Idaho Backcountry Trip (July 9, 2008)

   At the end of my 4 weeks of flight orientation training, we took a 3-day trip into the mountains in central Idaho. It was a great opportunity to put everything into practice that I had learned during the previous 3 weeks. The area that we were flying in has some pretty rugged terrain. Most of the mountains in the surrounding area are 7,000-10,000 feet high. There's nothing quite like flying down low in a valley with mountains close in on either side of you!

   All of the airstrips that we used in the mountains were more difficult than any airstrip I had ever landed on. The airstrips were dirt or grass, all of them were pretty short in length, and several of them had a significant amount of slope.

This is Badly Ranch. This airstrip is only 1,000 feet long, and one end of the runway is 150 feet higher than the other end!

This is at Allison Ranch. The runway begins on the edge of a canyon about 200ft above the Salmon River. It is a beautiful spot!

                                                                                                                                         ~Joey