It doesn’t look challenging, it looks like a huge airstrip with a tiny bit of snow. I could try to be cool, and say, “ya, it was no big deal”, but the truth is … it was hard work. The runway is plenty long enough, but it’s a one way landing because of that mountain dominating the uphill end. One way airstrips are standard …. it just means you’ve gotta get it right the first time. It’s not a rough strip but it’s not exactly smooth either. There are 3 lazy humps that wait eagerly to exercise the spring steel landing gear of my gross weight Cessna 185 diminishing my Cessna 185 to a three legged pogo stick.
This particular job had me earning my pay. The runway is about 30 feet wide which is a mammoth compared to most of our strips, but with nil braking, and a 15 mph crosswind I made it a point to set down on the upwind side of the runway knowing I was going to drift as I rolled out. This was a good choice because the wind had me nipping at the edges of the downwind ditch, by the time I got the pig stopped. When the tires have no traction there is really nothing you can do to prevent drift except stop the bird before you run out of runway width, because performing a sliding crab in a gross weight taildragger is a really poor idea. I learned on landing #1 that the brakes were my enemy and not my friend. Applying pressure to the brakes offered absolutely no response whatsoever until one tire would grip the rocks beneath the snow and kick the plane slightly sideways, the opposing brake would offer no correction as it slid on top of the snow and toward the ditch. Only with excessive use of the throttle and some fancy footwork did I avoid a total disaster on my first arrival. I made 18 fully loaded trips into this strip over a 4 day period, and there were a few exciting moments. I went home at the end of each day to eat nachos, drink a beer, and think about slippery, heavy, windy landings.