Saturday, October 27, 2018 Cobra flight #655, PIC #665, 2 landings Pueblo Viejo, Cebolita, Cerro Alto, High Lonesome

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1 Saturday, October 27, 2018 Cobra flight #655, PIC #665, 2 landings Pueblo Viejo, Cebolita, Cerro Alto, High Lonesome Belen: 7:53 am (MDT) St Johns: 9:32 am (MST) Airtime 2.7 hrs Cobra flight #656, PIC #666, 2 landings Meteor Crater, Grand Falls, Little Colorado, Marble Canyon St Johns: 11:00am (MST) Marble Canyon: 3:38 pm (MST) Airtime: 4.7 Today s Airtime 7.4 hrs Total PIC Time: Total Logged Time: Paul and I are headed out this morning on a week long trip to the Grand Canyon. I have a new pack for this trip, a heavily modified soft bag with wheels and handle. I really tore into it, removing the wheels, handles etc. I think it will work great. We intended to leave at 7:30, but didn t actually get into the air after sunrise. The weather looks perfect for today s flight, a huge improvement over last years trip. Our day s goal is the Marble Canyon Airstrip, at the far NE corner of the Grand Canyon

2 I took off, did one touch and go to make sure everything was hanging together, then headed out to the west. Our first stop is St Johns, Arizona. It is a nice little airport with a courtesy car so we could top off our tanks. It might be possible to make it all the way to Marble Canyon without refueling, but there will be very few refueling or landing options during the last hour or two of the flight into Marble Canyon. There is no need to push things.

3 St Johns is just slightly south of due west from Belen. I cruised by the pools of Arroyo Monte on my way to the low spot in the Sierra Lucero.

4 Once through the low spot pass in the Sierra Lucero, I made a point of overflying Pueblo Viejo. This site is another in a series of fortress stronghold ruins in the region. Pueblo Viejo (Old Village) is included in a list of Ancestral Pueblo Dwellings on Wikipedia, but I haven t been able to find out much more about it. There are many circular ruins on top. You can see some of them in the image above. I think there are long cracks the run the length of the mesa that were made into dwellings by covering the cracks with branches and adobe. It that is true, the site could easily house hundreds and maybe a thousand people. That s my crazy theory. I ll keep trying to figure this one out.

5 We flew a few more miles to the west to reach Cebola Creek and Cebola Canyon, one of my favorite valleys to cruise down. This valley is about 60 miles west of Belen, so I don t get the chance to fly it very often, but whenever I am in the neighborhood, I always grab the opportunity for visit. When we dropped down into the Canyon, the temperatures plummeted to around 35 deg F. Above is an old homestead cabin in the canyon. We followed the canyon all the way to the edge of the lava fields of the Malpais, a huge lava field.

6 I climbed up high to cross the Malpais, then headed into a field of tall conical volcanos on the western side.

7 The highest of these volcanos is Cerro Alto. I remember flying over it years ago, and seeing a small basin on top with a grove of tall pine trees. I thought would be a perfect outlaw hideout. I checked it out again, and continued west towards St Johns.

8 A private airstrip scrolled into view on my GPS. It is called High Lonesome. I altered my course just slightly to overfly the airstrip. It would be a nice addition to the NM backcountry network if we could get permission from the owner.

9 When we arrived at St Johns Airport I was surprised by the amount of traffic here. They apparently have the cheapest gas for hundreds of miles. We poured in our fuel jugs, then borrowed the courtesy car to top off our tanks and fill up our fuel jugs again. We would be able to make it to Marble Canyon, even if we had to battle 30 mph headwinds now. All this consumed an hour and a half of time, from landing to takeoff. When we departed (above), the dead calm conditions of the morning were replaced by some thermals. They weren t too bad, but I climbed up a little higher for the most of the trip to Marble Canyon.

10 The source of Little Colorado is near St Johns. We followed it downstream through the Painted Desert past Holbrook and Winslow to Meteor Crater. I often fantasize that my trike is a tiny one-man spaceship, and I really felt that crossing over the lip of Meteor Crater.

11 Over the center of the crater.

12 We followed Diablo Canyon, a tributary of the Little Colorado, to the Diablo Canyon Bridge. I did a little internet research and found that this crossing was the site of one of the wildest towns in the old west. The iron bridge was manufactured back east, and was shipped out to Diablo Canyon. Unfortunately, it was found to be several feet too short. While replacement parts were being made and shipped, a town of 2000 sprung up here with 14 saloons, 10 gambling houses and 4 brothels, all open 24 hours a day. There was no Main Street here, it was called Hell Street. There was no law either. The first sheriff was sworn in a 3pm and murdered 5 hours later. A total of three railroad bridges were built on this site. The next slide has a photo of the first bridge. The first train crossed this fragile contraption in The trains were told crossed it very slowly and I can see why. The present bridge show in the photo above went up in the 1940 s.

