What route are you thinking Cory? Inland through Canada or fly up the coast?

Assuming no weather delays, how many days via the inland route are you planning?

Wally and I are talking about an AK trip in June. We would love to join a caravan!

MAU MAU wrote:What route are you thinking Cory? Inland through Canada or fly up the coast?

Assuming no weather delays, how many days via the inland route are you planning?

Way too preliminary to be wondering either of these I think. Me personally would like to do one direction inland and the other via the inside passage. As for length of trip, I'm guessing you'd need 2-2.5 week minimum. Probably 3 weeks I'm guessing.

WilgaBeast wrote:Wally and I are talking about an AK trip in June. We would love to join a caravan!

I'm guessing from looking at the poll that this summer is too soon for most. I know that we already have our summer long trip planned so it's not doable for us. But you never know. There are a few that are interested in this year!

Choss...there are places to land, but there may not always be fuel. If you have the option of adding an aux tank, then you would also have the option of carrying the bushwheel bags or similar. Either is more than adequate. There are lots of airports scattered along the way that we usually don't mention. I don't know what the fuel availability is at Haines Junction, Silver City, Burwash Landing, or Beaver Creek, for example. Those are the airports between Whitehorse and Northway. But if you need fuel, you have lots of places to land. If yo have the fuel on board, that's great, just dump it in and off you go. If you don't have the fuel, but you have the bags, you might be able to beg a ride to the gas station and back. A lot easier than begging a ride and having to beg somebody to also find you a fuel container.

I asked about fuel as I was overflying Teslin last spring. The guy at the airport was willing to lend me his car, but he had no fuel containers and no idea where I would be able to round any up. I didn't really need the fuel, but I was getting close to the point where my landing at Whitehorse was going to be with 30 minutes of fuel. I like to operate with more margin than that.

We're planning a move back to the Pacific Northwest later this year. Obviously, joining a caravan after that move would be infinitely easier than trying to join one starting in Virginia. With the hassles of selling one house and building another plus moving this year, any big flying trips (other than relocating our Maule) are out of the question. That said, the trip north is on my bucket list!

WilgaBeast wrote:Wally and I are talking about an AK trip in June. We would love to join a caravan!

I usually head up either last of May or early June every year, What are you planning on taking up the Beast or the 182?

Would be great to head up there at the same time!!

chosstronaut wrote:Does anyone know what the distances are between available fuel? I can take MoGas too, but only have a 250nm range.

Fuel availability isn't too bad on the inland routes, but on the coastal route, it's a long ways between fuel stops AND airports or even landable sites.

MTV

Is/are there any online flight planning apps for a trip like this available?

Grassstrippilot wrote:Given the expense of the trip

Seems you have been doing a lot of flying lately, Corey. Beyond the higher cost of fuel in Canada, what are you foreseeing as more expensive if you head north for a couple weeks as opposed to one of your tours of the Northwest / Southwest, etc.? Don't talk yourself out of a great trip before you start. The kids will only get heavier and need more of their own equipment to bring along...

AK is high on our list. We've been waiting for the kids to be old enough to enjoy and remember the trip. Next summer would be great for us. The kids will be 8 and 6. Having other kids along would be awesome for them. The last 2 weeks of June would be great as the Kings are running then too.

Matt 7GCBC wrote:

Grassstrippilot wrote:Given the expense of the trip

Seems you have been doing a lot of flying lately, Corey. Beyond the higher cost of fuel in Canada, what are you foreseeing as more expensive if you head north for a couple weeks as opposed to one of your tours of the Northwest / Southwest, etc.? Don't talk yourself out of a great trip before you start. The kids will only get heavier and need more of their own equipment to bring along...

Oh don't worry Matt! I'm not talking myself out of it. I figure to do the trip and see where I really want to see, it would be about 50 hours of flying. Minimum of 35 hours just round trip to ANC. That alone is double our annual "big" summer trip. Put food, survival gear, and other normal traveling expenses onto that, and it will be quite a bit more than our normal summer excursion. Fortunately, Dee is on board and we want to do this trip. And yes, she's been great to let me do a lot of flying lately. I'm slowly breaking our checkbook into shape to handle the extra workout!

pilot117 wrote:AK is high on our list. We've been waiting for the kids to be old enough to enjoy and remember the trip. Next summer would be great for us. The kids will be 8 and 6. Having other kids along would be awesome for them. The last 2 weeks of June would be great as the Kings are running then too.

For us this is right on point and why we fall in the 2-3 year range. Our kids are currently 6, 4, and 2. A few more years will help them be able to take the longer legs without suffering too much of a hit to our useful load! It would be great to have some other kids along too! We have boy, girl, boy.

