More Adventures

Yesterday I had another exciting Saturday. My first flight was a pax flight up the west coast. The weather was marginal with low ceilings and snow showers on the way up. When we got to the airport I noticed the runway was snow covered.

It was only an inch deep of loose dry snow but I was suprised when the touchdown was almost perfectly silent, it made me look good, haha. I dropped my passengers off and headed back. I took note of the ceilings and snow showers and made a PIREP (Pilot Report) to the radio service when I called inbound. The only weather station up in this area is the airport where I'm based out of, so pilot's appreciate when other pilot's make pireps of the conditions up the coast.

My next trip was East up the other coast, to drop off a passenger at that reserve. When I left the sky was scattered clouds at around 3000 ft. The flight and landing was uneventful, and in a couple minutes I was back in the air climbing out on my way home. On this trip there are couple bays to either climb up high and cross over, or go around. When I'm empty, I like to climb higher and fly direct, because it doesn't take long to get to higher altitudes with a lightly loaded airplane. So within a couple minutes after takeoff I was already at 4500 ft, and for reasons that I can't recall, maybe a little boredom and a compulsive need to flick switches and press buttons, I tuned into my destination's AWOS (Automatic Weather Observation System). AWOS basically automatically gives the station's current weather conditions and broadcasts it on a specific frequency for pilots to listen to. It was calling 1/4 sm visibility, and 100 ft vertical visibility (essentially 100 ft ceilings). This was way below even basic IFR minimums. Crap, where the heck did that come from?

So I made the easy decision of turning around and landing again. The airport terminal building was closed for the weekend so I couldn't get to a phone, but after waiting around for 15 minutes another flight crew came out to the airport, and one of them let me borrow his cellphone to call company and give them an update of my predicament. They looked at the forecast for me, and to make a long story short, it became apparent I would be waiting there for a while, so I decided to walk into town. I could see from the air that the road from the airport into down kind of followed along outside of town first before turning left into it, and I could also see from the air that it would be a much shorter distance to cut through the woods from the corner of the airport into some houses on the outskirts. Rather then following the road, I elected for a little hiking adventure and decided to try to hike through the woods. I had my handheld compass that I bought, so I figured if I just made a heading of North NorthEast that would get me the shortest route into civilization.

My first challenge however was crossing a 10 ft wide ditch filled with water. I walked along it for a few hundred feet and found a spot where I might be able to cross without getting wet. It was a pile of bushes and then a snowbank making somewhat of a bridge across the ditch. Carefully I climbed across. On my last step before I was clear, my foot broke through the snowbank and I went up to my shins in water. Crap! Oh well, not much I can do now. I set off into the bushes. Well even though most of the snow everywhere else was melted off, in the forest it was still knee deep, and soggy. I spent about 15 seconds bushing through branches and hauling myself through knee deep snow before realizing that this would be neither faster nor the dryer way of getting into town. So much for that. So I pushed my way back out of the forest to the road. I had to cross the ditch again... hmm. I found another spot that held a dim hope of keeping my feet dry, but I didn't have any luck. Once again I crashed through, this time with both feet, into shin deep water. Dang. Oh well. So I walked along the road for a bit and a car drove by with a couple who offered to take me into town. Sweet.

They dropped me off, and once again I got another sense of Deja Vu. This is the place I stayed a couple years ago working for Flight Exec. I had some time to kill, and wet feet, so I walked into the Northern Store, wandered around there for a bit, and bought some nice wool socks. I remember watching Survivorman and he said wool has the property of not really holding water, so it makes it easier to stay warm and dry when wearing wool. I went outside, sat down on a bench to take my soggy boots off. It felt wonderful to put my nice new wool socks on, and it was true, even though my boots were still sopping wet, my feet felt dry in the socks.

There's not much to see in this place, so for a good half hour I wandered around aimlessly, killing time, and feeling like a homeless person. Across from the Northern store there's the Lodge, a hotel and restaurant called Wavies. And that is the extent of downtown. The lodge is actually quite nice considering where it is, its got a nice riverfront view, with a huge vaulted ceiling in the restaurant. I sat in the lobby for a couple hours, called Flight Service to get an update on the weather, with which they gave me bad news. Once the snowstorms at home base cleared up, they were supposed to move east to where I was now. The weather briefer didn't think I'd be able to make it out of here VFR until late tonight. Well our operation only flies day VFR, so that's no good. I called company to both give them an update on my situation, and try to formulate an action plan. After that, I wasn't really hungry, but it was 6:00, so I ate dinner anyways, just to kill time. I'm lucky I have a fast metabolism, cause when I'm bored, I eat.

I had a 1/4 roasted chicken, which ended up being a little overcooked and dry, but the fries were good. More waiting. I also noticed while waiting that it started to snow, quite heavily. Crap. By 7:00 I called company again to get an update. The weather at home had cleared, but as the weatherman said there was supposed to be a cold front in between along my route bringing bad weather. Looking out the window where I was it looked overcast, hard to tell the cloud height, but no snow, so we agreed we'd wait another half hour and see how things were then, and I'd depart. Pretty much as soon as I hung up the phone it started snowing again, and I couldn't even see across the river. Crappy deal. Oh well, we'll give it till 7:30. At 7:30 the snow seemed to lighten up again, so I called company one last time, and we agreed that I'd make a run for it. I crossed my fingers that the snow didn't freeze onto my airplane. By this point the hotel front desk had closed, so I don't even think I could even get a room anymore if I needed it for the night.

Off I went again walking back to the airport. I got about 2/3 there, and someone came by and offered to give me a ride. Sweet. We made small talk for a bit, he knew the guy I dropped off today. He was on his way to the airport as well, he was ground crew for a medivac helicopter that was coming in. He also mentioned that my airplane was an ice cube. Perfect. We got to the airport, and sure enough, the entire airplane was covered in 1/2 inch sized droplets of ice frozen solid onto the skin. Did I also mention that it was -8 below, 7:50 pm, with the sun setting at 8:45, and official nighttime at 9:15. Sweet. Luckily a couple days ago I threw a hand scraper into the back of the airplane "just in case". Feverishly I started scraping the ice off the airplane in a rush to beat the sunset. It's about a half hour flight back, so if I can take off before the sun sets, I'll make it time before official nighttime.

As I was scraping, and wondering who's idea it was to become a bush pilot, the medivac chopper came in and landed, and they offloaded what looked like a hypothermic passenger. They were wrapped head to toe in one of those hypothermic bags. It was a sobering reminder to make sure I scrape the ice off properly. Its a tedius job, to get every bit of ice off all of the critical surfaces, but I didn't want to end up off the end of the runway, as a medivac patient because I didn't clean the airplane off properly. I'm not a fan of becoming a statistic.

Without a minute to spare I had the airplane clean and ready to start up. It was snowing again, but only lightly, so visibility was still ok. I had no way of knowing what the ceilings were. I did my runup, taxied out, and pushed the throttle forward. Ceilings were ok with a couple hundred feet to spare. Minimum VFR ceilings didn't allow me to climb high enough to fly over the bay however, so I had to go around. When I got closer to home, it started snowing again, fairly heavily, but it was cold enough that I didn't pick up any icing. I could see the snow when I turned my landing light on, but the lights of the town came into view about 8 miles back. It was pretty well dark by now. I flew overhead the field and joined the downwind, and I could see the headlights of a truck on the ramp, I knew it was company waiting for me.

All ended well, I landed safely, and I got to sleep in my own bed.