I put a couple of hours on the Cub today … and it was mostly nice. I flew the Chugach Mountains between the Knik River and Turnagain Arm. It’s obvious from the picture above that in terms of cloud cover it was a beautiful day. Down at sea level, where we live, the winds were calm but once I climbed through 5000′ it got a little breezy. It was blowing a solid 45 mph and the fresh dusting of snow was whipping off the tops of the hills as pictured above. Snow-devils traveled across the surface of the glaciers looking like mini-tornados. The ride was smooth about half the time, but when the wind made itself known all I could do was power-back and hold on.
There were a couple of nasty down-drafts that got my attention because I could not out-power them. I do not like being at full-power, in a climb attitude, when the plane is descending at 1000 feet per minute, and mountains are all around. This scenario does not usually last very long but even 30 seconds can feel like an eternity and you better have a spare 500 feet. It is very important to always be able to turn toward lower terrain because sometimes these little planes cannot out-power the winds. We do not push weather like this, truth is, the wind was picking up while I was out flying, and I was trying to get back home when I got hit by the worst of it. I never go looking for weather like this, but the dynamic nature of the mountains ensures that you will not always escape some discomfort.