Motorcitymaule wrote:Flew to Teluride Co. on Wed. from Durango to do a long day of snowboarding. It was cool to land at over 9000' get out of a Maule amoung choppers and VL J's grab the snowboard and hitchhike to town right were the gondola comes in to street parking and ticket window.
Great snow and no one was there, even did a long in bounds hike to the peak (13,250') and road some super steep terrain and a couple great rock shoots. 30 mins. each way vs 3-3.5 hours of driving. Gotta love GA. Peter

Hiking at 13k + now that will build up your lungs!

We want pictures.

Rob

Got my flyin in yesterday, because today was supposed to be crap. But left my camera in the plane. And I wanted to post some pictures along with the story. Went out this morning to refuel plane and get camera.

So here's the story.

New friend with an early model pponk 180, and I took off around 8 AM. We were flying the missing man formation because my usual flying buddy(motorcitymaule, or as I affectionatly call him, (the backcountry terrorist) was missing in action. Probably out snowboarding somewhere. Go figure.

Anyways, great day. Headed over to Mexican Hat Utah where we were picked up, and delivered to the San Juan Inn, for their "World Famous" breakfast burrito. No more food required for the rest of the day.

Left Mex. Hat te San Juan River to Zahn's Camp. Littlestrip, right on the muddy San Juan. River is running pretty good now. Gonna be a great season for the rafters and Kayakers. We landed and were checking things out, heard this buzz in the air. It was a fellow BCPer who had flown down from SLC area in his new Kitfox.
Jeez, these guys are everywhere. So heasked about the strip, and came on in. Second dirtstrp he had been on, did a great job.

So, we talked for awhile, then took of for Nokai Dome. My terrorist buddy is gonna really be bummed when he finds out he missed this trip. Landed, made ourselves comfortable,enjoyed the view, and discussed what we wanted to do next.

Or new friend with the Kitfox decided to stay and spend the night at this great camping spot. We took of for hole in the rock. Found an unheard of before strip on the way. Got to HITR and drug it a couple times. Didn 't land because of warnings we had heard, and some blustery wind, but it didn't look too bad. Planning on comming back with some tools, landing, and fixing it up a bit.

Went from there up to Piute Canyon. Finding another usable strip along the way, and the flying a little off course to fly up Lake Powell to Piute Canyon.

Hiked around it for awhile. Starting to get a little late, so we headed on back to Durango.

GREAT DAY Hope yours was too Gary

3-2-08 TTD to PFC Calm winds. Got to fly over some clouds. Had the $100.00 breakfast. 1.5 hours

Howdy Gary, The pictures and description looked like fun. I did go out and bounce on a few ranch roads out in the central valley this morning for an hour or so but after a short trip it was back to stacking rocks with my landscaper in the front yard.

We had severe clear here in Cali and the winds weren't to bad if one stayed low .

Cheers,

Dave

Hi Dave

Dilly called after we tallked. But was gone when I called back. I hope to get him in the morning.

I guess that the next thing I need to do, is learn how to put my pictures in these messages like Rob did. That's pretty cool

Thanks for the update Cheers back atcha Gary

OK, it wasn't SO backcountry... Jandakot - Jandakot, but it was in a DH 82 TigerMoth, so bite me. What a sweetheart. I could get used to this kind of flying, as long as it didn't snow.

YB

Ahh, Peth. I lived there for about 6 years. I loved it there. Over the scarp are several excellent soaring clubs as well.

Those tigers are great, and one of the only places that I know where you can rent one.

Did you fly over to Rotto?

Soaringhiggy:

Didn't get to Rottnest. No life jackets for one and, if you can believe it, about 100 deg F at Jandakot with low stratus and fog along the coast. I'm leaving in a couple of days for Brisbane. I do some soaring at Darling Downs where they have thermals the size of Rhode Island. Didn't you find the whole soaring club scene here a bit of a time warp? Great soaring co-op and probably the cheapest flying on the planet.

YB

Yes it was great.

Do you have a place to stay in Briz? If not I know a great place in the CBD.

I also know some very good spots to eat in Briz. Have you had Morten Bay Bugs yet?

Also if you like kites and Kite boarding one of my best friends owns and manufactures at the kite shop in Perth, Great guy.

Hold the Line Kites, his name in Neil.

I lived about a block form the Freo bridge on the south side of the river. I miss it very much.

Higgy:
Hey, came across the Victoria street bridge today on the way back from Freo. The cafe street downtown has really grown up, but with a nice vibe. Was Little Creatures around when you were here? Great to have a micro brewery in Oz. Know why they have that beer called XXXX? Because they couldn't spell PIS*. Most Aussie beer is all about quantity, not quality. Their wine, on the other hand...

In Brizzy, we sometimes stay at the West End Central. You know a better place? Some friends run an apartment bldg in Coolangatta, right behind Snapper Rocks. Froggies is one of my top ten beaches in the world.

