Sunday, October 22, 2017 Cobra flight #607, PIC #620, 2 landings National Canyon, Havasu Canyon, Grand Gulch Bar10: Airtime: 3.3 10:44 am Bar10: 2:04 pm Sunday, October 22, 2017 Cobra flight #608, PIC #621, 2 landings Island, Sunset Flight over Grand Canyon This morning, I joked with Paul that yesterday I had my best flight ever proceeded by my two worst flights ever. I slept soundly, and had a great breakfast in the morning. I casually asked the Bar10 staff if we could buy gasoline for our trikes, and they said didn t have airplane gas, just 91 octane, ethanol free car gas for the 4WD carts. Perfect. This would save us a 3 hour flight trip to the Stout Airport, that would have cut into our airtime to tour the Grand Canyon. Paul and I poured the contents of our 6 gal fuel jugs into to our gas tanks, and strapped the empties in the back seat incase we happened to be in the neighborhood of a gas station on today s flight. Bar10: Airtime: 1.1 5:55 am Bar10: 7:01 pm Days Airtime: 4.4 hrs Total PIC Time: 1634.1 Total Logged Time: 1655.3 Jeff at the Bar 10 Lodge
The cook packed both of us a sack lunch and we packed them into our trikes. Our plan was to work our way back to the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon, maybe land at Marble and get some gas. The New Mexico Pilots Association gaggle of planes was leaving this morning. They had braved the high winds on Friday, and were leaving for home this morning. We got a late start but were the first to leave at 10:44am for our tour of the Grand Canyon.
After taking off, I looped around to flyby the Bar10 Lodge. Note the covered wagon style cabins to the right of the trees. Some of the couples staying at the ranch got to sleep there. They told me it was freezing cold. I am glad I had the bunkbed in the warm lodge.
I turned around, flew past the runway, then headed down the canyon towards the Grand Canyon. 3 miles south of the airport, I reached the edge the Grand Canyon Special Use Area, which has a 9000 floor in the Diamond Creek Sector where we would be flying. The elevation of Bar10 airport is 4100 ft. I started the long climb.
The Colorado River came into view.
We turned east, following the Colorado. Our original plan was to make multiple crossings of the Grand Canyon using the VFR corridors, working our way to the Marble airstrip and land. You can see Paul s trike ahead of me. There are no roads or easy bailout spots. The 9000 foot floor put is about 4000 to 5000 ft above the top of countless flat top mesas that were clear of brush or trees that we could serve as an emergency LZ in an emergency engine out situation.
the Dome We flew up to a butte on the north side, called the Dome. At this point we had to turn south to avoid a finger of an area that had a floor of 14,000 ft. Bar10
On the southern leg to avoid the 14000 ft floor area, we flew up National Canyon, a spectacular tributary canyon that I remembered overflying last night on our way into Bar 10.
We came back the other side of the forbidden zone and were right next to the Dome again. I got in close to Paul for this air-to-air shot picture of his Aeros 2 / Profi TL trike.
We continued east to Havasu Canyon and flew upstream to look at the waterfalls. This is Mooney Falls. I remember hiking down here in 2014. What a fantastic place.
Three quarters of a mile upstream is Havasu Falls.
Another three quarters of a mile upstream is Navajo Falls.
Beyond Havasu Canyon, the Grand Canyon was filling with smoke. We had been watching the smoke slowly drift towards us all morning. It looked like a mess over there, so we abandoned our plans to fly up to the Marble airstrip and turned back to the west.
Perry Null, the organizer this weekend s NMPA / Bar10 event told us of a backcountry strip next to an abandoned mine called Grand Gulch. The mine was on the sectional maps, far to the west. After flying past the Bar 10 ranch, we headed out to Grand Gulch.
There were two runways on top of a mesa. One of the runways stopped at the lip of a canyon.
The runways were narrow with small rabbit bushes on them. The thermals were getting strong and might bump me off to the side. Remembering how runways are usually much rougher than they appear from the air, I didn t see any reason to land here and opted to pass on landing. I didn t get any arguments from Paul. We climbed up and headed directly back for the Bar10 ranch and landed. We brought our fuel jugs with us back to the Lodge. After ate our lunches on the porch of the Lodge. Afterwards, one of the caretakers took us to the gas shed and lent each of us a 6 gallon gas can, so we could get 12 gallons of gas on this trip. We filled up the trikes gas tanks, brought the empties back the lodge, and took a rest.
Conditions were perfect. Calm winds, clear skies. Sunset was around 7pm. I almost skipped the sunset flight. Are they worth it? You are always racing the big clock of the sun in the sky. And it s a hassle to secure the trike in the dark. I was still worn out from the long grind of yesterday and today s earlier flight. But these one hour sunset flights are often the best flights I have ever had, and I had a feeling this one would be good. I got my ass in gear and headed back to the trike for another flight. Above: Looking down the runway before takeoff.
I climbed up to 9000 ft and crept out to where the road from Bar 10 ends at a cliff overlooking over the Colorado River. From there, it is a steep trail through lava rock down to the Whitmore Falls access point on the river.
Far to the south I saw an island, cut off from the plateaus north and south of the Grand Canyon. I headed towards the island.
The island (which is not named) had the Colorado on one side, and the other side One Hundred Ninety Mile Creek on the other side. In the picture above, I am flying up 193 Mile Creek to the gap that separated the island from the south rim.
Here I am rounding the south point of the island, looking at the dense stand of forest and the west facing cliffs. It was one of the most wild and isolated spots I have ever seen.
I made it back to the river and headed upstream again.
Here I am back near Whitmore Falls, looking down on the 4wd trail from the Bar10 ranch to the cliff overlooking the river. The airstrip was about 10 miles north and I had 5000 ft of altitude over the airstrip. I could kill the engine and glide silently all the way in from here. I was tempted, but sanity prevailed. Instead I did a slow 360 to take in the view.
Floating high above the Grand Canyon, over this alien landscape, I experienced a sense of isolation, solitude, and bliss that for me is the best part of trike flying. I could stay up here forever, long past sunset, never landing. But as the sun touched the horizon I came back to reality. It was time to bring my trike back down to earth. I turned north towards the Bar10 airstrip.
I looked behind and saw Paul above and behind me.
I was 5000 ft above the airstrip when I started my long spiral descent. You can see the light colored dirt of the airport threshold in the picture above.
After several minutes and a lot of ear popping, I finally made it down to the pattern and entered the downwind leg to land. Paul s landed first and was taxing to the tiedown area. The truck from Bar10 met and drove us up to the lodge. We were then only two guests left. I asked what the NM pilots had for dinner the day before we showed up and found they had steak. Then the cook admitted that there were two steaks leftover in the freezer. We were supposed to fly down Friday, but delayed our trip a day. Those are out steaks! I said. So we had a nice steak dinner Sunday night instead of hamburger. We turned in early and slept well. My GPS tracks are on the next page.
Bar10 Grand Gulch GPS Tracks Day Flight Sunset Flight Island Mesa Havasu Canyon