Originally Posted by
nigelh
..Nobody would ever intentionally fly at all in 50 or 100 or even 500 m of viz .ok ?.
Certainly not intentionally, but sometimes in the mountains you can try a little too hard and all of a sudden you're up to your neck in deep trouble. It's happened a couple of times to me, and it's not something you forget. I found myself hover taxing up a 7000' mountain in fog going from tree top to tree top, with a sling load on the hook (lucky it was only a 30' line). There was no way I would have been able to turn around and go back down the mountain, but I knew there was a helipad on top of the mountain so that's where I ended up, and waited it out for the weather to improve. So, point being, even experienced pilots can get caught out in the weather, particularly when flying in the mountains.