Adventures in the mountains and fiords
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009Time flown today: 2h 35m
Total time to date: 67h 55m
Someone had recommended that while in New Zealand, I should do some mountain flying with Air Wakatipu in Queenstown. So, we booked a plane and an instructor for a morning, and off we went. Here’s the flight on Google Earth:
Queenstown has a regional airport that has a few 737s and turboprop airliners a day, located in a fairly narrow valley by a lake between 2000m mountain ridges. The approach in the 737 a couple of days previously had been pretty impressive. So we met our instructor, checked out the Cessna 172, and set off. I wasn’t doing brilliantly, forgetting some checks, but I managed OK and we made an uneventful takeoff towards the east.
Looking south, shortly after lift-off:
Looking west up the lake, just after turning left after departure:
Looking back down the Shotover Valley at the back of Queenstown:
And north, up the famous Shotover Valley: (wish I’d gone rafting down there while I was in town!)
We climbed north then west, around the back of Queenstown, at max rate of climb to gain about 7000ft to clear the major ridge between the central and northern arms of Lake Wakatipu. Fairly soon, we’d got about 1000ft spare beneath us and the ridge, and we passed over it heading north-west.
My first mountain ridge crossing!
Suddenly, we’re in the high alps. It’s seriously big and rugged country here.
We crossed the ridge, and continued west to cross the northern arm of Lake Wakatipu.
North of the lake, the valley is wide with a glacial moraine:
Flying up the valley towards the next ridge, the ground got much higher - the peaks are well over 10,000ft and glaciated. This would be a bad place for an engine failure. We were clearing the ridges by less than 1000ft. The instructor showed me the technique: approach the ridge at an angle of 45 degrees, from the right-hand side if it’s a pass at the head of a valley. As you approach the ridge, watch what any visible terrain beyond does relative to the ridgeline: if it’s moving upwards, that means you’re above the ridge, and (downdraughts, rotor, etc. notwithstanding) you’re going to clear it. If the terrain beyond appears to be moving downwards relative to the ridge, get the hell out of there now. This you can do, because you’re approaching the ridgeline at 45 degrees, so by banking into a steep-ish turn to the left, you’ve got space to do a U-turn and fly away to fly another day.
The most nerve-wracking and exciting part of it is flying narrow cols. You need to cross the top of the col at 45 degrees, in order to leave yourself an escape route if you get to the brink and realise it’s not doable (solid cloud beyond, rising ground beyond, etc.). But you’re flying up a narrow valley, and at the head of the valley, on either side of the col, are walls and pinnacles extending thousands of feet above the col. So, you fly up the side of the valley, and approaching the top, fly at the wall to the right of the col. Keep flying at it. The 2000-ft-high wall of rock looms bigger, and bigger, in the windshield. Keep going, wrench your eyes from the wall of rock you’re apparently about to crash into, and watch the col, the target, check the terrain beyond is doing the right thing, check for any rotor cloud indicating trouble, wait until the angle is right… the wall fills the windshield… then wrench the plane over into a rapid 45-degree bank, wings back level, slip over the col, the rocks and boulders seemingly close enough to touch… and breathe again… as a whole new vista opens in front of you, and the ground falls away again.
The glaciers on the mountains just north of Milford Sound are spectacular.
And so we caught our first glimpse of Milford Sound, descending over the hills to the north out to sea to lose height from 9000ft down to 3000ft.
We descended, and flew across the mouth of the Sound.
We flew up the sound at 3000ft. To be honest, it’s not quite as spectacular from 3000ft as it is from near sea level - this is one place you should definitely visit in a boat. But it’s still pretty awesome from 3000ft.
This place is big. Really, really big. The building complex is a large cruise terminal, with row upon row of tour buses parked behind it.
Soon, we passed over the end of Milford Sound, and followed the valley as it curves around south. This is the view up the valley east of Milford, where the road descends.
We climbed up towards the head of the valley, climbing back into the high alps.
Over the top, and into the next fiord.
Fiord, valley, ridge, valley, fiord… our progress south continued, and soon enough we came to the poorer weather lying across the far south of the country. Had I been by myself, I’d never have continued into cloudy weather like this, but I was accompanied by an extremely experienced mountain flying instructor. Mountain pilots don’t get to be “extremely experienced” (20 years, in this case) if they have a tendency to take poorly-judged risks… so I figured I’d be safe. And I figured it would be an interesting experience! So we went for it…
The country is pretty rugged. How far away are those jagged rocky edges?
This next picture is particularly deceptive. How far away is the rock face: 2m, 200m, 2km? You just have no sense of scale, and that can be really tricky. As it happens, this rock face was moving in an exceedingly leisurely manner, as we cruised at a steady 95 kts. It was very, very big.
And so we arrived at the great, serpentine waters of Doubtful Sound. The clouds are looking pretty dodgy - but wonderfully atmospheric. Really gave a sense of scale. The instructor reckons they make the mountains look their best.
So we proceeded up the sound, hoping to make it over the pass at the far eastern end and drop down into Te Anau to exit the Fiordlands area. It was looking murkier and murkier ahead as we ploughed through the rain, carefully observing whether the skies were becoming darker or lighter in front as we proceeded.
It was getting really murky as we approached the pass, peering over it to see if it was clear beyond. Unfortunately, there was nothing but solid cloud visible over the brim of the pass… so we we turned tail and retraced our path down the sound, to try a more northerly crossing east.
We made our way up the next valley north, climbing higher and hoping the pass would be clear at the top.
The top of the pass is visible at the right-hand side of the photo below. There was about 500ft clear between the pass and the cloudbase - so, approach from an angle with a get-out route if it’s not clear, and go for it!
We made it over the pass, and the views opened up to the north-east, down towards a far western arm of Lake Te Anau.
The Te Anau plains soon opened up in front of us, and soon enough the neat little town came into view.
We crossed the lake, and proceeded north-east back towards Queenstown.
Between Te Anau and Queenstown, the country becomes very arid.
Soon enough, we emerged over the northern arm of Lake Wakatipu. The island is what we flew over on the way out, just a few miles few miles north.
We flew up the southern side of the middle section of Lake Wakatipu, and Queenstown came into view on the northern shore.
Pulled into a tight downwind for the short south-facing grass runway, nestled up against a hillside on downwind. It was a tighter and more geographically-constrained circuit than I’m used to at Oxford!
Turned base, and we were down! Didn’t make a brilliant job of the landing: I needed to get more practice in with flaring 172s. But I was buzzing. What a flight!
