Dawgs in Utah
by George Mandes

Charlie and I came up from Arizona to Moab this morning to enjoy some winter flying in the desert sunshine of the Canyonlands area. We were monitoring 122.9, and calling for Kurt Wien on his American leg, but he must have been busy eating his breakfast on the flight deck.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to clue in the weatherman as to our plans, because the AWOS at CNY was calling for 1900 overcast, visibility bouncing from 1.5 to 5 in light snow, with a temperature of -2 C.

We went into the clouds around FL 250 on the descent, and started getting ice around 12,000. I also noted that the winds aloft were quite a bit stronger than forecast down low. Charlie was the pilot flying, and as I monitored the CNY CTAF, I heard Gust approaching in his Husky, N317GK. All I could think of was that I believed CNY is class E to the surface, and I hoped he had at least 1,000 and 3 to be legal without a special. I started getting ground contact, and saw snow everywhere, and we got pretty close before seeing the runway. We had to look hard to identify the 1,000-foot stripe to be sure we were lined up on the runway and not the taxi way.

We greeted Gust and, amazingly, he was optimistic about heading out flying. Charlie and I were thinking that hot chocolate in Moab seemed more appealing, but Gust’s enthusiasm shamed us into heading out. As we taxied for departure, we saw another Husky on the ramp. I asked him if he wanted to come play with our dogs, and it turned out it was Dale Stewart from Heber. He had seen our post about flying today and came over to hook up. Gust made a call “flight of four Huskies departing runway 21 at Canyonlands,” and we were off for Mexican Mountain. There was no snow at Mexican Mountain, but it looked like full-on winter compared to the fall colors we experienced on our visit earlier in early November.

We next headed over to Happy Canyon, flying low level down the canyon with beautiful air. The snow really made the topography look surreal. Happy Canyon had a similar snow cover as Dirty Devil and we let the dogs visit for a while there.

While it was starting to get late, Dale and Gust were up for another strip before heading west to Price and Heber. Gust led us over to Mineral Canyon, via a low level flight through some canyons and then up the Green River. Gust landed straight in and reported that the snow was a lot deeper than we experienced in other places today — about six inches of heavy snow! Charlie followed with a three point, and had to work the power to keep it straight in the grooves from Gust. Dale made a very nice landing on his “little” 26 inch tires and I followed — planning to three point. As I rolled out, and saw my three buddies filming, I felt the tail coming up and cobbed the power to go around rather than take a chance of ending up on my nose on film. I made a slow approach, 50 on base, 45 on short final and then added some power to keep the nose up. Even so, I really had to pin the stick to keep the tail down, and for just a moment as I slowed down, the outcome was not 100 percent assured. I need to do a better job of following my own advice on landing in the snow on tires.