Day 1 - Pasco to Mtn Home to Logan - Not So Fast...

Cooling our heals on the ramp at Pasco...waiting...

Well, it was the ghost of Iowa City hanging over Pasco on launch morning...overcast but still VFR and flyable...EXCEPT for a little swath of the path from Pasco to Mountain Home...low clouds dripping across the race route. The 8 am launch was on hold until 9 am. A chase plane checks it out - yep, it's not VFR flyable there with the low hanging clouds. The launch is on hold until 1 pm. Tick, tock.

Finally, it's decided that we need to cancel the launch from Pasco. Having experienced that with the 2011 ARC Start in Iowa City, I completely understand the pain for Marjy and the Start City hosts. The racers are advised to hold in Pasco for weather to clear or to fly SAFELY to another location and plan to start their races by doing the flyby at P&R Field (Mountain Home ID) - that flyby will start their race clocks. Folks are free to start whenever.

Flying towards Boise...out of the clouds...

We talk with our ID buddies - Classic 5, GeneNora, Patty, and BJ. An indirect path to P&R is chosen, we flight plan, weather brief, and we're off. All starts well...however...then the ground rises to lowering clouds. We reach a point quickly where we decide to change route a bit, and then call a pop-up IFR flight plan with the controller. We're cleared for the IFR flight, but we've got to climb quite high - 11,000 ft - doable, but we know there's potential for icing. We're in and out of clouds...finally reaching 11K ft skimming just the raggedy edges of some clouds...picking up just trace frost on the leading edges of the wings...we creep down a little to stay clear of clouds and ice...then we're out of the clouds and all is good again.

Fueling at Caldwell Industrial...a bit deserted...
winds blowing 40 kts...sucking dust...hoping the outhouse
didn't blow over with me in it...

We continue south to Burns, which is a straight shot west of Boise, and turn towards Boise. The plan was to get fuel at Caldwell (near Boise), "flyby to continue" at P&R Field, and charge on to Logan UT. Well, as we near Caldwell, I see a small line of dust on the ground kicking up...it grows...we past thru some dust haze as we begin planning for the landing at Caldwell. All of a sudden, we go from calm air to a 45-50 kt direct cross wind hitting the plane. We scoot around and land at Caldwell, looking for fuel. As we touch down for taxi, we see a monster dust storm /wall blow up.

After refueling, using the porta-john by the fuel pump (and hoping the 45 kt wind doesn't blow the unit over with me in it), we decide to still fly to Mountain Home tonight...but now the dust wall is moving thru Mtn Home and Boise...we wait...it's turning dark, but we launch...the winds at Mtn Home are still gusting, and we tell the controller that we'll make one attempt to land there and then fly on to Boise for the night, if Mtn Home is too gusty...we sleep in Boise this night.