We almost reached our goal of Smithers today, but a wall of storms rose to meet us at Burns Lake so we’re settling for the night. Here’s our track West so far:
Track West to Burns Lk
This has been quite a day, and it seems impossible we woke yesterday in Regina! We slept in the deserted Jasper Hinton airport with permission, and woke early. Since the mountain pass entry into the Jasper park had patches of low cloud beneath a high solid overcast, we rode into town for a delightful breakfast with Pete & Nadine. Not only do we share a love of adventure and flying, but we talked psychology with former therapist Nadine. After a fruitless search of Hinton for the “archetypal cafe” where locals go, we relented and chose Smitty’s (Canadian equivalent of Denny’s) where it turned out there were lots of locals mingling with a biker group that stopped in. Despite the forgettable food, the company was fabulous. Our next stop was a supermarket where the gals got supplies while the guys tapped into an open wifi hotspot and my main focus was online weather info. Back at the airport I filed the daily flight plan and got a weather brief to supplement what I’d seen online and was about to experience first hand.
0198 Climber's Challenge
Minutes after our fond farewell, we became Jasper gaspers. The sheer enormity of the features is truly astounding. I didn’t get many good pix due to the lingering clouds and the smoke from myriad regional wildfires, but I hope you can get some sense of how amazing this place is. I’d been through on the train once, but flying it is orders of magnitude more astounding. Having only heard about it, poor Anne was even more unprepared.
0204 Bird's Eye
At the edge of the village the road near a small pond framed a perfect blue bird’s eye.
0221 Unseen Falls
High up the steep slope is a raging waterfall that few other than aviators ever see.
Anne’s blogging right now so I’ll close by briefly describing our passage to Burns Lake. We decided to stay high across Prince George and stop at Fraser Lake. Then we noted that the GPS said nothing about fuel or other services there, so we diverted toward Vanderhoot. Descending to land, another pilot kindly informed us that though there was plenty of fuel the only two people who could pump it for us were not available for at least four hours.
Now my personal choice is to always have at least an hour of reserve fuel. Climbing back on course I calculated 90 minutes’ fuel remaining. While that could have carried us beyond our goal of Smithers, it wouldn’t work for me. I asked our friendly local pilot about Burns Lake and he assured us it has services including fuel. It left me right at the edge of my hour reserve and there were plenty of alternatives within half an hour, so we pressed on. Now we started noticing rain showers ahead. Dodging between those while constantly checking and triple-checking fuel burn against time and distance remaining (and reassured by cross-check with my recently fine-calibrated fuel gauges) we hugged closer to the road and at last made it into Burns Lake. With exactly an hour of fuel remaining. After looking at the sky and the internet, talking to the Flight Service weather briefer, and looking at each others’ haggard faces, we decided to accept the kind hospitality of the airport angels here. We’re snug in a borrowed room, typing away as our eyelids droop ever lower ahead of the 9pm sunset. So all this by way of context on how tired we’re feeling right now. Happy tired. 😉
John & Anne Wiley 
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