The Grand Adventure - Day 4.

There's only two things that will wake me up before sunrise: Money, and flying. And neither happens often. Today, though, was worth the exception - It was mountain flying day!

We began with some airwork up at 8,000 feet, mostly slow flight and stalls. For every flap setting (0, 10, 20, 40) we determined a power setting for stabilized slow flight, what indicated airspeed the stall horn started to sound, and what indicated airspeed the stall actually broke. Then, we did some configurations for cruise, slow cruise, canyon speed, initial descent, and final approach.

Next, we went to New Meadows (1U4) where the runway is grass, gravel, rock, and probably some other bad stuff too. It also has a major hump in the middle. Two landings there, and then we climbed up towards a nearby ridge to practice canyon turns and kind of combined it with ridge crossings.

You approach a ridge at a 45-degree angle, and towards lowering terrain if the ridge isn't level. You should be at or below Vfe (we picked a slow cruise number of 105 mph). If something happens where you need to turn away from the ridge, or if you're in a canyon you can't get out of, you immediately do a 45-degree bank towards lower terrain, add full power and full flaps, and unload the wing (your steep turn does not need to be level here, you're going towards lowering terrain).

Next, we went to Ski Valley, a more confined strip that isn't on the charts. (It's about where the 350 radial meets the outside of the VOR compass on the sectional, or 44.929549, -116.174304) Here, we circled above the field a few times, checking for animals, stuff on the runway, paths we could use to climb out (this one involves following the power lines ), a good abort point on the runway for takeoff, trees on the upwind side of the runway that might cause squirrelly winds, and whatever other useful things we could find. Like most strips, we landed one way and took off the other way. Unlike others, you fly towards rising terrain after takeoff because there's a road in a small valley that you can follow out.

Next, we crossed back over McCall towards the rugged terrain to the east (Remember those ridges I had to clear on the way in yesterday?) and descended below the surrounding terrain when possible. This was a quickie navigation task, "find the strip." This one was pretty easy, maybe that's why it's called Landmark (0U0). We took a quick turn to scope it out, but then proceeded northward, descending a bit more into the valley.

We arrived at Johnson Creek (3U2) and began to scope it out. Not enough room to actually circle, so we basically flew the downwind a couple hundred feet high (about 800 above the strip, and <50 feet away from the rocks both horizontally and vertically). Then, a canyon turn at the end back to the south, and finally another canyon turn to enter the downwind leg at 600' AGL and even closer in to the runway - In fact, almost directly above it! I'd guess the downwind was offset from the runway less than 500 feet for the most part. It's also not much of a "leg" because you're making a bunch of turns to stay near the canyon wall.

The trick with this approach is that near abeam the north end of the runway, the canyon turns east momentarily and widens just a hair, so you turn a bit east to follow the east wall and then loop back around in a descending canyon turn which still puts you well past the runway centerline. You continue looping around in the turn until you're pointed back towards the centerline, then you line up and land.

Phew... I did it... WOW!!! The reward here is that you end up on the most beautiful little grass strip. It's the second-best grass runway I've ever landed on (behind Three Lakes) and it's got camp sites and facilities. What a great place to go relax! Looking towards either side of the runway, you're looking up over 45 degrees (maybe closer to 60) before the trees and rocks give way to blue sky (the surrounding terrain towers 4,000 feet above the field elevation.) Looking toward the ends of the runway, you see the terrain hinting that there might be a path out that way, if you'll only go around a few enticing curves.



We stopped to take a quick break and I took a ConUS claim picture. When we climbed back in, I mounted the video camera to capture the takeoff and climbout. Unfortunately, since I had it aimed out the front window it really doesn't capture how close we flew to the terrain attempting to get lift. And we did get lift - A pseudo-cruise climb (faster airspeed, slower climb rate) was resulting in about 200-300 fpm climb rate, but at one point we were able to catch a nice boost off a ridge that briefly gave us 1400fpm!