I just did the flight this summer with my son (7), dad (70), and an uncle (75). My dad was the restricting factor on legs. My son could have gone much longer. My wife drove up with my daughter (4), mom, and 1- year old . I think my son and daughter are in a great age for this trip. We saw a lot of things that my son has described back to me. Would have been even more memorable if we would have camped our way up. YRMV.

Brett

Our family's flying up to Alaska in July. We've been planning it for quite some time and have 3 1/2 weeks to do the trip. Our oldest is turning 13 and our youngest is 6, so I think it's pretty much the sweet spot age-wise for them as discussed above. Hoping to do a lot of camping.

If anyone is heading up around that same time, let me know and we can buddy up at some point. I've already gotten a lot of planning help from folks on this site. It's been a great resource, along with the Alaska Airmen's logbook, the milepost and Foreflight's Canadian charts.

Really looking forward to it!

I would think a caravan would be a real pain. I have done several solo trips, and a few two plane trips. Once in AK we have hooked up with 3-6 other planes for exploration trips. Every fuel stop takes a lot of time, and camping spots become limited because of parking.

After Cory and I talked about this, it's all I can think about. Noreen, Chuck and I are really hoping to get up there this year with the show, but next year we'd love to do a group flight up. I love the idea of launching from the Idaho fly-in. I imagine it as a loosely planned group flight.
Everyone heading the same direction, but not necessarily all taking the same route/time to get up there. Once we get up to AK, I kind of envision it like the JC fly-in - people grouping up by themselves and meeting at different strips, heading out for a few days to go here or there, etc,. It would be cool to have a few semi-planned group meeting places/times and do a campfire/pot luck dinner thing too. Sounds like a total blast to me! Count us in.

Glidergeek wrote:Is/are there any online flight planning apps for a trip like this available?

Foreflight has canada charts.

skyvector.com has some also.

Oregon180 wrote:Our family's flying up to Alaska in July. We've been planning it for quite some time and have 3 1/2 weeks to do the trip. Our oldest is turning 13 and our youngest is 6, so I think it's pretty much the sweet spot age-wise for them as discussed above. Hoping to do a lot of camping.

If anyone is heading up around that same time, let me know and we can buddy up at some point. I've already gotten a lot of planning help from folks on this site. It's been a great resource, along with the Alaska Airmen's logbook, the milepost and Foreflight's Canadian charts.

Really looking forward to it!

Bummer you weren't planning for next year! I guess you can be our point if recent experience. I'm glad to hear the report if the kid' ages from UH as those will be really close to our kids' ages when we go.

amacbean wrote:After Cory and I talked about this, it's all I can think about. Noreen, Chuck and I are really hoping to get up there this year with the show, but next year we'd love to do a group flight up. I love the idea of launching from the Idaho fly-in. I imagine it as a loosely planned group flight.
Everyone heading the same direction, but not necessarily all taking the same route/time to get up there. Once we get up to AK, I kind of envision it like the JC fly-in - people grouping up by themselves and meeting at different strips, heading out for a few days to go here or there, etc,. It would be cool to have a few semi-planned group meeting places/times and do a campfire/pot luck dinner thing too. Sounds like a total blast to me! Count us in.

I'm like you Allen. Haven't been able to stop thinking about this! In talking to Dee, we realized that we only have a small window of a couple of years when I'll have the ability to get the time off for such a trip. So we are serious about it!

As for the caravan, it seems like when things like this get planned, it's a small fraction of those that express interest that can actually make the trip. I'd be willing to bet it will end up being a small group. But if it's bigger, that's great too. There are ways to mitigate it (different routes, different departure dates, overnighting at different strips, etc.). But that's getting way ahead of ourselves at this point I think.

Grassstrippilot wrote:As for the caravan, it seems like when things like this get planned, it's a small fraction of those that express interest that can actually make the trip. I'd be willing to bet it will end up being a small group. But if it's bigger, that's great too. There are ways to mitigate it (different routes, different departure dates, overnighting at different strips, etc.). But that's getting way ahead of ourselves at this point I think.

I was thinking the same thing. Might be more successful casting a larger net. SuperCub, maulepilots.org, PoA probably all have pilots that would be interested.

I'm interested, enough that I've had my Homeland Security sticker for the last 3 years and just got my new one. This coming summer is out--we have a Grand Banks 36 chartered out of Anacortes for early July and there's OSH at the end of July--the budget is busted for 2014! As long as I can still pass my physical, I really want to do it, though.

Cary

That is such a cool idea, I'd probably fly to the USA just to have a chance to participate