Flying the Cascades
We have just taken o ff from Redmond, OR, in our Zenith 601HDS, N314LB. The Flight Service briefer has cautioned us about smoke moving from the Mt. Je ff erson area to the east exactly into our path. Fires Near Mt. Jefferson, Redmond, OR No problem, I think, and my friend Arie from Tel-Aviv, Israel, concurs. We saw this some years ago when Mt. Shasta was enveloped half-way up in smoke. As soon as we saw the smoke in the distance, we climbed high enough to be well above the smoke layer filling the entire valley below. With GPS we tracked the unseen interstate below, considering it an emergency landing site in case of engine failure. But this time it is di ff erent. We are taking o ff directly into light smoke, which rapidly thickens as we proceed northbound. We can still see the ground, so this is still VFR. But we cannot climb, since doing so would obscure the ground, e ff ectively making this IFR conditions. What should we do, and how did we get into this fix? The s...