Alaska 2012 - Day 6

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.
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.
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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