Tag Archives: aerial

Dealing with In-Flight Passenger Requests

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Remember the primary job of every pilot-in-command: fly the aircraft.

Phoenix MapYesterday, I had a rather unusual charter for Flying M Air. I needed to take two men on an aerial survey of commercial properties throughout the Phoenix area.

A Full Workload

For two hours, we flew low (about 300 feet AGL) and slow (about 50 knots) over building rooftops. While this may have been too low to need to worry much about traffic, I did have to keep an eye out for obstacles, such as towers. And because some of these properties were within Class D and Class B airspace, I had a lot of radio work to do.

As you might imagine, I had a pretty serious workload.

Yet ten minutes into the flight, it appeared that my under-prepared clients expected me to know the street addresses of individual buildings that we flew over.

For those readers who are not pilots, I may need to point out that finding the street address of a building you’re flying over is not easy. The address is not painted on the roof. The street out front isn’t labeled on the pavement.

Yesterday, we covered an area 26 x 33 miles in size. That’s over 800 square miles. It would not be possible to know the names of every single street — and recognize them from the air! — in an area that size.

Foreflight Street MapYet, believe it or not, I tried to accommodate them. I had my iPad with me and Foreflight software running. I had the Street Map displayed and was zoomed in far enough to read street names. When they asked, I attempted to read off the street name beneath us. I left it for them to try to get a number of the building. I did this for about 10 minutes.

And then I realized that what they wanted me to do was far beyond my duties as a pilot.

A Pilot’s Duty

Aviate, navigate, communicate. Those are my responsibilities, in the order of importance.

Aviate = Fly the aircraft. That means not only keep it in the air safely, but avoid hazards like other traffic and obstacles.

Phoenix Terminal ChartNavigate = Go where you need to go. That means knowing where you are, where you need to go, and how to get there. It means following the instructions of air traffic control. In my situation, it also meant keeping track of the airspaces I needed to fly in: Deer Valley Class D, Scottsdale Class D, Phoenix Class B, Chandler Class D, Phoenix Class B (again), and Deer Valley Class D (again). Certain rules apply in these airspaces and I needed to abide by these rules so I needed to know when I was nearing or in these spaces.

Communicate = Talk to air traffic control or other aircraft. Communication is required in controlled airspaces. Not only did I have to talk to towers to legally enter their airspace, but I needed to tell them what I wanted to do while I was in there. I had to acknowledge and respond to their instructions and traffic advisories.

If any one or two of these duties had been light — for example, if we were cruising point to point at 100 knots 500 feet AGL instead of flying low and slow in an area with potential obstructions or if we were flying in the middle of nowhere where navigation and communication weren’t a factor — I may have been able to provide them with more of the information they wanted. But with the heavy workload I had to deal with, adding another complex task — one that clearly required me to remove a hand from the controls and eyes from outside the cockpit — was far more than I could handle safely.

Indeed, if I had continued to try to provide this additional information for them, I would have put our flight in danger.

I was smart enough to realize this and I simply stopped providing address information. Instead, I mentioned street names that I knew as we flew over them. I let them deal with figuring out where we were.

Pressure on the Pilot

You might wonder why I even tried to meet this client request. After all, it seems like a no brainer. I was pretty busy doing what had to be done. Why add more to my workload?

The answer is easy: pressure to please the client.

All pilots feel this pressure. The client is paying for a service. We feel a need to please that client by providing every bit of service he requests.

But this is wrong. So often, client requests are unreasonable or unsafe. The pilot-in-command is responsible for the safe operation of the flight. The pilot in command has the authority to say no to any request he or she thinks would jeopardize the safety of the flight — or, for that matter, get him or her in hot water with the FAA.

As the owner/operator of a charter business, I may feel more pressure than a pilot who has no real stake in the profitability of the business or the ability to get repeat customers. In other words, I may feel more pressure to make clients happy. But should I? Of course not! I need to be a pilot when I’m in the air. I can be a business owner when I’m on the ground.