13 One time an outlaw robbed the payroll for the railroad construction crew. Outraged, the workers formed a posse and chased the outlaw down. When the caught up to him, he claimed to have lost the saddlebags filled the money. The posse decided to hang the outlaw on the spot and took him to the nearest tree. They threw a rope over a tree limb and were about to string him up when a thunderhead overhead let loose a lightning bolt that struck the tree. Thinking this was an act of divine intervention, they turned the thief over to the nearest authorities. There are lots of wild stories about Diablo Canyon, you should check them out online. All that remains of Diablo Canyon are a couple broken down rock walls of a few buildings.

14 Three days ago, while planning our route I noticed we could fly by the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado again. Paul and I have been out here twice before, but all we saw was a small trickle. Since then I did a little research and found a BLM river gauging station on the Little Colorado near Winslow, Arizona. A related webpage stated if the flow was over 500 cfs, there would be a good show 2 or 3 days later. The flow had gone off the chart, and dropped down to about 500 cfs three days before out departure. When I crossed over the edge, I was rewarded by the sight of a magnificent waterfall of mud.

15 As amazed as I was, I found out that this is not peak flow. Maybe next year during the spring runoff.

16 There were some people at a shelter at the edge of the falls who delighted to see us flying overhead. I noticed some very landable dirt roads in the area. I was tempted to land and check the falls out of foot, but I wasn t sure of whether this was on the Navajo Reservation or not, and didn t want to get all tangled up with Reservation Police. I was content to gauze at the falls from the air, the best vantage point anyway. I later found that Grand Falls is well inside the Reservation.

17 We followed the Little Colorado downstream to where the gorge begins. This was very gut wrenching to fly, the canyon itself was very narrow with deep sheer cliffs.

18 It was quite a ride. Thermals bounced me around a couple times.

19 I followed the river to the edge of the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules Area. The boundary is about a mile past the island butte that is separated from both sides of the canyon.

20 At this point my emergency bailout was the island on my left side.

21 There was a small paved area on the right. I remember some guy tight rope walked over the Grand Canyon many years ago. This is where he did it. I completed my circle around the island and headed northeast along the boundary of the Special Use Area where I joined up with Paul again.

22 I could fly low outside the Special Use Area, but it was pretty boring here. So I climbed up to ft to enter the Supai Sector and fly directly over the Little Colorado. I followed it all the way to the Big Colorado. I looked for a travertine spring down at the bottom of the canyon. I had seen it the last time I was here in It looks very similar to the Vents back in New Mexico and is the site of a Hopi shrine.

23 I found this image (lower right) off the internet. You can see the travertine formations, very similar to the springs near the Caldron of Hell, and the Vents back in New Mexico. I found it! It was hard to see, hidden in the shade just below river in the photo to the left.

24 I followed the Little Colorado past the confluence with the main river. The Little Colorado comes in on the left (above), and joins at the island in the river.

25 Conditions really started to mellow out now. This would end up being my only sunset flight over the Colorado, and it wasn t that close to sunset either. I really enjoyed this final segment of the flight. Very smooth and peaceful up here.

26 I flew north towards the town of Marble Canyon.

27 I entered the 3 nm landing and take off area around the Marble Airstrip and dropped down low. The two bridges cross the canyon near the hotel.

28 Landing at the Marble Airstrip. We checked into the hotel and made 3 trips with the fuel jug, lugging 6 gallons at a time to the trikes to get them topped off again. We finished that around sunset. I calculated I could have made it on fumes with a half gallon left if we had flow non-stop from Belen. I am we refueled and had an enjoyable flight instead. We grabbed a meal at the restaurant and crashed in our hotel room.

29 What a great day of flying! My only regret is that we didn t take advantage of the calm conditions to fly up to San Francisco Peaks (12,663 ft). It s probably best that we did not. Here are my GPS tracks the day s flight. Marble Canyon Airstrip Shrine Little Colorado Gorge Grand Falls San Francisco Peaks Diablo Canyon Meteor Crater St Johns High Lonesome Pueblo Viejo Cebola Canyon Belen