Huge Thank You to Glen and Dianne, owners of that beautiful place.
Next, Bill Miene for his organization of the event.
The Glenwood group for the fantastic breakfast Sat morning.
Rod and Hunter (Caveman Ranch fame) for driving in and cooking all the other mornings. If you ever need to know something about an airplane, call Hunter. A walking airplane encyclopedia!
We had an awesome time!

Just want to repeat what Tom said!!!!
Great event and perfect weather
,
Thanks everybody

Ditto!

What a great weekend! Many thanks to the Gallegos. Looking forward to next year already.

I agree, the Gallegos are very gracious hosts and have an amazing little slice of earth. Bill Miene always does a great job of organizing it. I also give a special thanks to Rod and Hunter and the GWS folks for cooking a little extra and providing for us hungry pilots.

Sorry I missed meeting a few of you as we were only there for a few hours.

X3 or X4 on the wonderful weekend and the thanks to the hosts!

It was great to meet lesuther and high country as well! Sorry I missed Greg and Matt. Man, that is a beautiful valley!!

X10!!
Beautiful Flyin, Beautiful People, Perfect WX..what else could you want!?
Many thanks to Glenn & Diane..and Bill!

Lots of visitors for the flyin too....and they left a little something behind.



While I was watching airplanes come and go on Saturday my wife and Ed's wife took a Jeep tour of the Crstal City area. My wife took this picture..probably one of the most photographed structures in Colorado.

Glad you all had fun, I sure miss going up there! Had a 1st birthday party for my son this past weekend and today was day number one on the new job...sure like getting paid to hang out at the airport all day...oh and work too I guess.

Regarding sheep and fabric airplanes.......
I flew a Maule over the Pond to England, landed in a field, asked a farmer if I could park a few days, he said 'fine'.
I asked if any animals were in the field, reply was 'no'.
Returned in 3 days to find a bunch of sheep had got in and munched on belly and side, enjoying the paint, fabric and dope.
Repair shop said ' you Alaska types carry guns and axes for survival gear, in England we carry 50 ft of barbed wire'.

Acca Dacca Soy its a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll.

It was great, and echo: Thanks to Glenn and Diane and Bill. It will be on my annual list as long as Uncle allows me to fly.

Friday, the clouds were a bit low, making it a challenge for those of us on the eastern side of the rocks to get there, but certainly not impossible. Friday night was very cold, a bit below freezing, so that everything Saturday morning was covered with ice. Saturday night was warmer.

The barbecue was excellent--catered this year by a private company.

Here's a write-up I put together for another forum:
I want to share with you, verbally, my visit to God’s Country over the weekend. The home computer is in the shop for repair, so I can’t post pix yet, but they’ll come. As you recall, this was my annual fly-in to the little grass/dirt strip in the bottom of a canyon a mile west of the big town of Marble, Colorado (pop. 130 with a 10-15% brag factor ). We had 59 airplanes and I don’t how many people there this year, plus a flock of sheep, gorgeous weather, and incomparable scenery.

Friday morning I left the Greeley airport at 10 a.m. I’d meant to leave an hour earlier, but trying to stuff everything into my little airplane took some organizing that I hadn’t really done until it was necessary to do. LRB’s trunk was full to the ceiling, the front passenger seat was full, and half the back seat was full to the ceiling—the other half was for Molly dog. Marilyn refers to my camping as “glamping”, but heck, being comfortable for 3 days is a whole lot better than not!

We (Molly and I) headed toward the mountains, my usual route over Loveland, then following just south of US 34, Trail Ridge Road over Rocky Mountain National Park. Friday the mountains appeared ensconced by clouds, but it turned out that the clouds were low over the peaks but still quite flyable as I aimed over Milner Pass—that’s the pass where you can look down to the south from the highest parts of Trail Ridge Road, and if you’d have been there, you’d have seen my airplane below you and we could have waved!

From there it’s a turn south toward Granby (Lake Granby is gorgeous from the air), then southwest past some beautiful changing aspens toward Kremmling and Eagle, position report with Eagle tower, and then south over Carbondale and into the canyon with Mt. Soper to the left and soon McClure Pass to the right, just after passing the big town of Redstone (pop. 130, counting all the dogs, cats, and horses, I think). Start announcing positions at Carbondale on 122.9, and stay to the right due to outbound traffic, if any. Turn left at McClure Pass up the Crystal River canyon, and in a few seconds, the strip comes into view.

The “standard” pattern is upwind at 9000’, slow to 85 mph or so with 10 flaps, then turn 180 degrees to downwind, descend to roughly 8800’ with 20 flaps, scrape the trees on the north side of the canyon, kinda guess when to turn base since you lost sight of the runway about even with the touchdown spot, add 10 more flaps, turn final when the runway comes into view, add the rest of the flaps, slow to final approach speed over the pond, and plunk down in between the rows of airplanes already there. This time I had a slight tail wind, so I rolled maybe 100’ past my usual turn around spot, not yet to the halfway mark of the runway.

Later the wind became strong enough that several people landed from the east—and that’s downhill and between trees that are closer together than at the west end. I haven’t done that yet, but I’m sure the time will come.

The weekend had some highlights, in addition to just visiting with fellow pilots and their significant others. Saturday night was an excellent barbecue, $15/head and delicious. Sunday morning was a “sheep run”, with a flock of maybe 350 sheep (looked like an over-sized moving Berber carpet) moving east to west down the length of the runway. Somebody got a bit impatient at the east end and took off before the sheep had cleared the runway (pretty inconsiderate), but it gave us at the west end the opportunity to see how quickly the sheep dogs and sheepherders could round up the scattering sheep—couldn’t have taken a minute. The sheep do a great job of smoothing out the runway and leveling the grass!

Canyon flying has an allure all of its own, and it’s certainly not for everyone. But it is beautiful, and if you know what you’re doing, not unnecessarily risky. The camaraderie of flying into such a beautiful place to spend the weekend with like minded folks, while by no means a religious experience, is still pretty special.

What it reminds me of the most is that living in Colorado and enjoying the fruits of our Lord’s labor in creating such a beautiful place is a blessing that is very, very hard to surpass. If you, too, can enjoy His creation in ways similar to the way I did this past weekend, then you’ll know exactly what I’m describing—words are inadequate, even with my tendency toward verbosity!

Cary