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In the morning we got up and things were looking pretty
good for our trip to Whitehorse, other than some low
ceilings enroute. We weren't able to determine for
sure, how bad it would get, but we were soon to find
out. The trip started out with clear to scattered
skies, but very quickly became broken, and then more
overcast than broken, and finally overcast, with the
ceiling dropping and dropping a little ever few miles.
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On the way up, we flew up Williston Lake, which is
literally well over 100 miles long (probably closer to
200), and we flew up the whole thing. The views were
again spectacular, and the flying was great. The
group was doing a bit better this day, and we all headed
North. As you can see from the photos though, the
ceilings kept dropping lower and lower. We were at
1200', then 1000', then 800', then 500', then 300', then
200, 150', and sometimes even lower. The further
North we got, the worse it became, often flying in and out
of rain showers. Usually the visibility was good,
but eventually we got to a point where we ran out of lake
and were following the last remaining riverbed, and as the
terrain rose, we were still at 150', in rain, and the
visibility deteriorated to a mile or so, and it was time
for a U-Turn. Lead called the turn, and the rest of
us in trail did the turnback and headed back down the lake
to Mackenzie. Less than 2 minutes after making our
turn, we again were in much better conditions, with better
ceilings and great visibility.
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Once we arrived at Mackenzie, it was time to top off with
fuel and figure out what the heck we were going to
do. We burned up a lot of gas in that flight, going
up the entire lake and most of the way back down, but in
the big scheme of things, we made very little headway that
day. Soon it was clear that we weren't going to make
Whitehorse or Watson Lake without an icing approved
airplane. Here is where the Let's Fly Alaska
reservation contract paid off...we had no cancellation fee
and Dale cancelled our reservations for us. Not only
that, but since he was stopped with a good sized group of
people, he was able to secure nice accomodations in
Mackenzie and get a good rate for everyone, along with
some ground transportation from the airport. So, it
wasn't long and we were checked in, relaxing, and they
even had a 2 room suite for me, which is always great when
traveling with the kids.
At night, we all contemplated how complex the flying was,
and how valuable it was to have local terrain
knowledge. Dale knew exactly where it would get bad,
and what to do when it did.
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