As an old Freo hand, you gotta be familiar with this:


YB

I have several of their flower bags framed and on the wall.

When I first moved to OZ I was on the very small piece of land between the oxbow of the swan and the ocean, two blocks south of the red back brewery, I do love red back.

My daughter was born in Port Hedland, not a tourist attraction, but an interesting place to live, well sorta anyway.

It sounds like you know Briz well enough. That town has changed major league. I remember when breakfast creek was almost alone in that area.

I spend the summer working on the Luggage Point project. Spent some time at the world famous Pink in Pinkenbaugh.

Have some bugs and Shiraz for me.

Did you know that XXXX is referred to as barbed wire? You can get XXXX on the oak at the breakfast creek hotel, it is actually ok when off the oak keg. If I remember correctly there are only 5 or so places that you can get it on the oak.

Most people think that XXXX is a prophylactic, in reality for Aussies it is the opposite.

02-05-08 oh what a day. 3.5 hr.

Those are beautiful photos Rob
I'm sorry but i didn't bring a photo machine with me to KTEX. Pete

Been playing with video sharing and here is the first attempt.

This was filmed from the right seat and is of an overhead approach into Cabin Creek last July before the fires.

I know the commercial guys come upstream and turn into the airport but I was shown this approach and like it because you can get a good look at the strip before setting up the approach.

Here goes:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="700" height="394" data="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=763438&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color="> <param name="quality" value="best" /> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> <param name="scale" value="showAll" /> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=763438&server=www.vimeo.com&fullscreen=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=" /></object><br /><a href="http://www.vimeo.com/763438/l:embed_763438">Cabin Creek </a> from <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/user394051/l:embed_763438">Tom Donnelly</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/l:embed_763438">Vimeo</a>.

Tom, nice video. What kind of camera do you have?

I increased the width and height on the embed code.

To those watching the video: To see the actual HD quality version (if you have a good video card on your machine) click the link below the video on this page and you can watch the real HD version on the Vimeo site. For some reason they don't let you embed the HD, only the low res.

I use a Panasonic PV-GS300 which is not an HD that writes to digital tape in .avi format.

The AVI format 720x480 and I compressed it (~ 700MB to 116MB) with Windows Media 9 to WMV. Unfortunately the sound did not do too well in the transition.

I am open to suggestions for an AVI to MPEG 2 or 3 converter. The MS Media 9 takes way too long to convert files to a size that is reasonable.

Cheers.

Took some new friends into the range for a climbing trip. The 3rd pic is the hill they have their sights on. The 4th pic is Denali with some nice lenticulars on top. The air at half the summit elevation was very smooth, though, despite the lenticulars.

Yesterday morning was downright sh*tty here- snowing, low clouds and fog. I was trying to sound upbeat on the phone when I told them that there was a little light breaking through in the southern sky, but privately, I didn't really figure there was a snowball's chance of flying them in for their climb. Then mid afternoon it went bluebird- completely CAVU. Floating between peaks with Jack Johnson and The Wailin' Jennys on the audio input. Fresh white snow on everything. A good-to-be-alive kind of day.

Oh yeah- had to fly them in two trips, what with the heap of gear and all. The extended baggage is certainly nice with skis and sleds. Per strict FAR adherence, we shared costs 50/50 and called it good on the finances. But the FARs don't say anything about how much home-smoked Alaska salmon you can accept Thanks, guys!

Good luck with the climb

It must be good to be you, DP. Sweet pics.

Jr.CubBuilder wrote:Just curious, what were the temps like when you took those pictures? It looks pretty mild, but I have this knee-jerk expectation of Alaska as being subzero except for a couple months out of the year.

We saw -60F for a week this past February, but you wouldn't have found me flying then. I leave that to the hard men like Gump and MTV. Personally, I figure there's a reason it's called pleasure flying. If it's much below zero, I don't find it all that pleasurable. Just gets to be a heap more work, and harder on the equipment, as you guys all know, but the difference here is that there's just less daylight to accomplish all those additional airplane chores that need to be done.

Surface-level air temps would have been in the teens in those pics. OAT at 10,000 was about 0F, as I recall. March is actually a great time up here on account of the sunlight (six minutes more each day at my latitude), but the temps can really swing either way this month.

TomD wrote:I know the commercial guys come upstream and turn into the airport but I was shown this approach and like it because you can get a good look at the strip before setting up the approach.

Your approach is the right way to go. Early one morning at Cabin Creek I was just lining up for takeoff roll when a commercial guy hauling equipment in for an outfitter came around the corner and turned on to short final heading right at me. I had called my backtaxi and departure intentions, but I never heard a peep on the radio. I was lucky I saw him before I started rolling. I know time is money so they don't like to fly a pattern, but radio calls are free. He probably didn't expect anyone else around.

CAVU