Sunday, June 30, 2013

Day 2 of our Skytrekk


We pitched our tent last night in the campground at the Whitehorse airport.  We woke up to a beautiful clear blue sky overlooking the runways.  Unreal – this is such a cool place to wake up (that is if you are a pilot, the jets started roaring early).  We met a great couple, Troy & Sara, who were also on a skytrekk.  They had flown all the way from Florida and were on their way to Alaska.  We got caught up exchanging stories and it was really nice to learn about their adventures and share some tips and tricks amongst each other.  After a late breakfast we fueled up and headed out.  We left Whitehorse just before 12n.

The weather was looking good for the Cassiar route, so we headed to Dease Lake for fuel and our next planned stop was going to be Smithers.  It was Scott’s leg; we trade back and forth. Not long after Dease we hit what Scott referred to as “looking into the heart of darkness”.  A thunderstorm cell closed the pass .  Lightning, thunder – the works!  We turned back and landed at Bob Quinn lake.  A young man heard us self-announcing in the pattern and met us to provide fuel.  He also gave me a ride up the road a few miles to a payphone where I called Kamloops (equivalent of the FAA’s flight service) to revise our flight plan and get a weather briefing.  We were advised the ban of cells (which were not reported earlier) was moving to the north. This was good news to us, so we sat at the gravel strip and waited out the thunderstorm which passed within an hour.  Having topped off with gas we were able to revise our route and go mostly direct to Prince George.  We cut over to the lower part of the trench and shaved about an hour off our time making up for the weather delay.

We landed around 10:00 PM in Prince George, called a taxi and booked a room.  All of the restaurants nearby were closed so we headed to the local casino for a birthday drink.  We met a couple there – and the strangest thing – the wife was celebrating her birthday too.  What are the odds?  So, dinner was a hot dog from the casino snack bar.  Believe it or not, I consider it one of the best birthday dinners ever! 




Home sweet home in Whitehorse - this is not the view overlooking the airport (which was killer!!)

Departing Whitehorse

There are SO MANY lakes in Canada!!

Dease Lake

Fueling at Bob Quinn before the TS passed through



Sitting through the thunderstorm - glad to be on the ground.
Waiting on weather - aviation acronym = WOW


Skies cleared after the ban of thunderstorms passed.


A few more isolated cells - it looks worse than it is.

Lakes, lakes and more lakes in Canada.


Sunset around 10:00 PM ish on final

Prince George

Scott actually had the "39" candles ready.  I'll reuse them when I am 93.
Not our exact route - we cut out Smithers and went direct to Prince George.



No comments:

Post a Comment