Client Shortcomings

In all honesty, I was a bit peeved with the clients. These guys were almost completely unprepared. The only legible map they had of the survey areas was an image on an iPhone with limited scalability. They didn’t have a GPS. They didn’t even have a camera. Either tool would have helped them get the location information they needed on their own. I’ve taken plenty of survey clients out on flights in the past and they’ve always been very prepared to track their location and take notes along the way.

How could I have made the situation better? I could have told them point-blank that I would not be able to provide exact street addresses during the flight. I could have recommended that they get a street map that they could mark up while we flew. I could even have refused to depart unless they had the tools they needed to get locations on their own. But I didn’t do any of these things. I was on the ground, wearing my business owner hat after prepping the aircraft for a 2-hour charter that had already been paid for in full. I wanted to complete the flight.

To the clients’ credit, after I stopped providing street names, they didn’t press me for them. I think they realized that my hands were already full. They took some notes and spent a lot of time just looking. At the conclusion of the 2-hour flight, they seemed happy enough with the results.

But I know they could have gotten a lot more valuable information — and made the cost of the flight more worthwhile — if they’d been better prepared.

Two Points

There is a moral to this story. Two of them, in fact.

  • A pilot needs to prioritize his workload in flight. The first three items must be aviate, navigate, and communicate. If doing all that doesn’t take up all of the pilot’s attention, additional tasks to meet passenger requests may be added.
  • A client needs to be fully prepared for an aerial survey mission. That means coming with maps, GPSes, cameras, or any other equipment that will help him get his part of the mission done. In addition, he needs to communicate, in advance, with the pilot to learn about the limitations of the flight.

Sometimes, when I read accident reports, I wonder whether the accident was caused by a pilot doing something other than his primary duty of flying the aircraft. While it’s great to be able to meet all the needs of a paying passenger, conducting a safe flight and getting back to base in one piece is far more important.

I’d love to hear other stories about handling client requests beyond the call of duty. Use the comments link or form for this post.

Phoenix to Lake Powell by Helicopter

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Again, but this time with video.

The initial call about the January photo gig at Lake Powell came in December through one of my Russian connections. Apparently, two Russian businessmen who were attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wanted to photograph the Lake Powell area from the air. They were willing to pay me to fly up to Lake Powell from Phoenix and make at least two flights totaling 3 to 5 hours.

Trips like this are extremely costly — after all, the client has to pay for 4 hours of flight time just to get me up there and back — and I honestly didn’t expect it to happen. But a week before the chosen dates — January 12-13 — I got the green light and the all-important credit card number I needed to get paid for that 4 hour repositioning flight plus a standard overnight fee to cover my expenses and compensate me for my time away from home.

The Gig

Weight and BalanceI admit I wasn’t looking forward to the gig. The two photographers claimed to weigh 242 pounds (converted from kilos) and I knew they likely weighed more fully dressed and carrying camera equipment. I calculated the weight and balance as soon as I had this information and discovered that I’d have to strip all non-essential equipment out of the helicopter to lighten it up so we could take enough fuel for 2 hour flight segments (plus FAA-required reserves). Anything that was left on board would have to be shifted from under my seat to under the seat behind me, just to shift weight backwards. Having two fatties — yes, including me — up front would make us front-heavy. Having two fatties on the left side would make us heavy on that side. But even after adding 15 pounds of weight for each of them, I confirmed that’d be in balance with 2/3 fuel or less on board.

The other thing that bothered me was weather. Page, AZ was having unseasonably cold weather with daytime highs barely getting above freezing. Flying a helicopter with two doors off guarantees plenty of outside air inside the cabin and no amount of heat is going to win against 30°F outside air. So not only did I have a bit of a challenge ahead of me with a listing (but still within acceptable CG) aircraft to fly, I’d likely be freezing my ass off.

As far as the helicopter goes, I wasn’t worried about the cold weather affecting operations. My R44 Raven II is fuel injected, so carburetor ice is not an issue. I’d flown it in cold weather before and it was always peppy — once I got it started. In fact, that was my only real concern: Lake Powell photographers usually want to get off the ground at dawn for morning flights and with overnight temperatures under 20°F, I worried a bit about getting the helicopter started for its morning flight.

