The intention was to shoot a serious video, which is mostly what I did. I'm sitting on a ton of footage from the adventure. That film will be along shortly....ish. I may write a longer trip report too, but I just wanted to show off some photos since I haven't really done a proper TR in a long time. Characters include: DistrictFab from Portland, Big Renna from Boston, Akgreg from Kenai, Larry from Fairbanks, Prosaria from Chugiak, 16Bravo from Wasilla, and me, Zzz, grizzled suburbanite.
There's nothing like touring Lake Hood. Locals may take it for granted, but airports in the lower 48 simply don't have this concentration of Super Cubs, Skywagons, and all the related lovely beasts. So much Beaver.
Day 1 was travel day, arrival into ANC and settling in. But for Day 2 I'd arranged a filming session with @16Bravo from Wasilla. We met at Birchwood airport where the Airframe Alaska people were busy swapping wheels on one of their prototype Cubs. Gabe and Richenda from Airframes Alaska gave us a great tour of their facility. Great company, and a big supporter of BCP.
@16Bravo and I were lead plane in a group out to the Knik river, which included his experimental Super Cub, a few SQ-12s, and the venerable 170B of Larry's.
This was on the return, but you get the idea; Knik River.
The tedious job of actually trying to make a flying film... Thanks to Pelican Cases for providing me some of their ultra-lightweight Pelican Air cases for this trip.
@16Bravo with his beautiful experimental PA_18:
Jon Bush and his stretched SQ-12 rev 2:
Here's a teaser of some of the footage, from the forthcoming film.
Tom, aka @Cubspanker would unfortunately bend this beautiful bird the following weekend in the Talkeetna slow flight demonstration. He's a great pilot though, and I have some beautiful footage of him flying. It sounds like he'll be back in the air later this year.
We returned to Lake Hood for an evening of hanging at the Millennium bar and visiting with a few other BCP peeps. The turnout this year was pretty slim compared to years prior, but considering that I'd met all my close friends on this trip at this same venue, it was alright. We had fun.
Saturday was the Airmen Association Show at the FedEx hangar, and it was pretty much deja vu, an event like all the previous years, with a raffle Cub, static displays, and seeing the same friendly faces from vendors. That evening we wandered over to a hangar party to visit with some folks, and performed the traditional evening stroll of the Lake Hood fingers, admiring the aircraft.
L to R: Prosaria, AKgreg, DistrictFab, Zzz:
A hangar to drool over:
Before I knew it the Airmen show weekend was coming to a close. We climbed in with Akgreg and headed south to his base of operations at Soldotna airport to prepare for whatever adventure we could design that evening. The weather forecast was pretty grim, with rain showers and low ceilings seemingly passing directly over everywhere we wanted to go. Bigrenna had to fly home out of ANC on Tuesday night, so the pressure was on to choose wisely. The observations on Monday morning sealed it: We would head northwest into the Alaska Range.
A checkpoint cabin on the famous Iditarod Trail, Rohn:
Tatitna, or Rohn, turned out to be a great spot to hang out. The Kuskokwim river was trickling north with snowmelt, and as I understand, would become much bigger in the coming weeks. The cabin site is a lush mossy forest just in from the edge of the steep cutbank of the river.
Prosaria and Akgreg's birds:
Larry's 170B has become semi-famous on the Youtube with its distinct acid-washed denim paint job.
When you need only one word to describe your passion in life (@Prosaria):
"Did I hear...Skywagon???" Bigrenna
Breakfast of champions...err... pilots who value weight savings over meal quality.
One of the guys has a photo of 4 of us wearing our bug shirts, a photo to best the best of the goofy buddy pics. The night in the Rohn cabin was complicated by our enthusiasm to have a fire in the stove, something thoroughly unwarranted when the overnight low only dips to 45. We basically slept on top of our sleeping bags, letting the few lucky mosquitoes who'd slipped in through the cabin doorway take full advantage of the man buffet.
The next morning brought some interesting-looking weather developments over Rainy Pass, so we decided to load gear and head out. It wasn't bad enough that we couldn't have returned through Rainy Pass, but we were also curious about the supposedly mellower Ptarmigan Pass that curved south from the Kuskokwim and then back north and east out the Skwentna.
Prosaria fueling up from the can reserves:
Upriver on the Kuskokwim:
Northward, flying out Ptarmigan Pass:
This was pretty much the end of the adventure for all of us together, but the day was still young. A few days prior, @Born2FlyAK had told me about some fun Yentna river spots with plentiful large river bars, so we gave it a go. What a great little detour!
We filmed a few takeoffs and landings with the drones, then just sat around eating cheese and crackers. No cell service. Idyllic.
Nary a nick in the stainless edged MT...
After we departed the gravel bar, Larry and Bigrenna set off for Anchorage while we headed south to cross over the Forlands and back to Soldotna. The trip wasn't quite over though... The following day DistrictFab, Akgreg, and I spent a few hours trolling the Cook Inlet for Kings, and DF scored. Always nice to go home from AK with a cooler of fresh salmon.
Fellow Kenai peninsulan Squash and his wife met us for dinner in Homer, and he was kind enough to fly myself and DistrictFab back to Soldotna for what I think may be the most relaxing and gorgeous evening flight I've ever been on.
Tustumena Lake:
Final approach, PASX:
And that's it; another end to the now traditional late spring trip to Alaska where the magic of BCP has created some great friendships and made some wonderful adventures possible. Thanks for reading this far.
Zzz
