A Quick "Flit" into the Alpine

I have a friend here in Vancouver who owns and flies his own float plane... Well its actually just a little light aircraft of the sort that many people use for accessing the "back-country" Its a Piper Super-Cub and it started out with just a regular set of wheels, but Mike got tundra tires (big soft balloon tires for landing on soft and uneaven ground) and skis for landing on snow, and a set of pontoons for landing on water. And Mike says that it is this last option that he loves to do the most, so the little plane spends almost all of its time with its floats on and visits lots of the tiny little remote lakes in the Coast Mountains around Vancouver.
Its getting late in the summer here in Vancouver, and this last weekend was likely one of the last fine weather weekends we will have, but it was really nice weather and I got the chance to go for a half day flight with Mike to visit one of those little lakes...

First we got the plane out of its hanger on a specially made little trailer/dolly, and we fueled it up and then drove it down a wooden ramp into the river. Then we hopped in (its a very small plane and fits only two people seated one behind the other with a small space behind that for personal gear) and took off for about an hour flight to the North.

The little SuperCub doesnt fly very fast (or very queitly for that matter!) but it is far more scenic than a car and does go in a straight line (rather than having to follow windy roads). After about an hour we were really little further away than we could have driven in the same time, but we were right in amongst impressively large mountains still capped with plenty of snow and glaciers and lots of little hidden valleys and alpine lakes.
Mike had a couple of particular little lakes in mind so we flew toward them to see what conditions were like. The first one was still largely covered in ice, so there was no way we could land on that... On we flew.
But the second one was free of ice and had a light wind blowing over it from a good direction.
So, we circled around the mountain and Mike brought the little plane in for an almost unnoticable touch-down on the little lake.
We then taxied to the end of the lake, carefully nudged into the shore, got out and then spent a few minutes tethering the plane to rocks and trees to be sure it didnt drift off or get damaged if the wind got stronger.
Then we decided to go for a little hike up the nearest peak to see what we could see.
It was a lovely time of year with very few bugs around (getting too cold for them to survive at night) and the area was very pristine with no evidence of people having visited the site for many years (though I assume others had been there at some time). Then we sat about on the top of the hill and enjoyed the vew... I always find it amazing how quiet the world is without people in the area... It must have been very tranquil before humans learned to talk :)))
There were some logging cuts in sight and of course some logging roads but access to the area was very difficult by vehicle and the hike up to where we were would have taken the better part of a day... But for us it was just one hour of flying from the city!

 

You can just see the tiny little plane on the shore at the left hand end of the lake in the picture below.

And then after having contemplated the world for a while, it was time to hike back to the plane and head back to the city (I had a dinner appointment!).
Im really glad I have friends like Mike, and I feel so priveledged to be able to occasionally come along for a fly and visit places like this with minimal physical effort... I used to do lots of hiking and climbing and skiing in places like this, but these days my feet and knees really cant do heavy duty hiking much so access to such places is very difficult for me... But not this day :)

Thanks heaps Mike :))

Finaly Ready for a Banquet

Its been all of three years in the making, but that dining room table that I have been working on (very occasionally) is finally completed :)

I bought the big slab of wood for the top about three years ago and it waited through a winter before I did anything with it. Then last year, I managed to level that slab of wood off and sand it smooth and cut it to size, and even to give it a mirror like epoxy coating before I brought it inside at the end of summer just as the rains started. And I also managed to buy the timber I would use to make the legs for the table, but, like the table top the year before, the leg wood had to wait in storage for a year before I could get to working on it.
This year, summer came late and Ive not really had much time to work on it but over the last few weeks I got the wood out and after looking at my decidedly old sketches, I set about cutting and sanding and then varnishing the legs... Actually, the hard part of the project was to locate a couple of large 1" diameter bolts to hold the pairs of legs together... It was hard to find the bolts that I liked because I particularly wanted "square headed" bolts to go with the rest of the table and chairs looks. But I eventually got those from a local bolt manufacturing company... They forge bolts upto 3" in diameter (and thats a big bolt I can tell you!).

Anyway, just this last weekend I managed to bolt the whole thing together:

And Im happy to say that over-all Im very pleased with the result indeed!

... and now all I need is an excuse for that proverbial "Banquet"  :))
Given this result, I may even make some more furniture for my house... though Id hardly call it the "cheap" option! :)