Saturday I flew with a friend to Wolf Lake airport in Palmer. It was severe clear, but as is usual, that was due to a north wind. On the ground, the north wind was fairly benign, but the winds aloft forecast was pretty brutal. I flight planned for 6,000 and 9,000 feet, and either of those would have taken us over 5 hours...which is more than the fuel on board (well, maybe not leaned to altitude...but I didn't want to test the maybe part of that statement...).
So we elected to hang down low, and after takeoff we were finding that 500 feet gave us about a 15 kt headwind, while 1,000 feet put us more in the realm of a 20+ kt headwind. Still better than the 35 kts at altitude though. Rather than fret and worry about fuel, we stopped in Iliamna to fuel up, then took off again. Our ground speed had been better than expected, usually near 80 kts, but the west side of Cook Inlet was supposed to be ripping from the northeast with turbulence below 2,000 feet, so we didn't want to be short on fuel as we were evaluating our options after the pass.
Flying over Port Alsworth, I realized I really hadn't ever taken a photo of the place from the air, so I remedied that.
The wind was fairly benign from Port Alsworth to the middle of the pass, and our groundspeed was up close to 90 kts.
As we passed the midpoint of the pass, we started getting an actual tailwind, and were showing groundspeed over 100 kts for a while. Got a few bumps in the Narrows and passing Big River Lakes, then turned and crested over the ridge toward MacArthur River and points northeast...and our groundspeed was 56 kts.
Oh boy.
Within a few moments of noticing that, it started getting pretty bumpy. I went up to 2,000 feet to see if that was better, and it smoothed out a bit, but we were still showing speeds generally below 60 kts, occasionally 50 kts. Seemed like it might be a really long trip up the inlet. Around Nicolai Creek, I decided to see if the lower altitudes had any smooth air or at least diminished headwinds, so we went down to 500' agl to check it out. Our groundspeed bumped over 60 for a bit, but then back down, and it was just bumpy enough to not be worth it without at least a 20 kt improvement. As I was deciding that, I looked and saw groundspeed of 50 again, and decided for that speed, I could ride some nice smooth air...so we climbed to 3,000 feet and it was smooth as butter. Flew 56-62 kts all the way to the mouth of the Big Su. At that point, I noticed that the speeds started to improve, and pretty soon we were seeing 70-80 as we passed Big Lake.
The automated weather at Wasilla was 21G26kts right down the runway. That gave us a good option in case we needed a backup. Palmer was reporting 26G37kts...not to my liking at all. Since this was my first trip to Wolf Lake, I was wondering which of these sets of conditions will be more similar to what they have there?
Looking ahead, there was a huge plume of dust coming out of the Knik Glacier valley and whipping over Palmer to the southwest. At least Wolf Lake was out of the main thrust of that. As we passed over Wolf Lake at 3,000 feet, the wind was pretty well aligned with runway 6, but the sock was standing straight out and swaying back and forth a little more than I would have liked. We flew past the airport, descended, then turned and entered midfield left downwind for rwy 6. There was a taildragger of some sort, first though was a champ but I didn't spend a lot of time looking at what it was, that was sitting still with the prop spinning, perhaps warming up on a gravel area off the approach end of 6. He wasn't talking, so I kept an eye on him in case he was NORDO as I turned base then final. He never moved, so I looked up and noticed that we were in an uncommanded climb, caught a serious updraft right there on final. I iniated an immediate 360, and since we could verify visually that there was still nobody else in the pattern, we continued the 360 all the way around and re-established final at an appropriate altitude. With the amount of wind, it moved us back far enough to give us a good descent profile, and down we came.
The lower we got, the gustier and more entertaining it got. The plane off the approach end was still sitting there spinning his prop, so we flew on past to make our landing. Wolf Lake has a nice long runway, but it is pretty narrow. I could tell it was going to be fun, as the wind that was whipping down the runway was spilling over the trees into the open airport area and we were getting shoved around pretty good. I kept myself tracking straight, slowing the plane down while repeatedly getting back to center as a gust would push us to one side or another. As I looked ahead, I could see that the corrections were going to take us past the normal land on the numbers practice. In fact, we were sashaying back and forth, less than 20 agl, trying to establish a good smooth descent while the air was anything but smooth. A couple times we were nearly ready to touch down and a side gust would push us over and I'd have to add power and strong correction to keep us from wandering away from the runway. Twice we touched a tire but not in a safe landing movement and had to lift it back up, but finally steadied just long enough to realize that we were going to hit the go-around button if we didn't land in the next two hundred feet...but fifty feet later both mains made good straight contact, I pulled power, and there we were.
Wind? Definitely more like Palmer.
Wow.
Now I had the joy of backtaxiing in the wind. That's a popular way to stick a Tri-Pacer on its nose. So I moved very slowly and deliberately, putting in control inputs the instant we changed direction to need them. As we were taxiing directly downwind, I was thinking of one of those non-sequitur jokes...there I was, pushing the yoke all the way forward. I imagined a passenger asking why I was holding the yoke so far forward...so I could have responded..."Because I can't hold it any farther forward!" And perhaps equally important, we didn't go too fast. I was happy to taxi into the lee side of our friends hangar and get out. Whew.
Sunday, we came back in the evening. The wind had died down, and was enough from the side that we didn't have much of a tailwind, but it was diminished enough that it was faster to go over the top than through the pass, so we climbed up to 7,500 to get a good look at the volcanoes again.
Mt Iliamna in the distance past the slopes of Redoubt.
Mt Redoubt, smoking away.
Cook Inlet and Kalgin Island.
Rock and ice face on Redoubt.
Tuxedni Bay and Mt Iliamna.
Glacier coming down off Iliamna, which is steaming away.
And finally, the moon over the mountain...
The sun was going behind the clouds as we passed the volcanoes, which is probably obvious from the light in the photos. I had been keeping track of forecasts to see if we needed to leave earlier, but we had a quarter moon and King Salmon was forecast to have a ceiling greater than 12,000 feet, so I was mostly interested in getting over the mountains in good light, which is what we did. As we passed Igiugig, it was getting dark, but we could see the lights of Igiugig from our cruising altitude of 6,500 feet even while it was still quite light, as the rotating beacon is pretty easy to see. We could see Levelock by the time we passed Igiugig. And as we passed Igiugig both King Salmon and Naknek came into view, as it was just getting dark enough for the lights to stand out.
I always like to know my options, and there were some low clouds over Lake Iliamna as we came over the mountains, so I had tuned in the Iliamna automated weather as we neared Pile Bay, and Iliamna was very good, so we had an alternate if needed. By the time we got to Pedro Bay we could see Iliamna, and tuned in the automated weather for Igiugig, which was even better, and we could nearly see it already. So we already knew we'd make it no problem to Igiugig.
Well, as we neared Igiugig over Kukaklek Lake, we picked up King Salmon weather and it was stellar. We could see that by then, but the official weather is always reassuring. The wind was calm, so from about 30 nm out we started our descent, and as we were 10 miles out I told my passenger to watch for magic, then turned on the runway lights...and she didn't even see them. So as we got closer I dimmed them, then put them on bright again. Then she saw them. I don't think she was very impressed. I love watching runway lights come up. Oh well.
The wind was calm, so a lovely flight ended with a lovely landing and then, after being dressed for cold, unloading the plane made me hot. It was 26 degrees and hot out. Must be winter.
Good flights all.