But the gig did have one big thing going for it: at least 4 hours of revenue time. And if there’s one thing I’m interested in, it’s getting paid to fly.

The Flight Up

Lake Powell is about 200 nautical miles north of the Phoenix area. Since my clients were paying for a 2-hour flight, my goal was to make it there in two hours. That meant flying as close to a straight line as I could.

CourseUsing Sky Vector, I plotted a course from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT) to Page Municipal Airport (KPGA) with only one waypoint in between: the Little Colorado River Gorge (LCRG) on the east side of Grand Canyon’s Special Use Airspace. I wrote down the coordinates for the LCRG to punch them into my GPS — a recent GPS battery change had wiped my user waypoint list clean. The flight path would take me north along the east side of I-17, crossing it just before it dips down to Camp Verde. I’d cut across the Verde Valley between Sedona and Cottonwood, then climb the Mogollon Rim west of Sedona, pass east of the restricted area for the Navajo Army Depot, west of Flagstaff, and west of the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain in Arizona. From there, I’d drop back down into the Navajo Reservation, flying over its western edge, hop the Echo Cliffs, and drop back down to Page, AZ.

And that’s mostly how it all came off.

I departed Deer Valley at about 8:45 AM under partly cloudy skies with little or no wind. It was a cool morning, with temperatures just climbing through the 50s. I crossed Deer Valley’s runways at 2000 feet MSL as required by the Tower there and got right on course, aiming for the LCRG waypoint I’d added to my GPS.

It was interesting and different to fly a straight line route through an area I knew so well. After all, I’ve been flying from the Phoenix area to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, and Lake Powell for years, so it’s not as if the area I’d be flying over was new to me. But I usually fly with passengers on board and, to make the flight more interesting, I fly over or past various points of interest, such as towns, highways, mine sites, and canyons. On this flight, speed was the goal — I wasn’t interested in scenery. But I got scenery anyway — how can you fly a helicopter through Arizona without seeing something spectacular every mile?

As I flew, my GoPro Hero camera recorded a 720p widescreen video of the flight. Mounted up front, it offered an unobstructed view of everything ahead of me. The wide angle lens brought in details of what was close while pushing back distant points. Later that night, I’d watch much of the 2 hours of video and remember the various points of the flight.

Mountains north of PhoenixWhat fascinated me was the way the light changed throughout the flight. At first, it was partly cloudy. Then the sun slipped behind the clouds and it was cloudy. Then the sun began to break through, speckling the mountainsides with light. This still image, captured from the video, gives you an idea of what I mean. The light changed numerous times over the two-hour period of the flight — at one point, clouding over completely only 1,000 feet above me — giving the illusion that the flight was conducted over multiple days.

It wasn’t just the light that changed, of course. It was also the terrain. Flat desert in the Phoenix area, soft mountains studded with saguaro cacti as I headed north, flat mesas with steep basalt sides, deeply carved canyons, wide valleys, red rock cliffs and hoodoos, alpine forests blanketed with snow, tall mountains, ancient cinder cones, flat “painted” desert, deep gorges, buttes, uplifted cliff faces, slot canyons. I saw it all over the course of my two hour flight — all without trying to see it. My nearly straight line course simply put me over the top of all these things. I sat comfortable and warm in my seat, admiring the view as I glided over it.

Glided is definitely a good word. There was hardly a breath of wind during the entire flight so it was amazingly smooth. A pilot’s dream. And although outside temperatures dipped as low as -5°C, I was cosy and warm with the heat up only about halfway.

SedonaOne of the highlights of the flight was crossing the red rock cliffs west of Sedona and climbing up over the Mogollon Rim. The light was absolutely perfect, breaking through light scattered clouds to illuminate the rocks with a soft golden light. Absolutely breathtaking and the GoPro camera captured the whole thing.

