Mountain Flying
 

Took off from Springbank Calgary yesterday and decided to do some Mountain flying. It was certainly better than flying around the local practice area or the average cross country flight. I decided on Banff and the flying and scenery was spectacular. I was at 8000 feet in a Cessna 172 and I was still dwarfed by the peaks either side of me. The weather was perfect with just the occasional bump and my passengers were silent as they snapped shots of the surrounding peaks. It was completely different from above as I have driven this route on countless occasions and I was amazed at the number of hidden lakes only seen from the air. I would certainly recommend this flight to anyone who is just starting out with Mountain flying and like I mentioned the views cannot be beaten. I am now looking forward to the same flight on a nice clear Winter morning when the mountains are covered in snow.

Arrived from Europe last year (FAA ASEL/ASES). Not sure if the CAA require a mountain rating, but if you're planning much mountain flying the best advice I got was from my Dutch BFR instructor and that is to perfect your stall turns. It's all too easy to fly into the wrong moutain valley and find it suddenly narrows or ends and is covered by cloud.

A proper stall turn is a real lifesaver!

I cannot emphasize this enough. IF you are planning to fly in the mountain ranges of Canada, get training. These mountains can and do kill unwary/untrained pilots.

That said... likely the prettiest flying you will ever experience.

I flew from Calgary International to Cranbrook and back last week - took the shortcut and went direct over the rocks at between 8,500 and 10,000 feet. It was a beautiful sunny day, just a delightful flight in both directions.

Even then, though, I was quite surprised at the amount of orographic turbulence that I encountered. At various times, the aircraft was going up (or down) at 1,000 FPM just due to airflow over the mountains.

I felt comfortable doing the trip - I was flying an empty Twin Otter, and thus had a pretty comfortable reserve of both horsepower and rate of climb - but I don't think I would ever try this shortcut with a less powerful piston aircraft.

V1,
who do you fly for?