As we meandered through the valleys, climbing the entire time, we paid very close attention to where we were going, using roads, headings, etc. in combination with the sectional. A very good lesson was learned here: Had we turned left one canyon too late at one point, we would have been in a box canyon. Another tidbit: Never fly down a canyon without active water in it - If there's no stream, it's probably a box canyon.

Finally, we had reached a high enough altitude to fly straight over the last ridge before McCall, and after we cleared it by 1-200 feet we had to start coming right back down to get down to McCall's field elevation.

I can't give high enough praise to Marti at McCall Mountain Canyon Flying - She was very accommodating of my constantly-changing arrival schedule as my flight path and weather and everything else changed. She managed to build me a "cram course" on short notice, and I learned a ton and had a lot of fun in the process (can you tell? ). Folks, if you want a fun vacation, spend a few days here. It'll make you a better pilot and the experience is amazing. McCall is a resort town too, so there's stuff for the spouse and kids as well.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to and end, and it was time to go back to "normal" flying. (Bo-ring! ) I called Bob Bement and then pointed the airplane in his direction. After flying off 3.5 hours, I'd need fuel before too long. I landed briefly at S87 to see if they still had fuel, but their pump looks completely destroyed. I didn't even shut down, just finished off the flight to Vale.

Bob took me flying to a couple of strips that are TINY. Owyhee Reservoir claims to be 30 feet wide, but it looked more like about 12. (See the video!) Likewise for the other one. Bob's one heckuva pilot. Owyhee is the hilliest runway I've ever seen too. Thanks for the flight, Bob!



I decided to put some fuel in at nearby Ontario, as there are basically no public airports along the route to Sunriver. I put in 20 gallons, and it turns out I didn't need it.

It was hot and bumpy, so I decided to go up high at first, but even 10,500 was a bit bumpy, and though it was a bit cooler, it wasn't enough. I put the oxygen on, and my pulse oximeter would blare at me from time to time, reminding me to take deeper breaths (difficult with only breathing through nose straws, at least for me). Then I had a stroke of genius - I turned the oxygen OFF and simply concentrated on taking large, deep, steady breaths and my pulse ox immediately improved to, and stablized at, 92 percent (which is roughly where it was at half the altitude with O2 on and poor breathing technique.

I was only getting 126 knots across the ground at 10,500, and I'd only gotten 130 down lower. I decided if it was going to be hot and bumpy, darn it, it should be hot, bumpy and FUN! So, I decided to use some of my newly acquired skills and knowledge and try to catch some ridge lift. Well, whadda ya know... Back to getting intimate with the terrain, I found plenty of lift which helped increase my groundspeed to 140 knots.

Soon, I arrived at Bend, OR and fueled again, topping off this time with "cheap" $4.89 100LL.

Finally, I hopped the last 19nm to Sunriver. There was a small rain shower off to my west that gave me one big bump on the way, but I did it! (I arrived at the family reunion in one piece. )



More to come, I hope to get my pics imported in the next couple of days. I probably won't be flying this week except maybe to McMinnville to see the Evergreen Air and Space Musceum.

Stats so far:
2230 nautical miles
24.8 hours (19.8 trip, 3.5 mountain, 1.5 flying around)
21 airports touched (KMSN, KANE, 14Y, KBWP, KABR, 6V4, 83V, KGEY, KPOY, KWYS, U53, 7S1, KMYL, 1U4, Ski Valley, 3U2, S87, S49, KONO, KBDN, S21)
9 ATC facilities talked to (KMSNx2, ZAU, ZMP, KMSP, KANE, KGCC, ZDV, ZLC)
10 airports claimed for the ConUS Challenge (KANE, 14Y, KBWP, KABR, 83V, U53, 7S1, 3U2, S49, KONO)
243.89 gallons of Avgas
7 Sectional charts (Chicago, Green Bay, Twin Cities, Cheyenne, Billings, Great Falls, Klamath Falls)

Falling asleep now! Zzzzz...