On Wed, 23 May 2007, Newps wrote:

Well what fun is that? Your missing out on a lot of terriffic scenery.
Sail over the pass at 6000 or 6500 assuming the wind allows.

True... but over the terrain in question, at that altitude, your ONLY
emergency landing options are the highway and its immediate surroundings,
which in that area are NOT good options. Anyone who's driven that stretch
of Hwy.12 knows what I'm talking about; west of the pass it's 80 miles of
twisting & turning with hardly a straight stretch long enough to think
about passing in a car, much less landing an airplane. (East of the pass
it's much straighter & flatter.) Being up a ways over the surrounding
terrain drastically improves your choices, and hence your chance of
surviving an emergency landing. Less scenic, but safer. Besides, I see
terrific scenery every time I look out the window. As I type this, I'm
looking at mountains 70 miles away. And every time I fly, usually the
first thing I do is climb out of a narrow 2000 ft. deep valley.

There's a lot more flat areas there than the chart would have you
believe.

Well, "flat" isn't generally the first word that springs to mind when I'm
flying over it. I'd go with something closer to, some spots that are bare
enough, and close enough to level, and long enough, to have a pretty good
chance of getting an airplane on the ground without killing yourself.
But, there are lots of mountains where even that's not true.

A couple years ago a guy went down about 25 miles SE of here because of a
mechanical problem, while flying IFR from Jackson Hole to Lewiston. By
the time he broke out of the cloud layer he didn't have a whole lot of
good choices of landing spot. Destroyed the airplane and messed him up
pretty bad, so moving very far was out of the question. The plane flipped
over and broke off the ELT antenna. The weather was really nasty that
week so they couldn't get search planes up. Took them 2 days to find him,
and even then it was just pure luck -- friend of mine driving on a logging
road where the sheriff didn't think they should even be looking. Radar
coverage stops at around 9000 there, I believe, so they didn't really know
where he was. There's a lot of really remote, rugged country around here,
and the terrain & vegetation are such that without a working ELT, it would
be really easy for an airplane to disappear without a trace even if they
knew you were inside a few square mile area. Best argument I know for
having a handheld radio (with good batteries), and preferably a PLB as
well. http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...16X00620&key=1

I tried to get flight following on the way home from Missoula once.
Didn't get it because, at 12,500, I was below radar most of the way.

All that to say, in mountains, it pays to be a bit cautious when making
decisions of route, altitude, weather, etc.

-Dan