Day One, Williams Lake
Flying the Fraser River Canyon out of Hope is really fun and in low weather, necessary. Not too low, but just a bit below the rim was plenty of fun on the way up. Be aware there are cables across the canyon down low, though you’d have to be flying really low to worry about those.
Then on my return trip I had to fly lower because of a low ceiling. My rule was not to proceed further if I didn’t think I could comfortably turn around in the canyon. Luckily just as I started to wonder if I should turn around, it opened up and I descended down into the grass airfield of Hope BC.
Fly with your landing lights on and fly to the right, like on a highway.
We really intended to fly further than Watson Lake on our northward journey but a line of thunderstorms forced us down. We waited and waited in the commercial terminal but never got a good weather window until it was getting dark at about 11:00 at night. So we just bedded down right there in the terminal.
My iPad had issues and I really wanted to have that working for the trip, so we found ONE at a drug store in Willams Lake. I couldn’t talk them into delivering it to the airport so Graeme took a taxi into town to get it. The taxi ride was $70. So you probably don’t want to taxi into town for dinner.
There was a fellow Cessna 182 pilot there with us. At about 7:00 pm I asked him if he wanted to have dinner with us. He just looked at me blankly. I asked if he wanted Chicken Terriyaki, Pulled Pork or Enchiladas. He still didn’t answer so I suggested the Pulled Pork, which I wasn’t too excited about anyway. Graeme and I went out to the plane, heated water, poured it into the pouches and went back inside. “This is terrific”, he said, how did you make it”? “Um, well it’s freeze-dried so we added hot water”, I said. He was surprised. “What? I’ve never heard of that!”. Then it was my turn to be surprised: how do you grow up and not run into freeze-dried food of some kind?
West Coast Flying Adventures 