February is here, but you wouldn’t know it! Our weather has been more like April. I even heard that the city has started its spring road repairs! I got in a few hours of flying, but wind has been my nemesis.

Fortunately, the first weekend in February was absolutely phenomenal! I know that a number of club members took Friday off to take advantage of the warm, sunny, calm day that was forecasted. As it turned out, this wasn’t necessary as both Saturday and Sunday were equally beautiful.

I had planned to meet with Pat Cunningham at Carstairs with Barry Wood and Gerry MacDonald joining us along the way. I had a small job to do with one of our clients down in High River (actually, I had to deliver and install a navigation light bulb… no biggie) and decided that it would make a good enough destination to start.

Pat and I got in the air around 9:30 and headed southeast toward Strathmore. As planned, Barry and Gerry got in the air as we passed Airdrie and informed us that they would be taking a more direct route over the city. We continued on and heard from them again as we crossed the river south of Strathmore. At High River, I fixed the plane… a process that was made up of five minutes of repair and 15 minutes of paperwork. We discussed the plan for the rest of the day and, although a trip up the Kananaskis Valley and Invermere were both seriously considered, we decided on Linden for lunch.

Lunch was great and it seemed as though pilots were not the only ones out taking advantage of the fine weather. The Country Cousins was packed! After a great lunch, we decided to go our separate ways. Barry had been flying the day before and said something about chores. Pat had to be back to Carstairs by 2 PM. However, I still had four and a half hours until official night and wanted to take full advantage of it!

I had the perfect destination in mind. Our neighbor at the lake, Doug McKay, has started building a new cabin, a process that’s going incredibly quick (about a month from excavation to lockup). I decided that a few aerial photos of the property were in order. It took about 45 minutes to travel from Linden to Red Deer Lake. It’s quite startling as you travel north as there is a very definite line demarking winter from spring which runs east to west about 25 miles south of Red Deer. As I continued north, I noticed that although the ground was white, the snow wasn’t really that deep. More importantly, I noticed that the ice on the lakes and ponds, especially near the middle of the larger lakes, was about a quarter bare with half covered with a thin layer of snow and a quarter with shallow drifts.

As I passed Buffalo Lake, I started to form a plan to land on the lake itself. This would be my first ever lake landing… more precisely, it would be my first lake landing without FLOATS! The drifts seemed to be lined up running from northwest to southeast, exactly parallel to Red Deer Lake’s long axis. As I thought about this, I noticed that the adrenalin was starting to flow, and I was getting rather excited at the prospect. Red Deer Lake finally came up under the plane and, just like Buffalo Lake, there were long, thinly covered sections of ice that looked safe to land on. There were plenty of snowmobile and quad tracks on the lake to both help determine the depth of the snow and that the ice was thick enough for the plane.

My initial pass over the lake was at about 1300’ AGL. I continued into a circuit that had my approach heading approximately northwest. This approach was a precautionary approach to get a good look at the conditions and, in particular, look for pressure cracks in the ice. I’ve seen these while snowmobiling on the lake and know that they can represent a 6” to 8” vertical displacement of the ice sheet. Hitting one at any speed would be catastrophic to the plane. Fortunately, with the bright sun low in the southern sky, every ripple and blemish on the ice surface stood out in stark relief with long shadows. There were no pressure cracks visible and the surface looked safe to land on.

As I climbed out the downwind, I realized that I hadn’t checked the wind direction. There were no telltales that I could find so I decided to try another northwest approach. On short final, I checked the airspeed and groundspeed and realized that I had a light, five knot tailwind. I powered up and reversed my circuit coming back in on a southeast approach. The soft field landing went perfectly and, aside from a few “grabby” patches of deeper snow, it was actually smoother than landing at Carstairs. However, I was having a little trouble stopping, so I headed for a small drift to help me stop. I stopped alright, and got stuck. I shut down and pushed the plane back out along its own tracks to a bare patch.

After a visit with Doug, I decided to head for home. I walked a stretch of the lake about 2000’ long to check for deep snow or drifts and Doug ran his quad along the track to mark it. I fired up and headed to the end of my makeshift runway and powered up. I was having trouble seeing my track with the tail down, so I raised it for a little peek. Just as I raised it, I hit a small drift that grabbed at the wheels a bit, so I slammed the tail back on the ground and relied on blind faith to keep me straight. In less than 1000’, I was airborne. The flight back home was uneventful, but I had a huge grin on my face all the way back! There is definitely a pair of skis for Chrissy in the future!