Beyond that was a surprising amount of snow and a light overcast layer that shrouded the top of the San Francisco Peaks. The temperature there was around 0°C, but the Flagstaff ATIS reported -5°C — a real thermal inversion only 10 miles east. The low cloud layer and dimly lighted snowfields made me feel claustrophobic. Ahead of me, it looked as if some precipitation could be falling from the clouds. That got me a bit worried about icing, but I continued on. By the time I got to the point I thought I’d seen rain or snow falling, it had stopped — and so did my worries.

The only surprise on my flight was upon reaching the GPS coordinates for the LCRG. Simply said: it wasn’t there. It was about 10 miles northwest of where I’d plotted it to be. I can only assume that I’d punched in a wrong digit when I entered the waypoint into my helicopter’s GPS. So rather than fly over its most dramatic point, I crossed a bit to the east and kept going. I deleted that waypoint so I wouldn’t depend on it again. Oddly if I’d made a serious mistake in the entry, I would have noticed it a lot sooner. But because it was only off by a little bit, it wasn’t until I passed the waypoint that I realized the error. I’ll definitely be more careful in the future.

Over the RezWhen I got to the empty expanse of the Navajo Reservation, I dropped down and flew low over the ground. There were few homes in the hundreds of square miles and only a handful showed signs of life. In the video, my helicopter’s shadow is clearly visible: small when I’m flying higher and larger when I’m flying lower. The video makes it seem as if I’m going much faster during this portion of the flight, but I’m not. I managed to keep a steady 100-110 ground speed for most of the flight. It’s just an illusion: the closer the camera is to the ground, the faster I seem to be flying.

I crossed over the Echo Cliffs at Cedar Ridge — at least I think that’s where I was — and sped across more of the Navajo Reservation north. In all, I think about 45 minutes of the flight was spent over the Rez. It’s an amazing land of stark beauty, sprinkled with traditional homesteads, more modern yet simple homes, and, on its far western reaches, the ruins of abandoned homesites clearly visible as rock rings and corrals. The traditional Navajo home is a round or octagonal building called a hogan and they are clearly visible from the air. Also visible on most days are livestock such as cattle and sheep and wild horses.

I descended down toward the lake, flying at a low enough level that I didn’t actually see its clear blue water until I was about 15 miles out. Of course, I could see other landmarks — notably the bulk of Navajo Mountain about 50 miles to the east of Page and the Navajo Power Plant, with tall stacks belching ugly smoke into the air just outside of town. The radio frequency was silent as I descended toward the airport. I lined up with the taxiway and set down on one of the helipads.

The Video

Later, after doing 3.4 hours of photo flying around the lake and points east, I watched the video shot by my GoPro Hero. It was probably some of the best footage I’d ever captured with the camera. My only regret was that I hadn’t shot in in 1080p.

Over the course of two days, I assembled a movie from seven-second clips shot during that two hour flight. Last night I added titles and music. I exported it for my iPad and uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is. Enjoy.

Bring the Right Lens

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No, a telephoto lens is probably not the right one for aerial photography.

Slot Canyon

This is the slot canyon I needed to photograph from the air. The slot is actually wide enough for an ATV to drive through; there were tire tracks in the sand. (Nosecam photo.)

Yesterday, my husband and I took the helicopter out to get some aerial photos in the Alamo Lake area. I’ve been writing for Aircraft Owner Online magazine and have a bunch of stories that don’t have photos to go with them. This flight was a chance for me to do some fun flying while getting the pictures I needed.

I set up the helicopter’s “nosecam” to capture an overall view of the area. The camera has a wide angle lens which does add some distortion to the photos, but not enough to render the photos unusable. In fact, during my recent Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure excursion last week, I captured hundreds of very usable shots, some of which you can find here. The camera has no controls; it’s set up to take a shot every 5 seconds.

My husband also brought along his Nikon D90. I didn’t pay much attention to the lens he’d bought along. He usually uses my old favorite, an 18-85 (I think) zoom, and that would be perfect for this mission. We took both front doors off and put in the dual controls so either of us could fly while the other took photos.

