Yesterday was the first competition day. We had to calculate our estimated time enroute and respond to five questions to receive points. Although our estimated time enroute was off by nearly an hour due to our unscheduled stop, we ranked third.

It happened. This morning as we walked to the airport, we could see our shadow. At last, we are departing under blue skies and planning an easy VFR flight to Fort St. John in Northern British Columbia. Thanks to the nice weather, we will be departing as an organized group so that we can arrive at destination within a tighter timeframe. To achieve that, each aircraft has been assigned a departure time. We are team number four. We are using a discreet frequency to communicate with each other enroute.

Soon after departure, we heard from Al, our air boss, who flew into Edmonton last night to have an ongoing alternator problem fixed. Someone at Edmonton was able to repair it so the Cirrus is back online. A good thing since no new alternator was available anywhere in Canada or the United States. The group for the western section of the rally is together and heading northwest.

Our flight started casually enough with a little cloud dogging on the climb out. As we approached Grand Prairie. I asked George to put on the instrument hood so that he could review attitude flying and timed turns. After he did so, he looked at the PFD side of the Garmin 1000  to see “HDG” with a fat red cross at the top of the heading indicator. “We’ve lost GPS” he said just before he realized that we had only lost the heading indicator. His next sentence was: “what did you do?”. Students always assume that the instructor is tricking them when something goes wrong and an instructor is onboard… The situation turned into a perfect opportunity to teach timed turns and introduce compass turns (see piloting tips). The heading indicator came back to life shortly before reaching our destination. The rest of the flight was fairly uneventful until we approached Fort St. John. Most airplanes arrived at almost the same time and the uncontrolled airport circuit quickly became a small Oshkosh.

The people of Fort St. John were waiting for us with a bus to take on a tour of the Peace River Valley. Leaving the airport, we headed north on the Alaska Highway (mile 40) to the Peace River Valley turnout. We rode along the emerald country road. Our bus was puffing and steaming up the steep hills. We reached the lookout over Bear Flat which used to be a landing spot for boats travelling the Peace River. Back on the bus, we continued to Hudson Hope.

Hudson Hope is the “land of dinosaurs and dams”. We made a stop at the Hudson Hope’s museum. Our host, a local resident with local roots going back three generations, presented

to us the history of the region including details about the famous Bedaux expedition. The view over the river near the museum was breathtaking.

Back in town, the bus took us to the Peace Island Park in Taylor for the evening reception that included heavenly steaks. Mine was so tender that it nearly melted in my mouth. Our hosts included the mayor of the city of Fort St. John and the mayor of the city of Taylor and many other local officials.

We sat for dinner with a counselor from the city of Taylor who told us about a 4-year old child, the “miracle child”, that had accidently gone into the Peace River driving his toy car and was found alive still on his car, floating, nearly 11 kilometers downstream. Although it is named “Peace”, the river is known for its fierce currents.

The evening ended with gold panning instructions followed by a gold panning contest, a walk to the river (and swimming for some), and live music near the unlighted camp fire (British Columbia has banned all camp fires in the entire province due to the high fire risk).

What a packed day and what a welcoming community!