Been nervously watching the Weather Channel for the last few days to see if there is much chance of making it to Colorado. Two days ago they actually mentioned the pass I plan to take across the Great Divide (Monarch Pass) on the national weather as 'a really bad place to be', due to snow. Today however it looks like it is pretty good weather to the Rockies, and they are forcasting a high pressure area over Colorado for tomorrow.
Left Scappoose (SPB) around 10:30 with full tanks (23 gallons) of auto gas and climbed to 7500' so I could pass over Portland's class C airspace. Noticed the silouette of a large airplane either pointing straight at me or going straight away. Seemed to be getting bigger. Heard PDX approach tell 'United 751 heavy' about a target 4 miles away at there 12 o'clock and an unverified 7500 ft. United said 'looking'. Distances are very misleading with a plane that big... sure looked closer. At any rate I decided the prudent thing to do was descend to 7000 just to be sure. By this time we were on different paths and clearly not going to meet. It was very interesting to see a very large jet pass what seemed like not very far away at all (1 mile maybe?). Later United told Approach that he had seen me.
Flight to The Dalles was uneventful. Beautiful day, nice (last) views of Mt St. Helens, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams.
Weather still nice at The Dalles. Last shot of Columbia River.
About an hour out of La Grande, OR, my lunch stop, the weather started getting cloudy. The terrain kept rising and the ceiling kept lowering.
Last dash away from the Columbia basin and into La Grande (LGD). Right before La Grande the ceiling dropped to about 6000', while the terrain was at 4400'. Not much in the way of emergency landing places here...
Bought 12 gallons of AVGAS at La Grande ($2.35/gal) and launched to the south following the interstate. I-84 was definately gave a nice feeling of safety... nice straight sections with probably 1/2 mile between cars... I think landing on the highway would have been very easy.
I should mention at this point that my cabin heat was woefully inadequate for the trip. Sitting still for hours at a time, with the cabin heat on full and wearing a North Face Extreme weather jacket and winter boots, I was still freezing anytime the outside air was less than 20 degrees or overcast. I think the cabin heat was probably adequate, but the cabin sealing was not. Have to work on that in Colorado!
Towards Boise the weather cleared up and by the time I was south of Boise, following the interstate still, I was back to blue skies.
Well, that is until Burley, ID. Every time I had checked the route weather in the last two weeks Burley was reporting snow and overcast, and today was no exception. Ceiling was still plenty high for flight though. It was starting to get towards sunset so I started looking for a nice place to spend the night. My Flight Guide didn't show any nice place at Burley so I decided to try and alter my route slightly to an small airport north of Salt Lake City. The weather kept getting worse though, sunset was approaching and my fuel was getting low, so I decided to head for Pocatello Regional airport, ID. When I got close enough to listen to the ASOS though they were reporting 1.5 miles visibility in snow, so I decided to just land at the nearest airport. This turned out to be American Falls, ID.
American Falls, ID (U01), population 3000, showed fuel available on the chart so I figured I'd fly up to Pocatello in the morning to buy fuel, if the weather was better. But when I called in on the CTAF the UNICOM answered and said they did have fuel. Bought 16 gallons at $2.60/gal and tied the plane for free. The FBO told me the State of Idaho has a courtesy car available there for $5 plus 0.30/miles plus a $5 overnight fee, and so that's what I did. Stayed at a small hotel for $32.