The overly-optimistic plan from the night before was to be off the ground by 9AM... but I needed the rest, and so did my hosts, who had returned home in their VW camper after 3+ months on the road. Even so, I awoke at about 7 to check weather once more and make border-crossing arrangements. By the time this was done it was 8, and then there was breakfast, getting to the airplane, getting loaded, etc. The prop didn't turn until after 10.
I planned for and departed Paine VFR under a broken ceiling around 7,000'. There was really no sense in trying to fly IFR as numerous towering cumulus clouds had sprouted up all over the Cascades and further north into the Canadian coastal range which had even higher-elevation terrain. These were ice-factories for sure, and I didn't have the airplane to deal with ice, nor the performance to top them.
Closing in on the border, the ceiling gradually lowered such that I had to descend down to 2,500' or so passing through Bellingham's airspace, and then on to Abbotsford B.C. whose tower controller "radar identified" me and cleared me "into the zone". Different words, but the meaning was pretty obvious. The border itself appears anti-climactic from the air -- an east-west road or fence line. Abbotsford just had an air show finish and there were plenty of display aircraft on the ground, though no one out flying around.
My plan was to proceed along a common VFR route: The Fraser river valley, which provides a natural corridor of low-lying terrain past the formidable Canadian coastal range into the interior between it and the Rockies further east. Turning to follow the river after Abbotsford, the transition in terrain was immediate and striking; mountains sloped steeply to 6,000' and higher, with peaks still capped with snow. Really it became nearly instantly more intense than the terrain I was used to in my prior pacific northwest flying, of which I'd done a fair amount.
The airspace and Canadian VFR charts leading up the start of this route include their own challenges. For the newcomer there appear to be a plethora of small special-use airspace areas that, without comprehensive study, restrict the pilot under VFR to basically cross over Abbotsford and follow the river as I did. Some are labeled for quarries that conduct blasting, but the others aren't beyond a number, and despite my preparation it wasn't obvious how to determine what the purpose and times of a particular chunk of airspace were. I'd looked over the chart prior to the flight, but studying the minute details of a stretch perhaps 30 miles long is low on the priority list when you're trying to cover 1000+ miles for the day. As such, my intent was to simply just avoid it all, whether the airspace was active or not.
The strategy worked, but presented a couple of other challenges: I've grown accustomed to the charts produced by the U.S. NOAA, which are quite good in many respects. The Canadians have some subtle differences that careful study of the chart legend helps with, but in the heat of the moment navigating up a river valley, there isn't time for a refresher on the chart legend. To complicate things, the choice of colors used to depict things like letters and numbers was almost identical to other features of low-elevation terrain on the chart; even with better than 20/20 (corrected) vision, it was like a low-contrast cruel color-blindness test.
At one point I glanced down at icons depicting a cable strung across the river a few miles ahead and saw an elevation figure -- 2,300' or so (I was at about 2,400' at the time) and had a holy-s... moment: Had I overlooked an obstacle that could kill me until now, just a couple of minutes from reaching it? Fortunately by this time the ceiling was rising as I progressed east, allowing a climb rather than course-reversal to sort it out. I realized the irony of this wake-up call some time later: the elevation figure represented a hill on one side of the river - not the obstruction crossing it. The river was still quite low here, near sea level, and it struck me as very odd that a cable would be that high. Still, this wakeup call and the rugged terrain firmly impressed into me that I was a stranger in a strange land, and that this and the flying to come would demand a lot of attention.
Rounding the bend at Hope, B.C. the river turns north and so did I. The chart recommends a minimum of 5,500' altitude to fly the route, and by Hope I was able to work my way up to around 4,000'. Cloud bases were growing higher with the terrain however, and it became apparent I was past the lowest of the weather and was able to climb up to 6,500' shortly thereafter. From here the flying was more relaxed, if still a bit taxing due to turbulence.
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| Turning the corner northbound near Hope, B.C. |
It was also an exercise in pilotage with a paper chart. Something I still practice on the iPad, but electronic charts (VFR anyway) were not yet available when I made the trip... for a couple of hours it was old-fashioned look-out-the-window and place the landmark you see outside on the chart to orient ones' self. Something refreshing.
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| Pilotage over panel |
Occasional rain showers fell from the taller altocumulus build-ups, never reducing visibility enough to worry about but getting the airplane wet and providing the occasional rainbow. Sadly, the circular rainbow phenomena, from precipitation below me, remained elusive. This sort of thing rain in the mountains would be a very familiar thing in the days to come.
About halfway up the gorge I contacted flight service and gave a position and pilot report on the cloud cover and precipitation. I hear my report passed on over an hour later to another airplane contemplating the route. I got the sense over this flight and subsequent ones that pilot reports really are vital as one progresses north, as the weather reporting stations are few and far between, along with the complete lack of radar coverage for both low-altitude aircraft and precipitation.
After following a combination of the river, highways, and finally a more-or-less GPS direct course as the terrain subsided and ceiling improved, I found myself over the interior plateau of B.C., with lands heavily used for forestry and mining. Still, there were beautiful sections and sky-blue lakes, another omen of sights to come further north.
The communities of Williams Lake and Quesnel (pronounced something like 'kennel') were the sizable towns I passed after Hope, now about 200 miles south of me. Neither of the airports in these towns had a control tower, but they did have another new concept to the visiting U.S. pilot: a mandatory frequency and radio operator to give traffic advisories. The mandatory frequency is just that; its not like a non-towered American airport where most traffic self-announces, but a radio is not technically required. A radio operator, who was remote to the airport in the case of Quesnel, responded with the local altimeter setting and any known traffic, instructing me to report clear as I passed by. Such operators are addressed by 'radio', i.e. Williams Lake radio, similar to phraseology used to contact flight service in the U.S. I flipped through the CFS book as I approached each airport to review what the mandatory frequency was and who to address my calls to.
About three hours after departing the Seattle area I arrived in Prince George, B.C. for fuel and customs inspection. Prince George is a towered airport and they closed by flight plan upon landing. Usually they'd advise me of this after takeoff/landing; no separate call to flight service required. I was directed to part next to the airline ramp and saw a pair of polite customs agents waiting for me. As I recall I was pretty close on hitting my ETA - probably within 5 minutes.
The customs folks were interested in seeing my passport, examining my shotgun, and collecting $25CDN for a firearm permit (credit cards accepted; I had zero Loonies). No further inspection or other paperwork required. After that I taxied over to a local FBO where I bought my first fill of expensive avgas at over $1.90/liter. I checked weather and filed a new VFR flight plan to Watson Lake, Yukon via "the trench", and was warned of a system bringing lower weather into Whitehorse, west of Watson Lake. Time was of the essence.
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