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Becoming bold in the north of Norway.. (ENAT, ENDU, ENSH)

Today we woke up in the beautiful cabin of Bjørnfjell Mountain Lodge, about 20 min drive from our arrival airport, Alta, Norway (ENAT).




This was our 3rd day of the Norwegian loop trip, and on the way from Lithuania, Vilnius, we also stopped at Rovaniemi, Santa Claus home. Our plan for today was to get to Lofoten islands, but we had to do a refueling stop. I jumped on the phone with refueling guy in Bardufoss airport. In Norway a lot of airports nowdays lack AVGAS, and those that do have it, only take BP card. I recently opened BP account, but the card was not shipped yet, so that was a bit of a problem. I finally managed to find out that you can order “fuel release” via BP website, and the airport then gives you fuel – you don’t have to pay on the spot.

However, as always in aviation, even if you decide to fly early in the morning, you are always late somewhere :) In our case, it was 10am already, but refueling could only be done until 12am at the latest. We ordered taxi right away, but the place we were staying was ±30 min from the airport with a car, so taxi took a while to arrive. Then you have to wait in front of the airport for a guy to let you in, minutes add up, and now you are really ‘late’. On the way there, I reviewed the weather which showed cloudy but doable conditions to me. Just before the take off Tower let us know that there is 35kt wind few hundred feet up.

We started climbing over the mountains toward our destination, but as the tops got higher, so did the clouds. We climbed to 8000ft, which I felt was enough to clear highest mountain tops on our route (±6000 ft). Doging between the layers, we navigated clouds covering the tops of the mountains – plus there was another layer higher up covering the sky. On route, to maintain VFR we had to do some course adjustments, and towards end of our destination it became more and more difficult to remain vfr.

This was not what was forecasted at all, yet there I was having to deal with the reality of it. All kinds of negative thoughts started creeping in, playing the worst scenarios in my head. In the hindsight, I should have just turned back, but it was very difficult to do mentally – we were just 10 minutes from our destination and airport was reporting BKN @ 5000ft. In hindsight it is obvious, but in a rush I missed the fact that just because the airport is reporting 5000-6000 ft ceilings, with the mountains surrounding it can still be difficult to get in. Plus, all the ECMWF models often are struggling to forecast mountais weather.



Things started piling up. Eventually we entered a cloud. The turbulence started kicking in. And to spice things up, we lost radio contact with Polaris control. We could hear them, but they could not hear us. Was it mountains, or cloud, I don’t know. They finally asked a Finnair pilot high up to relay the messages to us. Reflecting it, was kinda cool – me dogging the clouds above uninhabitable terrain covered with clouds, a big airliner relaying messages to me – yet very dangerous. My C182, with it’s single engine, no parachute, covered mountains beneath was not a comforting thought. My only thoughts were then – “focus on instruments, use AP, keep horizontal, don’t fuck it up.”

We broke out maybe 5 minutes later with the sight of big valley with SCT clouds and and airport bellow. That was the such a relief. We should have turned around.

Landing in Bergufoss was no fuss, and we got our tanks filled. It is a military airport mixed with civilian traffic, and I saw some cave bunkers ,where I assume they must be keeping fighter jets. Took off without delay and flew direct to Helle (ENSH), Lofotens. Weather was much better towards Lofotens, but based on radar returns we expected some light showers around the destination. The scenary on this leg was really amazing.


We approached Helle, and started our decent through a light rain. Overall the weather was slowly getting worse throughout the day, so we were happy we are about to land there.

I switched to listen for ATIS – “active runway 36, wind 080 @ 16G25”. What? Did I hear it correctly? Well I had to listen to it again, and yep, here I was, about to land in another new to me airport with 16kt full crosswind component. I thought I knew how to “read” weather, but here it was completely something else to what was predicted. It was supposed to be 3kt. On descent turbulence was brutal, but I decided to give it a try once My B plan was to divert to Leknes (ENLK) with a more favourible runway orientation.

It was sporty to say the least, but I actually greased it – so was very angry and at the same time proud about myself. We parked our airplane, tied it down, and took a taxi to Svolvaer.

After a day like that, I thought long and hard about why things turned out that way. I am defintely not proud of my decision making – it was stupid and dangerous. I was the guy who was always criticizing others in my head – “How could they run out of fuel? How did they end up in IMC? They are bad pilots!!”, yet here I was after the most difficult day in aviation for me.

I think a lot of factors played here – remote mountains weather, gethere’itis, lack of sleep, overconfidence due to previous flight history in marginal conditions, lack of mountain flying. I will have a new respect for the weather around mountains from now on.

Besides that, Norway is amazing country, with a landscape I have not seen anywhere else. I will definItely be back.




Last Edited by par at 16 Aug 14:19
par
too much time in ..
EYVP, EYKA, Lithuania

Wow, par. Stressful reading, alternated with idyllic photos. Thank you for writing this up, especially the analysis.

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

@par – Yes, it is beautiful up there. I was in SE/FI/NO/DK a few weeks ago, and ran into some similar weather challenges. On top, in the fjords, needed to get down. I spotted a hole, and dove for it – worked out ok, but I’m not used to flying along at < 1000 ft above the water in a fjord. It was fun, but scary.

One small additional frustration was that my EFIS decided to stop showing terrain once I flew north of 60 degrees latitude. I was counting on my synthetic vision to keep me away from the rocks in an emergency situation. Yes, I’m talking to the supplier about fixing this.

Fly more.
LSGY, Switzerland

Lovely. Thanks for the writeup. Hope it was not too stressful for your pax and you will do more trips in the future.

LPFR, Poland
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