Living in the desert of Central Oregon, there's not much float flying to be had real close to home. So, before the trip south, we swapped the airplane to wheels at Anderson Lake with the help of a new friend (who already knew the airplane well).
Although I had about 65 TW hours in my RV-4, insurance was adamant about getting 20 hours of dual in the Maule on wheels... Thinking this would make a good time to do it, I called a well-qualified CFI buddy of mine who I thought would be interested in the adventure, and picked him up from ANC the afternoon before we left. Having spent the past two weeks camped out at our unheated cabin, I decided we'd stay in hotels and eat out when we could for the trip home.
Our route was: Anderson Lake, Palmer, Tok, Beaver Creek (CAN), Whitehorse, Watson Lake, McKenzie, Kamloops, Dorothy Scott/Oroville (USA), and straight into Bend from there.
The two of us launched from Anderson Lake (0AK1) on the morning of October 4th.
We did a few patterns at the nearby Palmer airport to shake out the new gear installation and fuel up. Fortunately, the airplane has 40 gal usable in the mains, and an extra 20 gal usable in the aux tanks. We filled all of them, and used our 2hr leg to Tok Junction to confirm functionality of the AUX transfer system.
In Tok, we fueled up again (both with 100LL, and pizza from Fast Eddy's across the street), filed our EAPIS paperwork from our phones, and called Fairbanks FSS to open a flight plan (which they would hand over to the Canadian side). We launched for Beaver Creek where we'd clear customs, and were on the ground there about an hour later.
I misunderstood the Canadian policy, and thought I had everything covered as long as we just walked over to the border patrol booth on the highway. However, apparently Canadian Customs wants at least a 2hr heads up via phone if you're coming into Canada via airplane, as we were supposed to stay in the airplane until clear of customs. Fortunately, the officer I talked to on the phone (before even walking over to the customs hut), was able to help us and "check us in" entirely on the phone. I had filled out a non-resident firearms declaration form to bring the shotgun with us, but had to verbally fill it out again on the phone with the officer. He gave me the declaration report number which I scribbled on my paper copy of the form, and took my credit card info over the phone for the $25 fee. Welcome to Canada, the gas only gets more expensive from here
After about 30 minutes on the phone with customs, we raced the sunset into Whitehorse. This was one of my favorite legs of the trip, we passed numerous mountainsides full of big horn sheep, and overflew our favorite stop from our 6 ALCAN drives, Kluane Lake.
From Whitehorse airport, we took a cab ride downtown to stay at the Town and Mountain hotel which Elliot knew was close to his favorite local taphouse and restaurant. After a good nights rest and breakfast at Timmy's, we set off to the airport for our departure... or so we thought. The airplane was covered in frost, and fog rolled in thick enough to obscure the windsock across the field... Fortunately, there's a nice cafe upstairs in the terminal where we drank coffee, and waited for WX to clear. As soon as the cloud moved off the field, it revealed severe clear for the next 100 miles, so we launched for Watson Lake.
Remember the airport coffee from Whitehorse? Well we were both ready to water the grass by the time we got over Teslin, so we tacked on an extra landing. From Teslin we jumped back in and shot for Watson Lake. We had some clouds to go around and under before arriving to Watson Lake, but got in without much delay.
However, by the time we fueled up, admired the WWII photos in the terminal, and peeked at the Beaver in the old hangar, we realized our next stop McKenzie (3-4hrs away) would be good and dark by the time we got there, and it was MVFR... So we called a cab and rode into town for the night. Chinese food from the Nugget Restaurant was as good as I had remembered from the drive the month before, and there was plenty of... affordable/economy.... lodging available next door.
In the morning, we used the ($50CAD
) airport shuttle to get back to the airport where we had another session of de-frosting the entire outside of the airplane. Unfortunately, our blue morning sky had made room for a low cloud which proceeded to snow on us for an hour while we waited to launch. As soon as we saw an opening to the south, we jumped in and launched for the Trench.
As others have posted, the trench is nearly a straight shot valley over 300nm long that is in almost perfect alignment with the 350nm gps track from Watson Lake to McKenzie. The floor of the trench ranges from about 2000ft msl on each end, up to about 3500ft agl in the middle. Stay in it, and there's nothing to jump up at you quickly. The valley tapers down to just a few miles wide in spots, leaving plenty of room for even a lackadaisical canyon turn if needed. We approached the trench from Watson Lake climbing to about 9500ft, taking a look at going up and over the clouds... We were on top of a broken layer for the first 70nm, but eventually came to some taller clouds and decided we'd head down for the real trench experience. We stair stepped under several other layers, until we ended up in the valley.
Down in the trench, the headwind was brutal. We watched our usual 100kt groundspeed drop to the 50's in several places, but hung out around 72kts for most of the leg. We ran most of it about 500-1000' agl to try and get into some stagnant air, however even the tiny lakes were rough water. Fortunately, we had 6 hrs of fuel on board, because we had spend about 4.2 hours enroute by the time we landed in McKenzie.
(Given the weather, and ground proximity that kept my attention for our trench run, I didn't take any photos! However Elliot's instagram, @Edseguin has many photos of our trip, including some from the trench.)
The fabled "Trench Aviation" has been replaced with a (very nice) city-owned FBO, and while there wasn't Ice Cream waiting for us, there was a friendly woman with coffee and water waiting for us. After a leg as long and remote as the trench, this was a refreshing return to civilization. Weather was only getting better to the South, so we jumped back in the airplane and snuck into Kamloops just before dark.
As we pulled off the runway, the Control Tower Advisor told us the transient ramp was under construction, but gave us the phone number of the flight school who kindly let us park for the night. We got lucky, but I wouldn't count on parking in Kamloops this fall (2024) without prior arrangement.
We caught a cab to down town, dropped our bags at The Plaza Hotel, and walked to Moxie's for a dinner which confirmed we were out of the bush.
In the morning, we submitted our EAPIS paperwork from our phones again, to open a flight plan, and called US Customs in Oroville to tell them we were coming.
We launched from Kamloops, and were on the ground in Oroville just an hour later. The customs agent met us at the airport, and was much tighter than the Canadian agent we had spoken to days before.
He wanted airworthiness, registration, customs decal, and to look the shotgun over very closely, having an agent in office run the serial number. He also scanned the whole airplane over for radiation, and of course wanted sunglasses off while looking at passports.
FYI: I had not received the new registration since the purchase of the airplane. However, I had printed out a copy of the registration application, and had the still-current registration with the previous owners name on it. I also had not received the customs decal yet, but again I had printed the receipt with order number on it. These two were acceptable with the customs agent, and he waived us off for our last leg into Bend.
We arrived into Bend early that afternoon, having amassed 20 hrs on the clock, flown 1750nm, and spent a fortune on gas. All considered, it was an awesome trip. I learned a lot about international travel via airplane, stories about Elliot, and felt like I better knew the feel of this Maule (not to mention the build in confidence in the airplane itself). I hope to make it next time with my better half sitting next to me, and the dogs in the back, but I'm sure that trip will come with its own exciting variables.
