May Mountain Adventure

Leg 9 - 5/16/2023 - Salt Lake City, UT (U42) to Grand Junction, CO (KGJT)

Leg Stats

• Time Enroute: 1.6 hrs
• Distance (direct): 184nm
• Distance (actual): 227nm
• Fuel Used: 17.4 gal

It looked like the weather on Wednesday might be ideal for crossing the Rockies again, and hopefully landing at Leadville, so we planned to leave Tuesday afternoon and 'stage' in Grand Junction. Unfortunately, there were again some scattered light rain showers about this afternoon, including one towards the south and partially 'blocking' our route southeast. The weather on the other side was fine (and the weather north was totally clear skies), however, and at the airport I could see the rain and it was starting to lighten up.

I decided we would head south and see what it looked like out the windshield, and if necessary go back north to clear weather and exit the valley via I-80 and go via the Heber Valley. In the end, the rain had mostly quit and it wasn't necessary to take a different route, however we did catch a pretty solid downdraft on the backside of the rain showers near Provo. Fortunately that is a fairly wide and flat part of the valley, so terrain clearance was not an issue.

After getting back through the pass into the Moab area, we again made a quick flyby of the Castle Valley area for some more sightseeing, but the turbulence here was awful so we didn't linger.

We landed again at Grand Junction, but this time we decided to stay at a (very basic) motel just a few hundred feet from the airport in anticipation of a very early morning departure on Wednesday. I managed to do some coin laundry and we walked a mile or so to get some Wendy's for dinner and let Magic play outside some.

We planned to take a half-day morning off of work on Wednesday, so we went to bed early and planned a 5am wakeup.

Trip Leg Navigation