AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2013 - 69

EXPLORING VIA KAYAK on a river

near Juneau (far left) while Ben
Ferrel, the youngest passenger
on our trip, points toward our
position. Turbine Otters await
passengers at a downtown
dock for aerial tours.

air is so clear that any sense of scale is elusive. To the west, ironically named Mount
Fairweather rises 15,300 feet from its base
at sea level. To the north, the glacier-topped
St. Elias Mountains exceed 9,000 feet. And
to the east, the cliffs of the Chilkat Range
rise almost vertically from the bay’s pristine
water. A pod of humpback whales feeds on
candlefish or krill a mere 50 feet from the
rocky shoreline.
It’s a few minutes after 9 p.m., and the
sun is still well above the horizon at this
latitude of 58 degrees. The nearly constant
daylight, and the fact that our compass
swings leisurely with errors of 30 degrees or
more, adds to a vague but persistent feeling
of disorientation. We fly parallel, and at eye
level, to a series of towering palisades and
then circle the mirror-smooth waters at the
foot of the fragmented Casement Glacier.
This is the first day of my first-ever trip
to Alaska, and I can’t imagine a more wondrous place to fly.

BAKER VAIL

THE FUN PART

This annual trip to southeast Alaska is the
inspiration of Luke Lysen, founder of The
Flight Academy, who spent six summers
here during his late teens and twenties
working on commercial fishing boats. The
tall, easygoing, unflappable pilot/instructor/business owner thought he had left
the place behind. But he was drawn back
a decade ago when he and two brothers
returned to the region for a flying/fishing trip. And it became obvious to Lysen
that clients at his then-new aviation business would enjoy flying there in their own
airplanes—and the experience would make
them better, more confident pilots.
“I love Alaska’s natural beauty and its
wildness,” says Lysen, who also has ferried
SR22s across the Pacific to China, Australia,
and New Zealand. “I’m always looking for

interesting and challenging places to take students and fellow pilots.
So I decided to put together this flying trip to southeast Alaska,
which is my favorite part of the entire state. This trip has become
the highlight of the year for me and something everybody at The
Flight Academy looks forward to.”
Flight planning for the Alaska trip isn’t particularly complex,
but it can be daunting. It involves crossing into Canada and returning to U.S. airspace, and distances between airports along the route
can be huge. The flight can be made VFR or IFR, but the coastal
region is known for almost constant clouds. And since the mountains throughout British Columbia and southeast Alaska come right
to the coast, minimum altitudes for IFR airways can reach 10,000
feet, so icing can be a hazard even in summer.
The Flight Academy keeps participants informed about the
routes and weather as the departure date nears, provides charts
and approach plates for Alaska and Canada, and files flight plans
for the entire group. Four highly experienced Cirrus instructors
who have flown internationally many times—Lysen, Helen Cirnik,
Jason Reinke, and Chase Friesen—are there to fly right seat and help
with planning and logistics during the five-day journey. (They also
provide comic relief with their barbed banter, cryptic radio commentary, and flying tales from oceanic Cirrus ferry flights.)
“The information for planning and making a trip like this is
readily available, but putting it all together can be complex, quite
time-consuming, and intimidating,” Lysen says. “Most of our clients
are busy people with businesses to run, families, and lots of pressing
obligations. When they come along with our group, they can leave
the planning to us and not worry about logistics. All they have to
think about is the actual flying—and that’s the fun part.”
For McIver, the flying itself is the attraction. “The benefit of flying with this group is that you have people with vast experience and
local knowledge, but at the same time, you get to fly your own airplane and learn for yourself,” McIver said. “For me, coming to Alaska
is all about the flying. It’s not the magical scenery or the fishing. It’s
the challenge of flying in a place where the weather and winds can
change quickly. It’s flying IFR in a nonradar environment and doing
all that in a place where distances between airports can be vast.”
ALASKA SUNSHINE

Leaving Seattle, each airplane takes off about 10 minutes apart. Our
route north takes us over the Space Needle downtown as well as
Paine Field, where dozens of new Boing airliners cover the pavement, and the sparkling San Juan Islands. There, we check in with
Vancouver Approach for a transponder code before crossing the

AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2013