Southeast Alaska attempts, and Whitehorse

Day 6: Watson Lake to Whitehorse, Yukon.

The day began wet, with much of the same weather in Watson Lake as the day prior, but with good visibility and a 2,000' or better ceiling at Teslin and Whitehorse, further northwest along the Alcan highway. I called for a weather briefing in addition to checking online to study the conditions to get into the southestern Alaska coast thereafter.

"The Chilkoot Pass is IFR 300 days a year", the Whitehorse flight services briefer commented. "a better alternative is the Taku river into Juneau for customs, and then up the coast to Haines".

The Chilkoot Pass and Taku River are routes to get to Skagway and Juneau (respectively) on the southeast Alaska coast from the interior in the vicinity of Whitehorse. Despite an optimistic forecast the day before, both from flight service and a local bush pilot I was put in contact with who operates out of Haines, the day begam  with both passes solid IFR, as confirmed by studying the various web cameras set up to help pilots on the route.

The Alaska Aviation Camera website is an absolutely wonderful tool for both strategic flight planning and tactical decision making on a trip. Looking at the live camera images and comparing them to a clear-day view with the local mountains and distances from those mountains clearly visible gives a great sense of whether or not a route is passable before takeoff. In flight, flight service (in both Canada and Alaska) are happy to pull up a camera and provide a verbal description of what they saw. I can envision one day in the future when this might be streamed live to the cockpit from a satellite or ground transmitter.. one day.

My prior optimism for getting a weather window to get into Haines to see my friend was fading. Thankfully the weather in and between the various airports on the southeast coast weren't too bad; once I was there I could probably tour around quite a bit, but even if I got in, how would I get back out? My primary medium-range forecast, a set of surface prog charts forecasting weather movement and flight conditions 24-60 hours out promised a break tomorrow, but yet another low slamming into the southeast coast immediately thereafter. Would it be worth the hassle of two border crossings just to visit someone for a couple of hours?

My only schedule constraint for the trip was to pick up my wife, who had bought a one-way airline ticket to Anchroage several days from now and would join me to tour Alaska and fly the return trip home in the Mooney with me. I did not want to be late, nor did I want to get myself into a situation where I'd be pressured to get there.

Alcan Highway west of Watson Lake

With all this in mind I departed for Whitehorse, a less than two hour jaunt along the Alcan highway where I could stop and wait a bit more for the weather. I'd give myself the day to see whether I could make it to the coast and if not, continue along the interior into Alaska.

The flight itself was simple. I picked up the Alcan not long after departing Watson Lake and had the worst weather right there -- some pretty consistent light rain that went on a ways, but with visibility still well better than 5 miles, and ceilings better than the 2,000' reported.

The scenery was similar to exiting the trench, but took on an increasingly vivid nature as the highway -- and me above it -- wound our way through low mountain ranges whose tops were covered with scrubby but colorful vegetation that called for a periodic close aerial inspections as I passed by.

I found myself looking forward to each bend with anticipation and splendor as the landscape was still quite foreign, and though one could seemingly get used to the general lay of the land quickly, details such as the colors along river banks, or the size and spacing of the trees kept the mind as occupied with details as an infant was to exploring his new-found world.

Mt. White, west of Teslin

Lower cloud bases, approaching Whitehorse

Approaching Whitehorse the ceiling lowered somewhat, and there were plenty of convective showers in the vicinity. It was similar to being in windward Hawai`i - warm sun one minute, rain shower the next... but all slightly cooler.

Back on the ground I visited the Whitehorse FIC (flight information centre), whose on-duty briefer corrected my American tendency to call his office a flight service station. After a curt introduction he loosened up. I could tell he was the same fellow who told me Chilkoot pass was IFR 300 days a year earlier on the phone. Whitehorse is apparently one of the only places in Canada where a pilot can still obtain a walk-in weather briefing, and it really is a useful service.

World's largest weather vane - Whitehorse airport

The passes to the southeast coast hadn't opened up, now over four hours since I first started looking in the morning. I had lunch, checked again, and then called off the attempt to get to the coast on the northbound leg of the trip. I'd been stressed about this for some time and the instant relief proved it was the correct decision. What to do now, then? My inclination was to get back into the airplane and keep going, up the Alcan into Alaska. However, with the time consumed eating and fretting about weather I had just run out of time to prepare for the next leg, get fuel, and make it to Northway Alaska in time to meet customs. I was stuck for the rest of the day, having only flown a couple of hours.

Residential Whitehorse

I called around to find a hostel, hotel, or rental car but they were all full. Apparently on Wednesdays a flight from Frankfurt -- yes, Frankfurt, arrives in Whitehorse with hundreds of German tourists, attracted to the Klondike with its multitude of outdoors activities, and today's Condor Air B767 was just about to land. Thankfully the airport had a simple area for pilots to camp; I had accommodation. Town was only a few miles away; with the fold-up bike I had transportation.

The rest of the afternoon was spent touring the town, taking care of some errands, replenishing my fresh food supply, and giving myself a nickel cycling tour. I even got to visit Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons. When in Rome.

The city's population of just over 20,000 represents about two-thirds of the population of the entire Yukon Territory -- an area of land larger than the state of California. It was also apparent that a mining-induced construction and real-estate boom, perhaps of a smaller scale than the original Klondike gold rush were underway. New construction was going on all over the place. In a conversation I'd have later in the trip, I'd learn that the circumstances of the boom were eerily similar to what happened down in the lower 48 states in the 2005-2007 era. Humans seem to be slow as a species at learning from the mistakes of others.