Lake Cowichan, Vancouver Island. I took 15 hours of floatplane lessons and for 4 days did circuit upon circuit on these waters. The village of Youbou is clustered around the peninsula in the middle of the photo, otherwise we had the lake pretty much to ourselves. The clouds scudded overhead at ridge level, and the winds blew in different directions depending upon where you were on the lake. What a great place to learn float flying!

        The hillsides above the lake showed the effects of logging., and as you can see we were flying a Cessna 172.

        On day 5 we just kept on flying west along Lake Cowichan, over the divide, and out to the Pacific coast. Lake Nitinat glows before us as we fly out from under the cloud cover.

        We flew north, up the Pacific coast to the Alberni Inlet. Under the wing is Barkley Sound and the Broken Islands Group, part of the Pacific Rim National Park and a great location for sea kyaking.

        We flew up the Alberni Inlet to the town of Port Alberni, before turning west to Spoat Lake, where we landed.

        The two remaining Martin Mars flying boats were based here, anchored to buoys in Sproat Lake. The future of the planes seems constantly in question, but in the summer of 2007, one was in California, water-bombing the wild-fires.

        These pictures are from a reconnaisance of Mount Drummond in Banff National Park, which I wanted to climb. To accommodate possible bad weather and the rental organization, I booked a plane 5 days in a row at 5:30 am. As luck would have it, day one was clear in Calgary, and in this photo we are just entering the mountains over the Trans-Canada highway.

        The scenery is spectacular. The Sawtooth range is on the north side of the highway, just west of Banff. Cloud cover is building-up, and the base is at 9,700’, which was a concern as Mount Drummond is 10,300’ and I did not want to be flying an unfamiliar route with the tops obscured.

        Castle Mountain is a familiar landmark on the Trans-Canada highway. The valley has started to fill with low-level cloud, but from previous flights I know that as the valley floor rises, the cloud will dissipate.

        We have turned north from the Trans-Canada Highway, and crossed a pass at 6,400’into the head-waters of the Red Deer River. Drummond Glacier can be seen over the wing, and the summit of Mt. Drummond is in the distance, ahead of the windshield pillar. The cloud base has risen to about 11,000’, thank goodness!

        The summit of Mount Drummond. We flew up the valley containing the glacier, and made a couple of circuits. The original climbing route had been from the glacier, but it had retreated and this no longer looked possible. A route up the south ridge looked OK.

        A month later my daughter and I took 4 days to hike in and have a go at climbing the mountain. We got to 9,800’ on the south ridge before running out of time, but I did mange to climb it the next year. We were the first people on the summit since 1994 when the register had been put in place!

Copyright North Bay COPA Flight 23, 2005