Starting the Season Off Right
"Houston to Kenai in a Super Cub? Sign me up!"
Since I started flying, I've always wanted to make a low & slow trek up to Alaska through Canada. When I got a call this past March from a Super Cub owner looking for help getting his aircraft up north from Texas, I was thrilled. I had plenty of cross country experience and Alaska time, but this trip would offer new sights and fresh challenges.
The owner and I chatted over the phone and we agreed to forgo the tamer AlCan Highway route in favor of the more challenging Cassiar Highway route because of its reputation for better scenery (it did not disappoint!) We also agreed that we would camp along the way, both for cost and practical reasons; the latter being mainly that we would not be allowed to stay in traditional lodging in Canada because of COVID restrictions. I've spent a lot of time backpacking and camping so I was more than happy with this plan, and hey, it felt fitting for a trip like this in a Super Cub.
Ready to start the move from its original home in Texas to its new home in Alaska
Route Planning
I started the route-planning process by reading everything that I could find on BackcountryPilot.org, including the Guide to Flying to Alaska and Oregon180 and Family Fly North To Alaska! These articles, along with the voluminous comments, were invaluable throughout the research phase. Ted Waltman's site fly2AK.com was also a huge help, and Ted was even kind enough to provide some one-on-one consultation. I also spent time with the dated but incredibly-detailed Alaska Airmen's Logbook.
The owner and I also made dozens of calls to flight schools and FBOs along the route to confirm our understanding of local conditions. With a couple notable exceptions, these calls infused our planning with great on-the-ground knowledge. From all this research, we determined that the best route for us would be across Texas and New Mexico, then to make our way northwestward to cross the border in Washington.
Pre-Trip Planning Challenges
Once we had our route planned, we identified our biggest operational challenges as:
- Weight & balance, particularly given the amount of equipment required for such a long trip
- Canada / COVID / customs
- Cassiar route conditions pre-summer
For weight & balance, we started with a list of "plane gear" (tools, spare parts, survival equipment, etc) to solve for how much personal gear we'd each be allowed, which worked out to 50 lbs apiece. I approached weight like a backpacking trip, although I didn't go so far as to cut the end off my toothbrush to save an ounce. I did, however, weigh out each individual item using a kitchen scale and evaluate the necessity of each one, shedding as many non-necessities as I possibly could.
Clothing was particularly tough to plan for, since most backpacking trips don't range in climate from the heat of Texas to the chill of the Yukon, but I managed to slim my personal gear down to 49 lbs. Pro tip: USPS 12x12x6 flat-rate boxes take approximately the same amount of time as the trip, and you can mail up to 70 lbs of your heaviest items for about $20 (regardless of origin and destination). If this sounds like an exercise in extreme minimalism, well, I may or may not have lived in a 275 square foot tiny house on wheels at some point in the past.
On the Canada / COVID / customs side, we had heard that Canada would be tough. We managed to get in touch with the sole customs officer in Kamloops, who graciously provided regular advice to us multiple times a week throughout the planning process. She made us aware of how stringent the COVID testing requirements would be (negative test within 72 hours of arrival) and the pandemic-specific online process for submitting our info. Having a single point of contact with Canadian customs was invaluable, and we at least felt like we had a handle on the process (more on that later).
For the Cassiar Highway route, we recognized that April was very early in the season to attempt this route. Although we ended up getting incredibly lucky with weather, the NAV CANADA Local Area Weather Manuals gave us a very sobering pre-trip assessment of the potential downside scenarios for weather, notably the risk of persistent valley cloud lasting for days. However, our plan allowed us an "out" in that we'd make the decision whether to proceed with the Cassiar route in the Prince George area (CYXS), which would allow us to alternately head east to follow the Alcan Highway instead. That being said, there are no weather observations between Smithers (CYYD) and Dease Lake (CYDL), which also happens to be the longest no-fuel stretch along the Cassiar Highway (over 300NM), so it'd be a bit of a gamble in any sort of questionable weather. In theory the camping gear would help mitigate this risk as we could wait out weather at any stop along the way without a need for lodging, but it wasn't an option that we were too keen on.
