It was a hot and humid day in the valley yesterday. Perfect time to fly out of here for a day off, and things were caught up at the farm anyway. Took the wife and kids up to my Aunt and Uncles cabin in the South Chilcotin for a little visit and a swim in the crystal clear lake. It was a great day. The 185 performed well and I have to say that my youngest daughter was truly thrilled to have her own seat in the back row. Hit a little rough air coming home in the late afternoon but nobody got too worried, in fact everyone but me fell asleep at some point on the trip home.

On Sunday I took the family up to Lake Lovely Water for a picnic and a day on the beach. It's a beautiful lake in the mountains above Squamish with water that is indeed, lovely in colour. Don't let the blue water fool you though, this isn't tropical, that is glacial blue water. I had told my kids I'd swim and I did make good on that, my youngest daughter swam a bit also but the others just ankle waded. The lake can be accessed via a six hour hike and there were a few hikers that popped out of the bush onto our beach. One fellow popped out complaining about the tough trail, I told him I wouldn't know anything about that and offered him a beer from the cooler. He didn't like that, can't please everyone I guess. It was a nice family flying day. The takeoff to leave in the afternoon heat though did reinforce my resolve to get WingX on this plane pretty soon.

This thread consistently ranks as my most enjoyable viewing on BCP. Awesome.

Great thread, love the photos… and the pro hunting commentary. I no longer hunt, but I have great memories of all of the hunts I did over the years. I hate others infringing on our passions especially based on emotional non-conservation information.

Keep the stories and photos coming

Jay

Been a heck of a wet fall here in the Vancouver area of BC. On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of this week we had a record breaking rainstorm. The area I live in did fine although we are right next to the Fraser River, the Fraser topped out at normal spring runoff levels and by running our pumps behind the dykes we were able to keep the flooding to a minimum, just puddles in fields. Nearby Sumas Prairie is not doing so well though, in fact it's a disaster. Once we had things under control at our place I went up and took a few pictures. This is usually a beautiful farming area and it's been absolutely devastated. Highways and railroads are washed out, people are stranded on highways, people and animals are stranded on farms, it's bad.

I got a text email last night asking for volunteers with aircraft to go to Hope and fly stranded people to Chilliwack. I passed the message on to others, as for myself I have no mountain time so would likely be more of a hindrance than help.

I got it too. My plane is on floats and there isn't really a safe place to land in all this. I wouldn't land in the flood water and there are too many submerged gravel bars in the river up there. It's no good putting anyone's life at risk just to get them home if they are safe where they are. Wheeled planes between airports are another story of course. My Aunt is stranded on the Hague but there's nowhere safe to operate floats near her.

Fraser Farmer wrote:I got it too. My plane is on floats and there isn't really a safe place to land in all this. I wouldn't land in the flood water and there are too many submerged gravel bars in the river up there. It's no good putting anyone's life at risk just to get them home if they are safe where they are. Wheeled planes between airports are another story of course. My Aunt is stranded on the Hague but there's nowhere safe to operate floats near her.

Been hearing about what's going on down there. First I've heard about them looking for pilots though. Are they finding some or should a guy plan on heading down for a couple days?

Hope is lumpy soggy grass, so careful if you are going there. It is also NOTAM closed (for "military/police" operations) and PPR required for any exception requests. Good luck, nobody answered the phone after 5 hrs of trying.

Nearby Langley is also NOTAM'd closed over some petty scrap between ATC and the airport operator.

Chilliwack was busy with student pilots still in the circuit mixing it up with medium/heavy helicopters on task staging and refueling. Plus the east end of the runway was underwater. Flight schools still trying to earn a living.

Sandbars had disappeared on the river, like Fraser Farmer said it looked like peak freshet in May.

Fraser Farmer wrote:..... Nearby Sumas Prairie is not doing so well though, in fact it's a disaster. Once we had things under control at our place I went up and took a few pictures. This is usually a beautiful farming area and it's been absolutely devastated. Highways and railroads are washed out, people are stranded on highways, people and animals are stranded on farms, it's bad. ...

I've been seeing that Sumas area flooding on the TV news, bad stuff.
I've been living in western WA for going on 30 years,
but don't recall ever hearing much about the Nooksack River flooding like this before.
Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
Skagit River flooded bad, with a couple towns under water (as usual).
Some of the other usual culprits, not so much this time.
There was some pretty bad flooding & mudslides on the NW Olympic Peninsula,
much worse than usual, it shut down the two major highways out there (101 & 112).

Can't find it now, but I saw a satellite photo online yesterday of the Fraser River's muddy outfall into the salt water--wow.

A1Skinner wrote:

Fraser Farmer wrote:I got it too. My plane is on floats and there isn't really a safe place to land in all this. I wouldn't land in the flood water and there are too many submerged gravel bars in the river up there. It's no good putting anyone's life at risk just to get them home if they are safe where they are. Wheeled planes between airports are another story of course. My Aunt is stranded on the Hague but there's nowhere safe to operate floats near her.

