Lake Hood, Alaska...note how low the sun is at noon

Hi Don. Indeed, let it begin! I'm still waiting for my home strip to receive enough snow for straight skis.

denalipilot wrote:Hi Don. Indeed, let it begin! I'm still waiting for my home strip to receive enough snow for straight skis.

What's going on with the winter up there?

CamTom12 wrote:

denalipilot wrote:Hi Don. Indeed, let it begin! I'm still waiting for my home strip to receive enough snow for straight skis.

What's going on with the winter up there?

I don't know, but the past two weekends I've been outside washing vehicles with a garden hose.

18F and 1/2 mile here in fairbanks with freezing fog and freezing drizzle. Nasty. We are fortunate enough to have received enough snow to open the ski trails and for those wishing to get skis on the plane.

I snuck in a few trips around the pattern before the freezing rain came back on Monday

Caught a good afternoon sunset. They will be getting later after tomorrow.https://vimeo.com/115089580

JDW wrote:Caught a good afternoon sunset. They will be getting later after tomorrow.

Seemed like there was a lot of ski traffic out. Hope you had a great flight.

I flew from dawn to dusk.

Brett

Brett, sounds like you got around 4 hours of flying in. That's always a good day. The temperature has sure been feeling like spring time this year. Just need some more snow now with the longer days, would make for better ski flying this spring?

In the lower 40's here in SE Idaho, ain't right.....the ski area above my place briefly opened today. Rain in town means usually snowing like hell up at Pebble, even rain in the parking lot isn't a deal breaker, but today it was rain rain rain all the way up and the snow was like sticky concrete and the head patroller called BS and shut 'er down. NO snow on my runway.

UH-60andC-180 wrote:

JDW wrote:Caught a good afternoon sunset. They will be getting later after tomorrow.

Seemed like there was a lot of ski traffic out. Hope you had a great flight.

I flew from dawn to dusk.

Brett

JDW,
Great video, thanks for sharing! I never got the chance to fly out of metro.

Brett,
Sounds like an amazing day. I'm jealous! I'd be your copilot any time!

Ski season is open here too. But it is always fun to fly a little longer with Bushwheels.

Christmas Eve day 1970, first Christmas in Anchorage. Skies were overcast, light rain started in the morning, got heavier later toward noon, and washed away the snow that had been on the ground. Crumby looking--dismal. Temps in the high 30s. Hard to believe, here we were in Anchorage in our new house in Century Village, and we weren't going to have a white Christmas!

Older kid (then 5 years old) questioned out loud whether Santa would know that we'd moved to Anchorage, and if he knew we had, how was he going to get to us with no snow for his sleigh. I assured him that Santa knows we'd moved, and he really didn't need snow. I promised not to light a fire in the fireplace, so that Santa wouldn't get burned.

Christmas morning. Oh my! Sometime during the night, the rain turned to snow. 18" on the level! Skies cleared, partly cloudy, beautiful day, temps around +/- 20. Absolute proof for one 5 year old that Santa is for real.

Memories!

Cary

I found evidence of ski season shenanigans while I was tooling around the flats near Gold King.





Brett

Man am I jealous. The skis for the 180 have to stay in the shed this winter. Its damn hard to sit and look at your plane, it looking back at you just begging to go...

This picture was taken over two weeks ago, on the lake in front of my house. Plenty of ice to hold up the pickup truck (18 inches), snow has not been quite holding it's own the last week, with temps mostly around the freeing point during the daytime, but still plenty for ski flying.

Steve