Your Scariest Flight ?

[visibility3miles]

Maybe not the scariest, but it had me worried.

I and another pilot in Northern California went up with the instructor of our flying club to get checked out for landing at high altitude airports in the Sierra mountains.

[i.e., anything above ~5,000 feet, ~ 1,500 meters.]

We were both told which airports we were supposed to land at. We both had the Truckee Airport (elevation 5,900 feet) on the north side of Lake Tahoe, and each had a smaller strip.

It was winter. [Which is good for density altitude.] The other pilot clearly had not checked the weather conditions at his designated small airport, as when we arrived, half the runway was covered in snow, so no chance that we could land or even do touch and goes. Like the classic small strip in the mountains, it was on top of a ridge, with a steep uphill slope, and an even steeper drop off on three sides.

I had read about mountain flying, and so knew you are supposed to be aware of the airport’s altitude and hence what altitude you should be at when flying the pattern.

This pilot fell into the trap of judging his pattern altitude by looking at the ground in the surrounding valley, so each time he made of his “final” approach, in three circuits, we were below the runway threshold on final and had to climb for the go-around, rather than being above and descending for a “landing.”

I suppose if he could have done an actual landing, the runway was steep enough that his full speed approach would have worked, but I was not thrilled to be in the back seat thinking, “We’re too low! We’re too low!”