I’ve flown over this landing site probably a hundred times but never considered setting down until last Spring. There is probably a good reason for this, it is at the end of a tight valley and lies in the bottom of a little bowl with only one entrance that is very narrow. Short, short final is flown through a 50 foot wide cut nearly perpendicular to the strip. The strip is totally invisible until you have flown through the notch and turned hard to the right. You are commited long before this point and the strip has been hidden from your sight the whole time. There is a short decent over 6 foot high gravel bank and then 300 feet of smooth terrain before heading up and over a steep little rise and into a dry creek bed. Because it lies in the bottom of a bowl my biggest concern was ensuring that there was virtually no wind. Landing uphill is the only option on this strip, and it’s way too dicey to do with a tailwind on approach. But if I had any head wind on final that would mean a tail-wind on departure. A tail-wind departure was not an option because a certain gravel mound was waiting to clean the landing gear off my Cub if I did not find adequate lift after takeoff. So again, my primary concern before endeavoring to land here was ensuring a virtually calm air environment exsisted, not only in the air, but also on the ground. This is challenging when surrounding terrain inhibits an adequate fly-by and there are no pools of water to gauge direction and velocity. I made enough dive-bombing low passes into the bottom of the bowl to conclude the air was virutally still by closely examining my ground speed and the feel.
Because landings like this have absolutely no go-around or margin for gross error, I am always prepared to fly away as soon as a succesful out-come is in question. There are a multitude of factors that play into a decision like this. A few of them would be; aircraft loading, wind, elevation, sun position and shadows, fuel weight, obstacles, braking effectiveness (both mechanical, and vegitation), rain on the wind screen, am I feeling “cocky”?, am I in a hurry?, does somebody know where I am at?, are there sharp rocks that will cut my tires? am I sure I can take back off?, will this leave big ugly permanent tracks? Is this worth it?, etc., etc., etc. The difficulty in my job is not the piloting skill, but the ability to weigh all of these factors day in, and day out, and know where the tipping point on the scales is. Often I will dance with a new landing site and determine, “This ain’t worth it, I’m going home”.