The last stretch

Home, at last!

I couldn't leave Lethbridge until 130pm. That low cloud was persistent at 2500 feet. Everybody at the AirWest hanger and flying school was commiserating on how unusual the weather has been. The NavCanada weather briefer explained that today it was being caused by smoke drifting up from forest fires in Idaho, which created condensation nuclei for cloud formation. He was pretty confident that it would start to dissipate by 1 or 2pm, and that there would be a good VFR opportunity before the thunderstorms started forming in the afternoon.

So, nothing to do but wait, again. About 11am, one of the flying instructors offered to drive me back into town, because the Lethbridge airport is pretty small and has no coffee shop. So I had "second breakfast" at Smitty's and went back to the airport at 1230. Ceiling was now just over 3000 AGL, and improving. So I filed to Penticton, via the designated VFR route over Hwy 3 through Crowsnest Pass, Cranbrook, Creston, Nelson, Castlegar, Grand Forks, Osoyoos and Penticton.

By the time I got to Crowsnest Pass, the ceiling was ~10000 ft. It was the most turbulent and gusty leg of the whole trip, especially towards Cranbrook. There were times when I'd hit an updraft of >1500 ft/min, or get knocked sideways. There was a good headwind of 10-15 knots too, and most of the time my groundspeed was less than 90 kts.

At Cranbrook, I stopped to refuel and get a weather update. I updated my ETE, since my forward progress was a little slower than expected.

Toward Creston, the turbulence lessened. Cruising over the south and west arms of Kootenay Lake toward Nelson was quite pretty. At Castlegar and the bottom end of the Arrow Lake, I decided the winds and ceiling were good enough that I would take a shortcut over the Monashee Mountain Range, direct to Penticton. I radioed FSS with a flight plan update and continued over the north end of Christina Lake and came out over the Okanagan valley just north of Oliver.

I arrived in Penticton at 6pm, refueled and called Pete to update him on my progress and discussed whether to call it a day or press onward for home. We figured it would be about a 1.6 or so flight home, if I could go direct over the mountains. Otherwise it would be slower going the Hope-Princeton VFR route, and I've always thought that if the weather wasn't good enough to fly direct over, it would marginal to fly the VFR route in the valley anyway.

But the weather looked good, so I refiled a flight plan and headed for home, climbing over Summerland and then turning west for Hope. I came out over the Coquihalla/Hope-Princeton highway interchange just east of Hope at 8500 ft and started descending into the Fraser Valley. The sun was starting to get lower in the sky, and pretty much all the way from Hope it was shining into my eyes. I eventually stuffed a map hanging down from the visor to help block out the sun.

I could already hear the ATIS airport reports from Abbotsford and Langley. Nearing Langley, I asked the Langley ATC to assign me a transponder code to enter Boundary Bay's Class C airspace and continued on in for a landing on CZBB runway 30, holding short for other traffic on runway 25.

Taxied in, parked at PFC and unpacked the plane. I phoned for a ride home, and in an amazing coincidence, my wife Yvonne was just driving home from picking up my daughter Nicole at YVR, where Nicole was just returning from spending 7 months overseas in New Zealand and Australia. They diverted to Boundary Bay to pick me up and so it was a great way to finish a great trip.

All told, I traveled about 4750 NM (~8600 km), 1495 NM together with Pete. Solo, I traveled 3255 NM (5860km), quite a bit more than necessary to meet the cross-country requirement for the Commercial Pilot License :). We logged 54.5 flight hours on FPAK, and took on over $2100 in fuel (about $40/hour). Most of that will be applied against the rental cost of the airplane.

Although it was unfortunate that Pete had to return home early and wasn't able to rejoin the trek, I think we both had an absolutely great time and can't wait to fly again. But I learned that you can never fly as far or as fast as you hope, and you have to be prepared to wait out the weather. Although everywhere I went, people were talking about how unseasonable the weather had been this summer. Thanks for reading. And thanks for the comments.