I took off and we headed west. Once I’d established us in level fight, I offered him the controls. He took them. I reached for the camera.

And that’s when I saw that he’d put on a 70-210 zoom lens.

I felt my heart sink as I looked through the lens. At our 500-foot cruising altitude, it was simply too zoomed in to be useful. Sure, I could take photos of the occasional grazing cow we flew past, but there was no way I’d be able to capture the “big picture” views I needed for my articles. For that, we’d have to gain another 2,000 feet in elevation.

Sorely disappointed, I put the camera down and just watched the desert scenery go by.

Bringing the wrong lens along on an aerial photo flight is something I see first-time aerial photographers do all the time. For some reason, they get the idea in their head that things will be far away and they need telephoto power to frame them properly. In a helicopter, this can’t be further from the truth. I routinely cruise at 500 feet AGL and am willing to go as low as 100 feet (depending on the circumstances) for a photographer to get the shot he needs. Some of the best photos taken from my helicopter have been taken with focal lengths less than 50mm.

Wayside Inn

The Wayside Inn is in the middle of nowhere. And yes, those are parked airplanes in the bottom-right corner of the photo. (Nosecam photo.)

A telephoto lens is a bad choice for another reason: the longer the lens, the faster the shutter speed required to prevent blur caused by a too-low shutter speed. The rule of thumb formula is generally 1/focal length for minimum speed. So a 70mm lens would require a 1/70 second minimum shutter speed. But since our digital cameras have a 1.5 focal conversion (meaning that a 70mm lens is equivalent to a 105mm lens), that ups the speed to 1/105 second minimum shutter speed. Not a big deal on a bright Arizona day, but remember: that’s a minimum rule of thumb and I don’t think it takes into account the increased vibrations of a helicopter. (I wouldn’t shoot anything from a helicopter at less than 1/500 second without gyro stabilization.)

Departing Plane

A bonus shot captured perfectly by the nosecam after we’d landed and shut down. That’s the main rotor blade parked dead center.

When I took back the controls a while later, Mike took the camera. I think he immediately saw what I meant. He was surprised. He did take some photos — among them, some bulls locking horns out in the desert — but not many. The camera simply wasn’t properly equipped for our mission.

Fortunately, the nosecam had us covered.

Lake Powell to Monument Valley by Helicopter

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Part of my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure.

This article was originally written for Aircraft Owner Online magazine. I write their monthly “Adventure Flying” column. I normally pull old blog posts for publication, but this time, I wrote an original piece for them. You can find it in their November 2010 issue.

Although I’m based in the Phoenix, AZ area, I spend an unusual of time at Lake Powell doing aerial photo flights for amateur and professional photographers. In September of this year, I flew a total of 20 hours over the lake with at least 20 different photographers on board. I usually get as far uplake as the San Juan River confluence, which is halfway to Monument Valley. But due to the difficulty and expense of getting aerial photo permits for Monument Valley, I rarely fly there.

The one thing that does get me to Monument Valley is Flying M Air‘s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. That’s a 6-day excursion by helicopter that starts in Phoenix and spends a night at Sedona, Grand Canyon, Lake Powell (at Page), Monument Valley, and Flagstaff before returning to Phoenix. I don’t do this trip often — frankly, it’s quite costly and there aren’t many folks who want to spring for it — but I happened to do one in October 2010. In fact, as I’m typing this on my laptop, I’m looking of the window of my room at Goulding’s Lodge at the first light striking the famous monuments of Monument Valley.

On this particular trip, I rigged up a GoPro Hero camera on my helicopter’s nose. Although I used this “nosecam” to shoot video on the first day of the trip, the mount introduced too much vibration to make the video usable. For the remaining days of the trip, I switched over to still photos. The camera automatically shoots a high resolution image every 5 seconds as I fly. With 720 photos per hour, I usually get a few good shots on each leg of the trip.

