October 9, 1990: Flying to Steamboat Springs, Colorado

One of many trip reports under the SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie Grow.
Email me at ajs@frii.com.
Last update: May 25, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1990_0908-16_LakePowell_Mike.htm)

Email from Jer/ Eberhard mentioned me and Sherry Perkins:

Date:  9 Oct 90
From:  Jer/ Eberhard 
To:  ward@rhqvm14.iinus1.ibm.com
Subject:  Re:  ski the summit card

(Edited:) ...Yes, we had snow in Colorado. Mary and I and the kids flew to Steamboat Springs (SBS) to visit her parents (who have a condo in SBS for a month) last Friday, 10/05/90. By Saturday morning I knew I was weathered in. Mary's folks drove us back to Fort Collins (FTC) on Sunday afternoon and I left the C-182 in the snow, fog and icing at SBS.

So on Tuesday afternoon the clouds had lifted on 6" of new snow at SBS (the first of the season). Flight Service (FSS) was calling for "good VFR" in the mountains. So I figured that if I had to go to SBS anyway, "lets have an adventure and to the hot springs and get naked with the hippies!"

So I filled an Arrow with another Arrow pilot, plus Alan Silverstein and his girlfriend Sherry Perkins, and we flew over to SBS, rented a 4WD, picked up munchies at the Safeway and drove out to the Strawberry Park Hot Springs (SPHS), six miles north of town. It is a commercial operation now, much cleaned up, but still "natural", with rock work forming the pools, no concrete pools. It cost $5/person to get in, and the sign said "nudity only after dark". :-( However, since it was after dark... We did!

We stayed at SPHS until we had eaten our fill and couldn't stand the good life any more, got dressed at 9:30 pm and headed back to the Steamboat Springs airport (real SBS). We scraped the ice and snow off the C-182, preflighted with a special lookout for water in the tanks, and lifted off for FTC.

We did a normal takeoff into a black hole. My instrument skills were put to good use. We flew southeast toward Rabbit Ears Pass, climbed to 11,000' and turned eastbound, on course. We continued climbing to 14,000' and as we got close to Cameron Pass, I kept looking at the mountains and thinking "boy, they look high, tonight!" When we got closer, I decided that they still had some clouds around them, up above 14,000' and thats why they looked especially high tonight.

A small deviation of about five miles north solved all the problems, and I could see the lights of Cheyenne, Greeley and finally FTC. We entered the pattern, closed the flight plan and greased another landing onto Downtown Fort Collins Airpark (3V5). This was followed by the normal tieing down of the aircraft and paperwork. :-(

We arrived at 3V5 at midnight and I was home in bed by 1 am. :-) Another successful Jer/ Adventure! Keep Flying!

(Next trip report: 1990_1230_CrystalRiver.htm)