Friday 04/16 - Pre-Departure Preparations
I headed to Texas on April 15th, with the plan that we'd depart Saturday the 17th, although the forecast for that day looked questionable. After a month of spending hours a day planning, I was pretty eager to get the trip going. While planning for only a single day onsite before departing on such a large trip might seem foolish, I was confident that we'd be able to make our timeline because 1) the owner is a 20-year A&P and it was clear to me that he took meticulous care of his aircraft, and 2) we had a plan for exactly what tasks needed to be accomplished before leaving:
- Airworthiness review / inspection of the aircraft
- Weight: gear review and refinement (read: things to leave or ship)
- Balance: loading plan (read: the exact place that each & every single item would be loaded)
- Pick up last minute gear & supplies
- "Finalize" route planning (read: base case, to be adjusted throughout every day of trip)
- Social issues: responsibilities, cockpit rules, etc.
The most notable of these items were the weight & balance preparations, on which we spent four hours Friday morning. First, we laid out all the gear on a tarp on the dirt floor of the barn-style hangar. Because of the cataloguing of gear that we had done before I arrived in Texas we were already within 50 lbs of max gross, and we went through every single item to evaluate what fell into the leave-or-ship pile: second backup fuel bladder (2.5 lbs), tarp (2.0 lbs) etc all the way down to the second mess kit (0.7 lbs) and extra gloves (0.4 lbs). Through this process, we managed to reduce gross to where we needed it be.
After slimming down gear to the bare necessities, it was on to the loading plan. We were extremely fortunate to have a belly pod; in fact, I don't know how the two of us could have possibly kept the CG within the aft limit without it (separately, I don't know how we could've come in even close to max gross without the two of us weighing a combined 300 lbs). The owner took the lead on the game of tetris that was loading the pod, putting the heaviest items in the front of the pod. Once we had our plan in place, we appended the belly pod moments to our overall CG calculation using three separate estimated stations (25", 45" and 64") that lined up with the respective centers of mass for different groupings of gear. Our final calculation with full fuel showed CG 18.8" from the wing leading edge, comfortably within the 20" aft limit.
The backpacker pilot's load-out
All the other planning and preparations for Friday fell into place, but the weather outlook wasn't getting any better. Saturday's forecast showed IFR ceilings early, clearing out just as the wind picked up to 15G20 crosswind across our 15'-wide, very non-level grass strip. But we decided that we'd get up early, load the plane and be ready to go if we got any sort of window between the ceiling lifting and the wind. If we could get out of the strip before the winds picked up, we could wait for the remaining weather to clear out from a nearby airport with a runway more favorably oriented for the day's wind direction. But if the winds did pick up before we got the plane out from the strip, we'd have to put off leaving for a day or two.
Saturday 04/17 - Crossing Texas 365 nm
Sure enough, as we got the Cub out of the hangar and loaded, the ceilings lifted just enough to let us slip out with only a moderate amount of crosswind. So we got out of there and headed west, and immediately discovered that the low ceiling extended further than we expected, but we made it to Temple (KTPL) and landed to top off fuel and wait out the weather. Unfortunately, the bands of weather across Texas were moving slower than we had hoped, so we made our first major change to the route: instead of cutting northwest across Texas, we'd fly more or less directly west to skirt the weather.
A few calls found Crane TX (E13) amenable to us camping at the airport, and we'd just need to call the sheriff to unlock the self-serve pump for us; when I did so that evening, I found out that an actual police complaint needed to be filed (with my name on it) in order to dispatch the deputies. So Day 1 we managed to keep the forward progress going, even if not according to the original plan.
Sunday 04/18 - Cross NM & CO, Overfly Moab 686 nm
CLICK FOR ROUTE
E13-KPUC
A day of dealing with weather, with a couple mistakes and lessons learned. We started the day with another morning of scud-running, with the plan of getting past the weather and to a higher altitude. Sure, it's not how I'd typically prefer to fly long distances cross-country, but with west Texas and New Mexico dominated in April by 15+ mph westerly winds, we wanted to take advantage of the no-wind conditions while they lasted. And since we'd be flying over unpopulated, mostly flat terrain in an aircraft with proven off-airport landing capability (to say the least), we decided to go ahead and fly the leg. So we headed northwest and got a two-hour tour of oil country from below 1000' before arriving in Roswell. I've heard the vibe around America's #1 UFO destination is generally pretty weird; we didn't venture into town, but the almost-deserted airport jammed with hundreds of mothballed airliners felt like a zombie-apocalypse scene from 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead.
Northern New Mexico...sand and scud.
With broken-to-overcast ceilings along the route and the Albuquerque ceiling broken around 3000', once again we had to make a decision on whether to continue due to weather, especially since there was really no option from here to adjust the route laterally to dodge the weather as we had done crossing Texas, and we didn't want to continue to scud run with rising terrain underneath the clouds and only a couple of tiny airports along the way as landing options.
Since Albuquerque was forecast to clear up in a couple hours, we planned to climb above the clouds, avoid the terrain and find ourselves with a clear path to land and refuel in the Albuquerque area...which was a mistake. Along the way, our ADS-B wx METARs stopped updating over the desert, and by the time they started updating again about 45 minutes outside of the Albuquerque area, we got observations that all three airports in the area were overcast, and of course the nearest fuel option was at least an hour past those airports.
The bush-speckled sands of some Albuquerque terrain
At this point I wasn't totally confident in the plane's endurance (or aware, as we'd find out on the ground, that we had been burning only 5.7 gph lean at altitude), so I ended up demonstrating the Han Solo style corkscrew-through-the-only-opening-available routine for the owner as we approached the Albuquerque area, all while reinforcing my warning earlier on the leg to the owner that VFR-only private pilots should generally avoid giving up reference to the surface. As it turns out, once we crossed over into the Albuquerque area (below the clouds) the ceiling was a lot patchier, and my demonstration hadn't really been necessary.
We spent the rest of the day traveling across desert terrain dodging scattered clouds, with some pretty incredible scenery. At Farmington (KFMN) we got a nice illustration of density altitude (~8000' at takeoff), with our fully-loaded Cub trudging off the mesa at ~200 fpm. And flying above Moab was truly incredible, even though I wished we had more time to fly lower and explore the area more. We beat sunset in Price UT (KPUC) by 45 minutes and camped right outside the fence; I've since been made aware that the camping at nearby Huntington (69V) is far superior to trying to get tent stakes into the hard-packed dirt in Price. Camping at Moab would've been great too but the campsite is a mile down the road and the crew cars were gone for the day.
Monday 04/19 - Grounded in Price UT 0 nm
Forecasts for winds gusting 50+ mph in southern Idaho along our planned route grounded us for the day, so we decided to use the time to get our customs-mandated COVID tests done and got our first solid taste of Canadian-brand absurdity.
Grounded in Price, Utah
Because Canada's policy at the time required a negative PCR test result within 72 hours of clearing customs, and since Canadian customs had warned us that they had turned away Americans with 73-hour-old results, we had waited up until this point to confirm that weather would allow reliable passage within the allowed time frame (following our tests). Official Canadian government policy required test results to include very specific verbiage, which added the additional layer of complexity of finding compliant test result paperwork.
After four hours working through these issues, we reviewed customs / eAPIS / Canadian aviation regs for the rest of the day, along with our planned crossing through the pass between Price and Spanish Fork (KSPK) the following morning.
Tues 04/20 - Utah desert, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon farm country 575 nm
The winds in Price during our grounded day had not disappointed and continued into the next morning, causing us to delay departure by a couple hours.
We had spoken with numerous local pilots on both sides of the pass along Highway 6 between Price and Spanish Fork during our pre-trip planning process, and had planned to fly the pass first thing in the morning to mitigate the risk of westerly headwinds, turbulence, and rising density altitude. And although we had been assured that the route was very manageable in a light GA aircraft, we really didn't feel like we had a totally clear idea of what to expect. In planning for the worst, the pass turned out to be a complete non-event: wide, easy and no problem. The problems started as soon as we cleared the pass.
The life of the low-budget ferry pilot: nylon hotel on the grounds at Hermiston, Oregon (HRI).
During my pre-trip planning, in reviewing the chart around the Salt Lake area it struck me how similar the layout was to the Anchorage special flight rules area: a large urban area with numerous airports sandwiched in a narrow corridor between terrain, remote areas, water and restricted airspace.
I scoured the supplements and other pubs but found no information about any special procedures, and I had been reassured by a friend familiar with the area that local controllers wouldn't be very busy and were happy to give vectors through the Class B to unfamiliar pilots. As we emerged from the pass, at our VFR altitude we were completely unable to even hear the KSLC controllers and ended up flying around for an hour to different spots trying unsuccessfully to make contact, even at times within 5 miles of the Class B.
We finally gave up and landed at the 20'-wide runway at West Desert Airpark (UT9) to "ask directions" and met some really helpful & nice folks in the clubhouse there that got us up to speed on the area. And in the end we skipped the Class B completely, flying the I-80 corridor westward between restricted areas and refueling at Wendover (KENV). Wendover is a really cool WWII airport...wish we could've hung out longer but we were behind schedule with the morning's wind delay and airspace confusion.
An unforecast 15 mph tailwind helped us make it through southern Idaho and all the way to our planned stay in Hermiston, Oregon (KHRI). The hospitality and setup at Hermiston was really amazing, and if you're into the camping thing, I highly recommend a stop there (talk with Rolf at Gorge Aviation ahead of time). We didn't stay overnight at Baker City OR (KBKE), but they also had a great setup for camping and a cool FBO as well.
Wednesday 04/21 - 
Into Canada 494 nm
We headed out first thing to fly four hours traversing eastern Washington, with our planned crossing to occur between Dorothy Scott International (0S7) and Kelowna (CYLW). 0S7 is a beautiful airport and less than 5 miles from the border, but a word of warning: the infrastructure is minimal, with the new airport manager having to drive over and bang on the fuel nozzle with a hammer to make it work. Once we made the right calls to US customs and took off, it was an easy one-hour hop to Kelowna, which is where the fun began.
The extended legs with no-fuel or unknown fuel availability in British Columbia and the Yukon.
Canadian customs agents sarcastically greeted us on the ramp with "welcome to the police state of Canada," and started the standard clearing process. To the agents' credit, they were completely reasonable and professional, and were very apologetic about the state of affairs with the Canadian government. They inspected our identification and the sole firearm onboard, and together we began trying to complete the submission of our COVID compliance information via the ArriveCan app. Unfortunately we all discovered that the app is not actually designed to accommodate our exempted-traveler use case, so they placed a call to their kommandants.
After two hours with no electronic way to officially document our information and the health department threatening to make us take another COVID test (48 hours after our Utah results) and quarantine for who-knows-how-long, the agents made an executive decision, scribbled our info down on the back of a piece of paper and released us..."CLEAR PROP" followed approximately 12 seconds later.
CLICK FOR ROUTE
Crossing into Canada
We were well behind schedule at this point and shortcut the highway with a direct route to Kamloops (CYKA) to refuel. I don't really recommend the shortcut, but we climbed high enough to pick up the Kelowna frequency almost the entire way (just in case), we were carrying a Garmin inReach and, again, we were in a fully-capable off-airport aircraft. After our hasty exit we did not, however, file a flight plan from the air (as required by CAR 602.73(2)), because all we could think about was the outside chance that we'd be asked to return to the airport to be led off in shackles to the Canadian customs gulags.
CLICK FOR ROUTE
Route: CYLW-CYQZ
After fuel in Kamloops, we followed the highway another three hours to Quesnel (CYQZ) for the night, beating sunset by 45 minutes (one great part of this trip was that sunset kept getting later and later the further north that we progressed!).
Quesnel Airport was completely deserted, with GA aircraft tied down but the terminal locked and not a soul anywhere. Thankfully we had access to great camping, showers and even Dominos delivery...hat tip to all the BackcountryPilot.org commenters that recommended camping there.
The flood-carved canyonscape of eastern Washington's high desert
Thurs 04/22 - Pivotal Day for the Trip 674 nm
This was the only day without a completely clear final destination for the day.
We had figured that we'd need to spend an evening in Whitehorse in order to make it to the border within the inconvenient hours of US customs, but reaching Whitehorse from Quesnel in a single day appeared to be out of reach. In the meantime, we had to worry about the long no-fuel and no-weather stretch between Smithers (CYYD) and Dease Lake (CYDL). Thanks to the folks on BackcountryPilot.org, we were aware that securing fuel during the winter in Dease Lake could be challenging and during our pre-trip planning we had spoken with two different people in Dease Lake that confirmed the availability of fuel (one even told us that a Shell had opened at the airport).
A still very frozen Meziadin Lake
CLICK FOR ROUTE
Route: CYQZ-CYDL
We departed early from Quesnel and arrived in Smithers without incident after 3.5 hours, but we hadn't reached either of our Dease Lake contacts the prior day to confirm fuel availability, which we absolutely needed to do lest we wind up stranded more than a hundred miles away from 100LL.
After refueling in Smithers, we finally got our primary Dease Lake contact on the phone and it turned out that he had thought during our conversation weeks earlier that we had been asking about fuel at the Smithers Airport (because he's physically based in Smithers)...and of course there's no avgas for sale at Dease Lake. So now we're sitting in Smithers thinking that we're going to have to fly A FULL DAY eastward to follow the Alcan Highway up (no chance we'd fly the Trench this time of year). And for all we knew, there was probably a Canadian SWAT team hot on our tail ready to pounce the minute we diverged from the planned route that we provided to customs.
All I know is that the aircraft owner walked off for a few minutes with his phone and ten minutes later we were departing Smithers with a plan to buy avgas from a private helicopter operator at Dease Lake. I can neither confirm nor deny the use of any age-old codewords of the Fraternal Order of the Rotorcraft secret society remembered from his days as an Apache A&P. But I can warn anyone that wants to fly the Cassiar anytime soon that unless you're up for using mogas along 125 nautical miles of two-lane Canadian highway between Dease Lake and Watson Lake (after walking the gas up from the town of Dease Lake to the airport), you should triple-check the fuel situation before planning your trip. Supposedly there's a plan to restore self serve, but who knows when, if ever, that gets done.
CLICK FOR ROUTE
Route: CYDL-CYXY
I'd like to say that it was all smooth sailing from Smithers to Dease Lake, but the reality is that it's still over 300 nm with no fuel and no official weather observations (there's a WX cam at Bob Quinn Lake but no wind info).
The forecast called for a 5 mph headwind increasing significantly with altitude. We knew that we could make it with a 5 mph headwind, but at 10 mph we'd be cutting it close and 15 mph we'd be risking turning base-to-final while pushing the plane up the highway. And we couldn't rely on flying higher and leaning it out to save fuel, because the forecast showed the headwind increasing dramatically over the course of just a few thousand feet. But two factors made me want to give this leg a shot: 1) we had severe clear weather and almost no risk of it turning on us, and 2) if there was one stretch of our trip that I figured would have the most unreliable forecast, it'd be this stretch.
So we set out with a plan to constantly monitor groundspeed and progress, and we turned out to have no headwind and up to a 3 mph tailwind at some points. We made it to Dease Lake and an on-site ski-bum-turned-helo-pilot (awesome dude) helped us dig hoses out of a few feet of snow and fuel up the plane. What a relief.
Between Dease Lake and Watson Lake
From Dease Lake, we had planned to follow the highway northeast to Watson Lake (CYQH); we weren't excited about the backwards direction, but had been warned about trying to fly the direct route from Dease Lake to Whitehorse this time of year. Against the advice of several very experienced pilots, about 30 minutes north of Dease Lake we decided to turn northwest and take a direct path. There were several considerations involved:
- We had no headwind, no ceiling and unlimited vis
- We planned a route to join the Alcan Highway 35 miles east of Teslin with a maximum distance from either highway of 30 minutes (flying) with very flat terrain (read: survivable landing if necessary)
- We had arctic survival gear, flares and inReach
- We had contact info for a nearby helicopter operator
- Importantly, Watson Lake had a very gusty crosswind that was not forecast to let up for the day, and if we headed in that direction we were committed to land there as it was our only fuel option (no fuel along the highway between Watson Lake and Whitehorse)
Sure, we could have sat out the Watson Lake winds and camped for the night at Dease Lake, but we felt like we had a lot of factors going for us in this decision. And while I wouldn't recommend the shortcut to everyone, for us on that particular day it worked out great. We arrived in Whitehorse well in advance of sunset, fueled up and stayed the night. The Whitehorse airport was yet another completely empty post-apocalyptic scene...we didn't see a single person outside that day, even while standing in front of the terminal for 10 minutes.
Friday 04/23 - Homestretch 607 nm
Leaving Whitehorse, it really was an easy last day and epic weather. We filed eAPIS the prior evening, called customs from the air above Burwash (CYDB) to move forward our arrival time to account for the unforecast 15 mph tailwind and met up with a very friendly US customs official in Northway (PAOR). Fuel and Fast Eddies in Tok (PFTO), and a few hours later we rounded the corner into the Mat-Su Valley after an incredible drive-by of the north side of the Wrangells. After fueling at Palmer (PAAQ), we flew well above the bustle of Anchorage airspace, buzzed the owner's house and landed at a private strip south of Kasilof (5KS).
Inching closer to home – the welcome sight of the Wrangells and Mt. Sanford mark the gateway to Alaska.
What a trip, with so many more stories that I couldn't even fit into this lengthy travelogue.
For the owner, it was a chance to take his cross-country experience from hundred-dollar hamburgers to cross-continental navigation and advanced aeronautical decision-making.
For me it was a chance to fly in a foreign country, continue to learn from new experiences and witness some of the most surreal beauty I can imagine, even having flown in Alaska.
We couldn't have planned this trip without all the info lent by Backcountrypilot.org contributors, with special thanks to Ted Waltman. I'd highly recommend the trip to anyone willing and able to take it on while adequately prepared, and I hope that some of our mistakes, misadventures, and successes recounted here are helpful to others in planning their adventure.
The full routing from Texas to Alaska – a mere 3,402 nautical miles.
Finally among the brethren – Super Cubs on Trail Lake at Moose Pass