Wednesday was one of the most scenic legs of the trip. We flew from Page Airport (PGA) up Lake Powell to the San Juan confluence and then east to the airstrip at Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley (UT25). On board with me were my two excursion guests and all of our luggage for the 6-day trip. I pack the luggage on and under the seat behind me and sit my guests in the two right seats (front and back) so they get the same view. I then fly to put the best views on their side of the aircraft.

We lifted off from Page at about 2:30 PM. The ASOS reported wind at about 8 knots out of the north, but it sure didn’t feel that strong. I made my radio call and then departed right across the runway, heading uplake. A Citation jet called a downwind a few moments later; we caught sight of him high above us as we crossed the airport fence.

Departing PGA

Our shadow as we crossed the runway at Page Municipal Airport.

It was a beautiful day, with high, thin clouds tracing lazy lines across a clear blue sky. The October afternoon sun bathed the landscape with a soft light that illuminated the red rock cliffs and buttes, cast shadows in the canyons, and accentuated the blue of the water. Sure, the light was too harsh for the aerial photographers I usually take around there, but for my passengers and me, it was great for taking snapshots of our surroundings.

The first canyon we crossed was Antelope Canyon, which is just east of the airport. Normally, I just buzz across it, but the tour boat was inside the canyon, so I made a turn to the left so my passengers could get a photo of it. I didn’t circle, though. I’m extremely conservative with fuel on the fourth and fifth days of the excursion, since there’s no fuel between Page, Monument Valley, and Flagstaff (or, in this case, Winslow). I need every drop of fuel I have on board to get to my Day 5 destination on Thursday with required reserves on board.

Antelope Canyon

Most people see Antelope Canyon from the inside, where it’s a masterpiece of sandstone swirls carved by wind and water. But this is the view I see most often.

We continued uplake, passing Antelope Point Marina and the mouth of Navajo Canyon. I made a position call a mile north of iconic Tower Butte and changed from the Page airport frequency to the uplake frequency (122.75). I repeated the call on that frequency and got into a discussion with the returning tour pilots. They’d be coming my way at 5,000 feet; I’d stay out of their way by flying at 4,500 feet.

The tour traffic is a major concern for anyone flying at Lake Powell. It’s a very good idea to learn the tour routes, altitudes, and reporting points they use before exploring in your own aircraft. There’s nothing scarier than flying the lake and seeing a plane flying where you don’t expect it, especially if it’s not on frequency or doesn’t know where it is in relation to the usual reporting points. Ten minutes with a tour pilot and a chart at Page Airport is enough to get the basics.

We slipped between Dominguez and Boundary Buttes at the south end of Padre Bay and continued uplake. Winding canyons opened up on our right. I pointed out a cluster of kayaks near a powerboat in a canyon with water as smooth as glass. In the main channel, you could clearly see the wind on the water. Not enough to make whitecaps, but gusty enough to see round patterns of movement appear and disappear across the water surface.

Dominguez Butte

My usual uplake route takes me between Dominguez and Boundary Buttes. In the far left of this photo, you can see Padre Butte, referred to by local pilots as “submarine.” Navajo Mountain looms in the distance.

We passed the south side of Gregory Butte and Last Chance Bay as two tour planes flew by overhead. Last Chance is a long, wide canyon with steep sandstone walls. It’s a long boat ride to the end where there are a few sandy spots suitable for houseboat parking. Distance to parking and the cost of fuel are part of what keeps the canyon free of traffic, even during busy summer months. On this October day, however, the whole lake was quiet; I don’t think we saw more than 20 or 30 boats.

We flew over the main channel of the lake as the canyon narrowed. One of my passengers pointed out Dangling Rope Marina and asked me about it. I told her what I knew: it was a marina only accessible by water. There were no roads in or out. I then told her a story about our stop there 20 years before on a houseboating trip. How I miss cruising the lake in a houseboat!

Lake Powell from the Air

Over the main channel of Lake Powell just uplake from Last Chance Bay. The canyon walls rise about 800-1,000 feet off the water’s surface here.

