This airstrip is absolutely one way only. The surrounding terrain is big enough that depth perception is all screwed up, and if you try to out climb the ground on short final, when loaded, someone is gonna get hurt. I was in a big hurry, and it was my first landing of the Summer on this air strip. I’ve landed here hundreds of times and my confidence level, out-weighed my caution. Rather than making a low-pass I decided to drive it straight in to save a little time. I dropped below the glacial moraine on final approach, and was seconds away from being totally committed to a landing, when the stupidity of my hurried state sunk in. I applied full power, and crawled out from behind the glacial moraine. I swung-out over the ice, and turned around so that I could have a look at the landing surface going downhill.
As my tires skimmed the surface of the airstrip, it was obvious that I had made a prudent last-second decision. The Spring snow melt had trenched the center of the airstrip into a 14″ deep ditch. Mike has been landing here since the early 1980’s and this was a first. It’s strikingly easy to tame nature in one’s mind, and then make really stupid decisions accordingly. The strip was unusable so I picked this mud flat to land on instead.