Been hearing about what's going on down there. First I've heard about them looking for pilots though. Are they finding some or should a guy plan on heading down for a couple days?

The sky is dirty with light planes and helicopters going up and down the valley. I think we're pretty well set for now. Like Karmutzen says, the airports are providing some additional challenges.

FWIW here's a newspaper article that mentions the local Disaster Airlift Response Team (DART) group flying in bottled water to a couple local communities whose water systems failed.
Good work, and good exposure for GA.

https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news ... -west-end/

hotrod180 wrote:

Fraser Farmer wrote:..... Nearby Sumas Prairie is not doing so well though, in fact it's a disaster. Once we had things under control at our place I went up and took a few pictures. This is usually a beautiful farming area and it's been absolutely devastated. Highways and railroads are washed out, people are stranded on highways, people and animals are stranded on farms, it's bad. ...

I've been seeing that Sumas area flooding on the TV news, bad stuff.
I've been living in western WA for going on 30 years,
but don't recall ever hearing much about the Nooksack River flooding like this before.
Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
Skagit River flooded bad, with a couple towns under water (as usual).
Some of the other usual culprits, not so much this time.
There was some pretty bad flooding & mudslides on the NW Olympic Peninsula,
much worse than usual, it shut down the two major highways out there (101 & 112).

Can't find it now, but I saw a satellite photo online yesterday of the Fraser River's muddy outfall into the salt water--wow.

The Nooksack overflows to varying degrees pretty regularly. The last time it blew a dyke and overflowed to this extent was in 1990, I remember it well, for some reason the papers and social media keep putting up black and white photos of the 1990 flood like it was old times and we didn't have colour photography.

Fraser Farmer wrote:The Nooksack overflows to varying degrees pretty regularly. The last time it blew a dyke and overflowed to this extent was in 1990, I remember it well, for some reason the papers and social media keep putting up black and white photos of the 1990 flood like it was old times and we didn't have colour photography.

I remember that.....I was hauling fuel over there then,,, pretty bad mess in places, but from what I'm seeing, this is a little worse.
I've heard from a lot of friends over there...some that never worried before, and got water in the house and barns this time.
John

Last weekend was beautiful here in the Lower Mainland. Took the old car for a run on Saturday on clean, dry roads. Sunday it was time for a family flying trip. The high lakes are frozen over and the low lakes have roads into them so we went to Chehalis where Novembers rain and landslides have severely hampered 4x4 access to the lake. We got the whole North end to ourselves for a campfire and some smores.

Nice pictures and kinda neat that you could get there but others couldn't.

180Marty wrote:Nice pictures and kinda neat that you could get there but others couldn't.

It was neat. I really enjoy my 4x4 too, but once the trail to this lake is reopened it will be a zoo, impossible to have a peaceful time like we did, and lots of turds and toilet paper lying around. I'm a big fan of free access to our backcountry but this lakes proximity to urban areas means it sees a lot of crappy behavior.

Last weekend I was able to do, for the first time, one of my main objectives when I got my pilots license. I took my whole family up to the cabin up country. One and a half hours flying versus four hours on the highway. This one took a little time to achieve because it is a bit of a haul and also because it requires a fair bit of altitude, so a nice day, and in heat like we had on the weekend it is inevitably going to be a bumpy flight. I needed to make sure everyone was very comfortable with the plane and flying before we undertook this flight, I didn't want to scare anyone. It went great, little bit of bumpiness, beautiful views, my kids spotted a herd of mountain goats as we flew through the peaks, and it has make any weekend with reasonable weather a cabin weekend if we wish, now that it's so quick to get there. In the pictures you can see the lake was in bloom last weekend, it's usually pretty clear. We went up Saturday afternoon, after the kids piano recital, bbq'ed some steaks off a beef I raised, had a night at the cabin, enjoyed all of Sunday on the lake, and zipped home in the evening.





Every trip home my youngest falls asleep on the back bench, she loves it back there.

Congratulations on the success!! Great to see

I did a pretty big trip last week from the 5th to the 12th. This might take a few posts so here'll be the first one.
We were heading to Coldfish Lake in the Glady's Lake Ecological Reserve to hunt Stone's sheep. We have to actually hike from the lake up through the Reserve before we can start hunting. We also checked out Spatsizi Plateau on the other side of the lake. On the way up we flew a somewhat inland route. Knight Inlet to Turner Lake above Hunlen Falls where we took a quick break, from there to Tyhee Lake at Telkwa where we bought fuel and had some lunch. From Telkwa we flew to Coldfish Lake where we bunked for the night in the BC Parks camp. It was a beautiful flight the whole way in except for somewhat limited ceiling on the last leg forcing us to fly around peaks instead of over.

Alpine Lakes Aviation dock at Telkwa, modified PA-12 in the foreground with my 185 behind


This Carbon Cub was also tied up at Telkwa. Is this anybody here with that US registration?


BC Parks camp at Coldfish Lake with the 185 healed onto the beach