We were nearing the mouth of the canyon that would take us to Rainbow Bridge. As I flew, I’d been listening to the radio and knew there was a female pilot in the area. I also knew there was another tour plane behind me, on its way to “the bridge.” It’s a tight squeeze in the canyon and my challenge is always to stay as low as possible to ensure my photography clients can get the shots they need. Over the years, I’ve perfected my approach.

The female pilot was just leaving the area when I reached the mouth of the canyon and turned in. I flew up the canyon at 5000 feet, telling my passengers what to look for as we flew: the dock, the trail, the giant stone arch of Rainbow Bridge. I was busy keeping an eye on the mesa to the right of the helicopter. On a day like that one, with occasional gusts of wind, I wouldn’t get any closer than 200 feet from it’s edge. I verbally pointed out Rainbow Bridge when I saw it, keeping both hands on the controls. We flew past and they snapped photos. I circled around the back, assuring the pilot behind me that I’d stay at or below 5000 feet until I was clear of the area. Then, when abeam the bridge a second time, I broke off to the left and climbed out toward the San Juan Confluence.

Rainbow Bridge

This wide-angle shot gives you an idea of how tricky the area around Rainbow Bridge is. I get very close to that mesa top. Can you see the bridge in the photo?

The trickiest bit of flying I’d have to do on the entire trip was behind me.

I climbed to 6500 feet to give my passengers a good view of the twists and turns of the San Juan River just upstream from the confluence. Then I punched in my user waypoint for Goulding’s Lodge, adjusted course, and headed east over the eroded desert terrain south of the San Juan River.

San Juan River

The San Juan River twists and turns dramatically before meeting the Colorado.

We were east of Navajo Mountain now and the area was riddled with water-carved canyons, windswept rocks, and stunted trees. Below us, here and there, were two-track roads leading back toward the river. One of the roads looked very well maintained, although there was no sign of any homesteads or other reason to use it.

We flew over the top of No Man Mesa, where two or three ranches are scattered. A pickup truck drove slowly along a two-track toward one of the ranches. We saw a herd of horses and a flock of sheep tended by a dog before crossing over the top of the mesa and beginning our descent toward Monument Valley. The famous monuments started coming into view as we rounded the edge of a cliff face.

Off No Man's Mesa

A wide canyon cuts across the desert just past No Man Mesa. While not as beautiful as the Grand Canyon, it offers a glimpse of what the Grand Canyon may have looked like before it became grand.

I switched to the Monument Valley frequency and heard several tour planes making calls. I leveled off at 5500 feet and flew directly over the first paved road we’d seen since leaving the airport. Ahead of us, at the airport, I could see three tour planes launch, one after the other. One crossed overhead in front of me, the others climbed out beside me and likely crossed behind me. All of them were returning to Page the quick way. They’d be back within 30 minutes; we’d taken 60.

Before landing at Gouldings, I always make a quick loop around the western part of the Monument Valley Tribal Park. That day was no different. I climbed to 6000 feet and followed the road into the park. Once I reached the visitor center area, I banked left toward the Mitten buttes. I flew between them, on a route the tour pilots refer to as “splitting the mittens.” Then I banked left again and headed back toward Goulding’s.

Splitting the Mittens

The two Mitten Buttes (East and West) are iconic Monument Valley images.

Monument Valley

I restrict my quick loop around Monument Valley to the west side of the park to minimize noise impact on the ground.

As we came in for a landing, a small herd of horses, spooked by the sound of my helicopter, galloped across the desert east of the airport, kicking up fine red dust.

Landing at Monument Valley

Monument Valley Airport has just one way in and out. Not the kind of airport where you want to overshoot the runway.

It had been a good flight with few bumps or unexpected challenges. Later, in my hotel room at Goulding’s Lodge, I was pleased with the quality of the images my Hero camera had captured. What a great way to document a flight.

Note to Pilots: If you do plan a trip to Goulding’s Lodge, remember that the airport there is private and for use by Goulding’s guests and tour clients only. Go to Goulding’s Web site at www.Gouldings.com to learn more about restrictions regarding airport use.