Monday, October 23, 2017 Cobra flight #609, PIC #622, 4 landings Zion Canyon, Bruce Canyon, Escalante, Stevens Arch, San Juan Goosenecks, Bluff Dirt Road I got a great night sleep, and woke up a little early today, in the pre-dawn darkness to look around. We packed up all our gear and took the caretaker (forgot his name) took a picture of me two on the front lawn. I could see my trike tied down on the ramp, it has survived the night. We had huge breakfast that would need to last me the rest of the day. The Bar10 Lodge was the comfiest place I have ever flown into, great food, gas, decent rooms. We paid $250 each for 5 meals and 2 nights. The meals were worth $100, so that s only $75/night for the rooms. A good deal, and I ll definitely will be back for a longer stay in the future. Bar10: 9:57 am Escalante: 1:11 pm Escalante: 3:14 pm Cal Black: 4:29 pm Cal Black: 5:10 pm Bluff: 6:10 pm Days Airtime: 5.6 hrs Total PIC Time: 1639.7 Total Logged Time: 1660.9 Jeff at Bar 10, trikes and planes in background. Living room, dining room Bar 10 Lodge My trike
Here I am all packed up, doing a final check on my GoPro cameras before take off. I was filling up my GoPro memory cards and had to delete a bunch of the files, where I accidently left the camera on during boring terrain. I would be careful with video for the rest of the trip. We were fat on fuel and could fly anywhere today. The caretaker had topped off our fuel jugs one last time to carry along with us in the back seat. We only had vague plans to head north for Zion and Bryce Canyon, and then turn east. Paul had to be home Tuesday night and we would play it by ear today.
I took off, looped around the pattern and did a touch and go (above), never letting the nose wheel touch down. I climbed out, turned to the north and flew past the Bar 10 Lodge one last time, then headed up the canyon to the north.
We flew north over relatively boring terrain, at least when compared to the Grand Canyon. We flew past Stout Airfield at Hurricane, Utah, the airfield we would have had to fly to for gas yesterday if we couldn t get some at Bar10.
The wind picked up and we started to climb to get clear of the rotors. I unfortunately, that meant climbing to 9000-10000 ft, where the winds were even stronger. I recognized this sharply defined ridge from our trip here in 2014.
We flew over the top of Zion Canyon. Very spectacular from above. It would be amazing to fly this canyon down low. The next slide is a shot looking straight down into a steeply walled canyon in Zion.
Zion Canyon
I looked over to the right and saw the Zion Ponderosa Ranch, a dude ranch I stayed at 3 years ago with my daughter on a road trip to California.
We worked our way to the northeast towards Bryce Canyon National Park. The winds aloft were getting stronger, out of west and the terrain higher. We had to climb up to 12,000ft to stay in relatively smooth air. This is a picture of the pinnacles of Bryce at the southern end of the park.
This is a view about halfway up the ridge, looking back along our track to the southern part of Bryce Canyon National Park.
Here we looking towards the northern end. Bryce Canyon Airport is back in there. We considered landing there for a break but it was into some strong winds and at the base of mountain. We keep on going towards Escalante.
We flew out toward the high peak at the center of the picture above. It is called Barney Top. It did not look that threatening, but as we approached we were hit by some really strong turbulence. It was probably a combination of thermals, and 30 mph winds coming from the direction of Barney Top. I eventually climbed up to 12,900 ft to get to slightly smoother air. We had planned on landing at Escalante which was now over 7000 ft below us. I was not sure about crawling down into that deep hole, to land there. But Paul talked me into it.
Paul and I had landed in Escalante back in 2012. It is a great little airport. Nice pilots lounge, showers etc. I slowly worked my way down waiting to get clobbered by the rotor, but the winds gently died down to nothing. We speculated that the rough air we felt earlier was wind blowing up against a light colored, thermal generating ridge. We landed here and took a long break. The high winds discouraged us from flying up to Mineral Canyon or Dirty Devil. We decided to head for Bluff, UT tonight and head home tomorrow.
We took off and headed east for Lake Powell. I saw this cottonwood tree in a tributary stream of the Escalante River.
It was an endless maze of canyons our here.
As we approached Lake Powell, I kept my eyes peeled for Stevens Arch. It is visible at the center of the picture above.
The span of Stevens Arch is 220 ft.
From Stevens Arch is was a just a few miles to one of the tributary arms of Lake Powell. This was probably the scariest part of the flight. I went to my mental happy spot and ignored the lack of landout options for the next 3 or 4 minutes.
This is better, lots of flat stretches of sandstone I could attempt a landing.
As I approached Cal Black, I saw the distinct shape of a delta wing trike parked on the ramp. As I taxied over to the fuel pump, the pilot came over to greet me. It was Hein, from South Africa. He was very excited to see two trikes out here, in the middle of nowhere. Hein was an engineer on a luxury yacht and had taken 6 weeks vacation to fly to the Seattle area, buy a nice Tanarg trike, pack up a bunch of camping gear and then fly across the western US. I think he went over towards the Grand Tetons, then headed south across Wyoming and Utah and had landed a half an hour before we did. He was heading towards Monument Valley, then south to Tuscon where he would store his trike until his next trip out here. He asked if he could join us, and I said sure. We were planning on camping on a dirt road next to a Cliff near the Bluff Airport, but if it was windy we would continue on to Bluff. We filled up with gas and then took off for Bluff. The push to talk button on Hein s radio was not working well, so we told him that if he got separated from us, head for Bluff.
We took off across some very rugged country with crazy slot canyons the drained into the San Juan River.
I made it to the San Juan, then crossed over to the south side which is flatter, and had a web of dirt roads you could land on.
We crossed the Goosenecks and flew over Mexican Hat, visible a the center of the picture above.
One of the reasons I wanted head over to Bluff was the check a possible dirt road landing strip next to the edge of the San Juan Goosenecks. I saw it after departing Bluff two weeks ago and it looked like a perfect place to land if the winds were dead calm.
The crazy LZ road overlooks a cut off meander of the San Juan River.
The winds were not calm today, so we continued on to Bluff.
We crossed the Comb Ridge were it is cut in half by the San Juan River.
I landed at Bluff and saw Hein s trike parked on the ramp.
Hein was waiting for us. I wonder what would have happened if we had landed on the dirt road? I pulled over to the side of the taxiway to scoot past him and tied down on the ramp. Paul and Hein camped under their trike wings. It got windy later on and I moved my tent up against the lee side of the hangar. I set up my gas stove which also served as a campfire. We cooked up some freeze dried meals, and then called it a day. We would get up early tomorrow and fly to Monument Valley. Check out Hein s Tanarg, piled high with gear. Left to right, Paul, Hein, Jeff
Here is my GPS track from today s flight. Zion Bryce Canyon Escalante Airport Stevens Arch Cal Black Airport Bluff Airport Lake Powell Marble Airport Dirt Road Airport Bar10 G R A N D C A N Y O N