RV7 Flight: Palouse Falls and Steptoe Butte, Early December 2013

It was only five degrees outside this afternoon, but we decided to take a short flight to see Palouse Falls, frozen!

We left at around 3:30 pm. It gave us enough time to fly to the falls and get back--barely--before the sun set. We were in the air for slightly over an hour. We wouldn't have wanted to fly for much longer than that. The airplane has a heater, but even so, it's not like sitting in your living room! Mike wore insulated overalls in addition to his jacket, hat and gloves. I stayed fairly warm in my coat, hat and gloves, although I noticed that by the time we were nearing home, my fingers felt quite icy and stiff. 

In the picture above, we're circling around the falls, as we had approached it from the east. 

Here, you can see that the amount of free-flowing water has dwindled to a narrow stream. 

We're flying east again, and are on our way home. You can see the Snake River in the upper third of the picture if you look closely. The sun was setting on the hillsides and everything had a pretty, salmon-colored glow. 

Here we see Steptoe Butte, the highest landmark in the immediate vicinity of where we live. It's only about 10-15 miles away from us. We're descending toward the Colfax Airport. There are only two other airplanes in the air. One of them is a Citation, which is a private jet, and is probably one of the ones owned by Ed Schweitzer, who owns Schweitzer Engineering Labs, which is the largest employer in our area. It provides products and services in 142 countries, according to Wikipedia.  

We had never flown when it was this cold. Mike said he will never do it again. It wasn't dangerous, unless you needed to make a forced landing. But it simply wasn't a whole lot of fun, due to the cold. 

The minute we were on the ground and lifted the canopy, we both scrambled to get out as fast as we possibly could. When I got home, I spent several minutes in front of the pellet stove, thawing myself. So did Mike, who had stayed behind to put the airplane in the hangar. I offered to help, but he said to just go on home. What a sweet guy.