Last night as we were coming back to the hotel, everyone was talking about the upcoming flight to Elliot Lake and what the weather was going to be like. Everyone could see that a weather system was going to be coming in and not sure whether or not we'd even be able to make Elliot Lake. Lennard looked at a bunch of weather sites last night and then we were both up by 5:30 so that we'd have time to see what the weather was doing and do some more planning. Lots more pilots had the same idea and we were all in the breakfast room discussing which routes to take. We could tell we wouldn't be able to get in to Marathon, so a bunch of us decided to divert to Geraldton then possibly on to Timmins and then hopefully to Elliot Lake.
A bunch of the guys flight planning this morning. It was sort of fun seeing all the ipads out and everyone figuring out which route to take.
Almost ready to go.
More flight planning... Lon & Pat Boehme (Medicine Hat), Linda Danser (Rimby) and Lennard.
We followed Lon & Pat for a bit and I managed to get a couple pictures of them flying.
This was pretty much the view for the day... it was a little interesting trying to make sure you knew where you are on the maps when all you could see was trees and lakes!
Here we are flying over Lake Nippagon.
Coming in to Geraldton. We had pretty good weather up to that point. We landed and got fueled up right away.
By the time we were ready to head out again, we decided to check the weather again and see if we could go directly to Elliot Lake. They said we should be able to get there but that there are no guarantees for Southern Ontario weather... they weren't joking. The weather was okay for about a half hour outside of Geraldton and then it started getting cloudy. We just went a bit lower to get under the clouds and kept going.
The weather continued to sock in and we had to make a few diversions to try to get around the bigger weather systems. With everything that was going on weather wise, I still had to try to keep track of where we were on the map... NOT easy! There were far too many times when I had to look at Lennard and say that I had no idea where we were! Yikes! We always managed to figure it out... eventually!
Here's a bit of what I was looking at today on the map... so much fun!
Just about in to Elliot Lake.
I didn't take any pictures while we were going through the worst weather... I should have, but we were too busy keeping an eye on where we were and trying to get through crazy amounts of rain and very low clouds! At one point we were about 200 feet higher than the highest point in the area. Not fun. I was VERY ready to be down by the time we found the Elliot Lake airport.
It was only sprinkling when we landed and turned to blue skies pretty soon afterwards. It definitely made us question whether we should have waited a bit or not, but we made it either way!
Having skipped lunch (again), we were both very happy when they had barbecued hamburgers waiting for us. A hamburger never tasted so good!
We had a bit of a wait to get a shuttle to our hotel, but we enjoyed visiting with a couple pilots from Abbotsford and Boundary Bay. It's has been so fun meeting new people and hearing all their stories.
The club put on a fish fry tonight about 45 minutes outside of Elliot Lake, but Lennard and I were both so exhausted from the flight that we both decided to have a night off. We got some dinner at a local restaurant and had a nice night just relaxing together. It has definitely been an adventure today!
Day #3 Stats: Almost 4 hours of flying time. 494 nautical miles (plus some for the diversions). 2 more cities. 1st day of scud running (hopefully the last!)
sg
Emma thinks that Lake Nippagon is a funny funny name, and Ben was super excited at the picture of Lennard in front of the Elliot Lake Airport sign. He pretty much shouted, "That's MY Dad!!"
ReplyDelete