Living on the edge of the continent......

Saturday at about 11:30 we took off from KPAE, full fuel and all seats filled, only about sixty pounds under gross. I had three of my four kids with me on a planned lunch trip to Friday Harbor, taking advantage of Zeke being in town from Boise and both Liz and Steph free for the afternoon. The plan was to zip up and enjoy a bite and some scenery, then fly back home where we'd load up for a trip to Pine River Cabin for a weekend of beer and sun and revelry.

As I've learned, loading a Cessna 172 to gross weight allows one to simulate the performance of a 152. Takeoff was a while in coming and holding five hundred feet a minute uphill was a challenge only met by sacrificing some airspeed in favor of climb. Temps were comfortable at about seventy degrees but the humidity was high. As the ship labored up into the smooth air, I imagined trying to get off the ground with a similar load at Fish Lake. I'm thinking I don't want to try.

There was a fair amount of radio traffic while flying through Whidbey's Class C airspace, but we only saw a couple of other airplanes in spite of that. It's a comfort to have everyone in that corridor on radar, knowing you've got someone on the ground watching for you. We made good time northbound, reading between 134 and 140 groundspeed the entire time. Lunch was quiet and pleasant and followed by a stroll to the marina for some gawking at the incredible wealth floating around there. By the time we were walking back up toward the airport, a very light drizzle was underway but the sky was of no concern since it appeared the ceiling was probably about six thousand feet. This perception remained with me until the Skyhawk lifted off the runway at Friday Harbor International and I was able to get a good look around.

To the east and southeast - my intended direction - was a wall. The clouds and sheets of rain falling from them merged into an indiscernible gray with the water. No telling where things were in there. I have no idea where all this weather came from. As I lowered the nose a bit, I could see south across the Strait to the shoreline between Port Townsend and Port Angeles. There was a layer of some sort inland but I could see the shoreline. I held that thought in reserve as I rolled left and aimed toward the clouds to the east. The radio was alive with traffic as I dialed in 118.2 and listened to Whidbey Approach. It seemed as if every light plane in the San Juan Islands was airborne at the same instant, all headed the same direction as me, and all asking for flight following. I heard the Whidbey controller asking several pilots "able to maintain VFR at 2200? (or 2500 or 3000)". I also heard multiple requests for filing in-flight IFR. That was when I became a bit uncomfortable with the state of things. By this time I was over Lopez Island and the wall of cloud and rain was no more than a mile in front of me. I could see the runway at Lopez below me; I could see north to Orcas, and glancing over my shoulder I saw it was still clear at Friday Harbor so I knew my situation was fine but it was time to make a decision. I turned around without calling Whidbey.

My initial thought was to get a little altitude and head south for the open water transit to the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula, but the weather seemed to be growing less friendly there all the time. Meanwhile the radio chatter continued and one airplane was asking for a diversion from Paine to Port Townsend. Another airplane was enroute from Oak Harbor to Port Townsend and called with a request to return to Oak Harbor since there was nothing ahead but zero/zero. In spite of what I thought, things weren't looking good to the south either. At this point I found myself in an airplane with three non-pilots, all of whom were beginning to look a little uncomfortable and it seemed to me that my job was to do something that would not cause them to feel uneasy. If they weren't happy with my explanations then perhaps my decisions were not quite right. As we headed back to Friday Harbor, I told Stephanie, "looks like you're gonna be late for work". I don't think she minded. I now had in mind one additional option I wanted to explore before putting us back on the runway. Remember this; if you're really down to only one option, you're truly in trouble. I had one "additional" option besides landing at FHR.

If you look at a chart of the San Juan Islands, you'll see why it is technically not an island chain, but instead is an archipelago. Heading due east from San Juan Island and the Friday Harbor area, you can follow the crests of the underwater mountain chain that leads directly back into Skagit Bay just north of Anacortes. It occurred to me that we might be able to navigate our way east while maintaining at least minimal VFR by simply flying from one of these islands to the next. Since every one of them (almost) has at least one runway on it, the worst that could happen would be we'd set down on one of these out of the way strips and wait the weather out. I turned east again at the north end of Lopez, explained to the "crew" what I was going to do, and we started descending to a "Commander-Emery-approved" altitude of 1000 feet. The plan worked well and I was able to always see ahead to the next piece of real estate before leaving the safety of the strip below me. What surprised me, however, was how completely disoriented I became in this little jaunt, even though I was navigating with a combination of chart and eyeball and the GPS. I knew where we were by the screen on the GPS but I could not look out the window and make myself see the same thing. We finally broke into the clear just northeast of Anacortes and turned back to the south, calling Whidbey and requesting additional "eyes" as we headed once again toward home.

To the east now I could see the freeway and a wall of rain just beyond it. The weather seemed to be improving to the west, however, so it seemed like we'd pulled it off. I was still hearing a flood of radio traffic to the southwest and south of Whidbey so I remained guarded and kept one eye back to the field at Skagit / Bayview and another at the runways around Oak Harbor. If all else failed I figured we'd simulate being a Navy jet and land at NAS Whidbey. We had to skirt the shoreline along the east edge of Port Susan, between the mainland and Whidbey, because things remained solid to the east. No following the freeway this trip. I was able to get high enough now to pick up the VOR at Paine and pointed us between the clouds while heading in the direction indicated on the OBS. After a few minutes I dialed in the ATIS at Paine and was treated to "visibility three miles, broken fifteen hundred, thunderstorm, lightning". The intercom in the Skyhawk was filled with four voices simultaneously saying "Lightning!!". We laughed at the common reaction and at that exact instant hit our first bump of the day. It was a good one, the cosmos apparently trying to emphasize this new news and make up for the smooth ride to that point.

As I cleared the patch of scud running along the shoreline just north of the Ritts ILS Outermarker, I could see ahead for the first time and noted thick patches of scattered cloud between us and home base with a ceiling about a thousand feet above the water. There were ways through, however, and I could see Hat Island dead ahead and Camano to the west. I heard one airplane inbound on the ILS to the left of us, and two more somewhere in the soup west of us, all of us aiming for the same place and clearly interested in getting on the ground right away. Paine Tower cleared us for the straight in at about the same time the ILS traffic reported breaking through the clouds so I turned a bit west to stay clear of his approach. At the same time we had a Bonanza and a Cessna converging from the right. Everyone was faster than us so the crowd cleared out in time for me to fall in behind and pick up a modified clearance to fly a right base. We zigged and zagged and jigged around a whole collection of clouds, all the while watching an ominous squall line crossing the Sound and just reaching Possession Point at the south end of Whidbey. It was close. And full of lightning. I kept the throttle almost to the firewall all the way to the runway threshold. Fast and high I slipped hard and executed a not-bad landing and then raced for the taxiway.

As we attached the last tiedown chain, the storm reached us with torrential rain, booming thunder and exciting flashes. Exciting, at least from the safety of the inside of the truck.