your engine(s) there and you will either ditch or crash. If you are lucky, you will have too much of audience. If not, they may never find you or the plane.

Being an eastern pilot, my first glider flights in the Sierras scared the hell out of me. The lift was typically up against or over the highest ground but the closer I got the gnarlier it seemed. Yet, when only a wingspan away from the rocks I 'knew' I had 30 to 50 glide range into 1 or more valleys. It took a few days for that to sink in.

The most treacherous terrain I've encountered is jumping ridge lines in the Appalachians. You are rarely more than 1500' above the valley and minutes from putting it on the ground if you've judged things wrong. But I did enough of it that it got pretty comfortable down there.

The rolling hills of WV get your attention the first time you see them but at any reasonable cruising altitude it doesn't get you in the gut even when it should.

I guess the North Atlantic isn't technically terrain but that and any cold body of water is truly treacherous if things go wrong.

Yeah, the North Atlantic.
 
The scariest for me was getting temporarily lost on the way to Sturgis in the black hills. You see no ground out there- no ground at all...
 
I'd say Saudi Arabia......along the main jet routes up north, there are pretty wide swaths of area without suitable diverts for a jet aircraft. Maybe the kind of places you would consider if both engines were on fire, but there were pretty significant distances of absolutely nothing.
 
I did the last leg of my night dual XC departing Asheville NC (KAVL) to the north, and turning to the southeast over the mountains. The CFI (who shortly thereafter quit instructing to do construction work) wanted me to see the lights of the Piedmont come into view after crossing the mountains. The problem was, we had no real plan for altitudes on departure at night. Kind of stupid in hindsight.
 
Lake Michigan
Mount Washington
Downtown Detroit...

Seriously, just about anywhere in Vermont after dark, you really don't want the fan to quit. Even during daylight, you don't have many options. I was thinking today about getting more frequent annual-type inspections for as long as I'm here -- say every 50 hrs or so -- then I realized that I'd probably be making maintenance-induced failures more likely.
 
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Southeast Oregon/Northwest Nevada in the the middle of July. You might land somewhere ok, but no one will get to you quickly. Hot, dry and barren. Yes, I carried lots of survival gear on that trip.

Jeff
 
Mt. McKinley. Glaciers with Windex blue cracks 2000 feet deep. Flying tourist at 10,000 ft and having another 10,000 feet of ground above you. Start by taking off from Kantishna Airstrip. On the map it has (HAZARDOUS) printed under the name. That's hazardous by Alaska standards. About 1.5 flight time going a full circle around the mountain. Going through passes at 9000 feet, on the radio asking if the other side is clear of clouds.

The terrain is described as rapidly rising to vertical. Not really any place to land a 206 if a problem develops. The glaciers are not smooth at all.

No one ever told me in flight school that I would be at 10,000 feet and have to watch out for avalanches coming from above me...:lol:

I think flying over the Rockies at night going into Denver APA still concerns me a little.

The Bering Sea is not survivable, even in summer.
 
Lake Michigan. Last time I flew over it I started thinking about what I'd do if the fan quit. I had some flotation, but was aware that I'd be dead from hypothermia before they ever got to me. So my choices were blunt force trauma in a crash, drowning if I couldn't get out with the flotation, or prolonged hypothermia if I did. Crashing into a mountain seems more desirable. At least its quick.
 
Hanoi, Haiphong. Do they count? I did lose both engines over Haiphong, once. Got a nice ride on a a couple of ships as a result, courtesy of the US Navy. Thanks Ranger, thanks Kitty Hawk.
 
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steingar said:
Lake Michigan. Last time I flew over it I started thinking about what I'd do if the fan quit. I had some flotation, but was aware that I'd be dead from hypothermia before they ever got to me. So my choices were blunt force trauma in a crash, drowning if I couldn't get out with the flotation, or prolonged hypothermia if I did. Crashing into a mountain seems more desirable. At least its quick.
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I thought about adding Lake Michigan to the list but I think the ditching part would be survivable for how long is an entirely different question, I was thinking more along the lines of " it isn't likely I'm getting out of this plane" kind of treacherous.
 
Over Sierra Nevada mountains at night, pitch dark, no Moon. Flight from South Lake Tahoe to Palo Alto, CA after a day of skiing, at gross weight (all seats occupied). Both airports and surrounding areas were VFR but everything in between solid IFR due to ground fog.
 
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The East Texas piney woods can make you pucker up.

Nothing but very tall pine trees, briars, and banjo playing cannibals down there...
 
txflyer said:
The East Texas piney woods can make you pucker up.

Nothing but very tall pine trees, briars, and banjo playing cannibals down there...
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The banjo playing cannibals may actually provide the greater risk. I've recovered a few planes from trees, no fatalities involved.
 
AdamZ said:
I thought about adding Lake Michigan to the list but I think the ditching part would be survivable for how long is an entirely different question, I was thinking more along the lines of " it isn't likely I'm getting out of this plane" kind of treacherous.
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I doubt they could get the helicopter moving before I went under from hypothermia in 55 degree water. That's assuming they were at the chopper getting it ready to take off. I dunno, maybe I'd get lucky and they were already airborne on a training mission or something. But I certainly wouldn't count on it.
 
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