It is so cool to make a landing in an area like this, once shut down and out of the plane, the reality sets in, you are way in the hell up and out there, in the middle of nowhere, and the risk is balanced by the reward of pulling it off. First thing I always do is walk where I just landed, and see how upon close up inspection it compared to my aerial looksee, sometimes it can be a rude shock. As in Holy Cow I didn't see that but didn't hit it good thing, rarely is it better then it looked, almost alway worse or about what you figured. This was steeper then I expected, that and the altitude explains the amount of power needed to make a smooth landing (a lot, almost full).
The landing site:
Looking up, note the near lenticular appearing cloud high up hmmmm, more on that later:
The takeoff was immediate, as expected with that slope, and as I headed out to look for a overnite campsite I left the ridgeline and, while not climbing, just flew away towards the valley to get a little air room under me. Then, with perfectly smooth air the previous hour and a half, and not near any different ridgelines or other turbulence inducing features, I got THUMPED like I never have before, just a super short duration WHACK of negative G, stuff that has never moved before, was now scattered throughout the cabin, and insuring the controls were clear was the first order of business. It was glass air again, and for the next 20 minutes while I searched and found a likely looking campsite and set down. The 1/2 second at most WHACK, the smooth air before and after, lack of any changing terrain features, all combined to make this different from other bumps and turbulence, just some kind of rogue wave thing never before felt in 30+ years of flying this area in all kinds of very light aircraft, stuff happens I guess. Obviously the upper level cloud denotes some higher elevation action, I particularly noted the cloud shape change between the 2 pictures it appears in, taken just 4 minutes apart. Time was 10 ish AM.
After landing I had to 4 wheel it to the camp site (see the Badger getter outer thread) but it was worth it, the mountain bike ride, and then the hike after it got too steep, to the tree line was awesome, I even found a few meadows big enough for winter ski landings and noted same in my GPS user waypoints. Getting lost from the fading trail was a major concern, I had my GPS, but no extra batteries, flouescent red survey tape, back at the airplane, same with the compass. I made do with tree branches laid out pointing the way, screw that, in the future spare batteries, survey tape, and the compass should ensure my directionally challanged ass (NO sense of direction) finds its way back to the campsite before dark. I still had a few moments of "which way now", spooky feeling. Finding the bike where I left it, and then the campsite after a wild ride down was, as always "nice". The still cold beer tasted great too!
A down wind takeoff the next AM (no choice) and a little over an hour later I was home, right before the wind picked up and blew like hell all day, fun stuff!
Camp site in the trees, after a tortuous taxi from the bench landing are some distance away:
