Day 4, June 28, Fort St. John, BC to Ft. Nelson, BC

There were three possible routes on this leg of the trip.  The first route follows the Alaska highway through the mountains and is the most scenic route, but there was a thin layer of lowish clouds that might descend into the valleys, so Plan B was to follow the railroad to the east, in lower terrain.  The third route is to follow the airways--direct lines between radio navigation equipment--but this required higher en route altitudes.   We started out along the highway and quickly realized we were going to run into the clouds, so we headed for the railroad.  The cloud heights were  lower than predicted and we ended up scud-running (flying below the clouds and pretty close to the ground).  I didn't feel locked in however, because I knew we could 1) turn around, or 2) ascend into the clouds.  We were well east of the mountains and could intercept the IFR (instrument flight rules) airway.   Plus, the cloud layer was fairly thin.  Eventually the clouds thinned and disappeared when we got to Ft. Nelson.  We talked to other pilots there who said they just punched through the clouds and flew on top, which is against the rules.  In retrospect, probably the best thing to do would have been to file IFR but I didn't have charts, and it turns out a lot of these airports didn't either!   Then we would have punched through the thin layer of clouds to clear blue sky all the way to Ft. Nelson.   Next time I will be prepared to fly IFR.  The only picture I snapped was a blurry picture of what looked like a cell-phone tower (not shown here).  And here I thought we were in the boonies.

At Ft. Nelson, we met up with Bob Taylor and his son from Fairbanks.  They informed us of the smoke from the forest fires blocking our route all the way to Fairbanks.  It's curious that we didn't hear anything about this until we got up to Ft. Nelson.  We could make it to Lake Watson but the hotels in Ft. Nelson are better, according to Bob, who has made the trip many times in his Cessna 182.  We called up Flight Service and confirmed that we were stuck until the winds (currently from the northeast) changed direction.   Here's a satellite photo showing the fires.  The clouds at bright white, and the smoke has a slight brownish hue.



We wanted to get to Fairbanks or Anchorage following the highway through Watson Lake, White Horse, and Northway (airport of entry).   All of these airports were closed, except Anchorage, but that was beyond our fuel range.  Fairbanks was < 1/4 mile visibility for a week, which is below even IFR minimum requirements for landing.  This is where I became jealous of another airplane for the first time.  Bob's  Cessna182 has a higher cruise (about 170 mph) and longer range than my maule, not to mention having an autopilot, so he could actually make it to Anchorage, and I couldn't.  But then he'd be stuck there because he still couldn't get to Fairbanks.  Notice that Dawson City is clear.

Ft. Nelson has a nice Super 8 Motel so we decided to stay the night and decide what to do in the morning.  The motel even had a high-speed internet connection that was free.