It was July of 2012. I was with Geoff Pritchard in the terminal at Cranbrook, BC. Waiting patiently on the ramp were our planes; his Champ, my Merlin. We were on our way home after having flown to San Francisco and we’d been gone nearly two weeks.

But we had a problem, and it was a big one. The problem was a stagnant and stationary, super moist low pressure system basking lazily out on the prairies. It was spinning all that moisture up against the eastern slopes of the Rockies, and then over top of them into the Crownsest, the Elk Valley and the Columbia Valley.

Oddly, within about 30 miles or so of Cranbrook, the weather was OK/marginal VFR. The cloud ceiling was at several thousand feet overcast and there were some scattered and maybe broken layers, too. I don’t recall the actual numbers anymore.

We’d had a tough time even getting to Cranbrook. We left Sandpoint, Idaho, in some questionable weather that was manageable and had at least not gotten any worse en route to YXC. But it sure hadn’t gotten any better, either.

We had some options. We could accept our fate and find another way home, or we could, you know, just go have a look. Just a peek, mind you, and if it didn’t look good, we could turn around. I mean, really, all we had to do was follow the highway through the valleys until we popped out near Pincher Creek. Then it’d likely be OK for us to make it home over the flats from there. Maybe we should, you know, just go have a quick look. I mean, how bad could it be, right?

Ya, you can probably see where this is going.

So we went and had a peek. Oddly enough, a Cessna 182 took off ahead of us, apparently trying to do the same thing. We headed south down the Columbia Valley toward Elko and the south end of the Elk Valley. As we approached Elko, we heard the 182 pilot report he was turning around, stating the weather was too bad to continue. He was up higher than we were, so I thought that with our slower speed and our comfort level down low, maybe WE could get through when he couldn’t.

It didn’t take us long to get there, and then we could peer east into the bottom end of the Elk Valley to where it bends north toward Fernie.

It didn’t look good. But we couldn’t see what was north of the bend, and that’s what I wanted to know about.

I convinced Geoff we should continue to the bend, just in case. He was clearly reluctant, which was a good way to be, honestly. I told him we were just going to have a peek and that we’d have lots of room to U-turn if we needed to, which was true. It’s quite broad at the valley elbow, and our back door was still open to us.

We turned east into the Elk and we flew the five or six miles to the bend, my hopes diminishing with each passing moment. Sure enough, we reached the elbow of the valley, looked north, and saw the clouds were pretty much right down to the ground.

We turned around and made our way back to Cranbrook, defeated but still alive to complain about it. We remained stranded there for two more days. Through a stroke of amazing good fortune we secured a ride back to Calgary, because the conditions wouldn’t allow us to fly. Along the route, we drove through weather that was as bad as any I’d ever encountered. There was moderate to heavy rain, clouds right down to the ground, sometimes less than a quarter mile visibility. It was good to not be flying.

We returned to Cranbrook to retrieve our planes a week later and flew home safely the same day.

So I think there are a few points worth discussing. Would you have gone to theelbow of the Elk Valley to ‘take a look’? Would you have turned around sooner?

What do you think of Geoff’s decision to follow me, despite his reluctance? Full disclosure here; I didn’t at all pressure him. We actually made the decision together to depart and have a look at what was out there. We had some pretty good evidence to suggest we try, namely the VFR, albeit marginal VFR, conditions in the Columbia Valley around Cranbrook. Additionally, I knew we’d have room to turn around where we did, and that we’d still have an open back door for our return to Cranbrook.

Your voice matters here:

Please share your thoughts by sending them to Greg for the next issue of Skywriter. It doesn’t have to be a long response, just a few words will do. You can be anonymous, too, if you like. Or, send them to me, and I’ll edit them with you,even if you’re critical of my choices. We have a lot of experience in the club and talking about safety is important. So lets’ talk about it.