Mountain Flying Instruction

Mountain Flying Course in the Heart of the Colorado Rockies

Mountain Flying in Colorado Have you ever wanted to venture into the mountains with your airplane, but worried that you may not be ready for the challenge? If you want to fly in the mountains, the best idea is to get some mountain flight instruction from a qualified flight instruction that specializes in mountain flying. The team of instructors at Alpine Flight Instruction can provide just that training.

Central Colorado offers incredible natural beauty, from desert mesas to snow-capped 14,000 ft peaks. This landscape also presents a wide variety of challenges for all pilot experience levels. Narrow and sloping runways, one-way airports, density altitudes in excess of 10,000 ft and difficult-to-predict mountain wave will test your decision-making abilities and skills as a pilot.

Safe and enjoyable flying in the mountains requires the right perspective, solid understanding of aircraft performance, the operating environment and most importantly, your abilities as a pilot. The proficient mountain pilot will carefully assess each of these factors when planning a mountain flight.

Call and talk to the instructors at Alpine Flight Training. We will build a training plan ideally suited to any pilot's skill level and experience. Our instructors can provide mountain training in our rental aircraft or in your own aircraft. Additionally, we can arrange to meet you at an airport east or west of the Rockies on the way from where you are coming from.

Instinct and Intuition - A Recipe for Disaster

In the course of going through the most basic pilot training many of us learn that control inputs based on instinct or intuition are often wrong. Some examples of this are the graveyard spiral or recovery from a spin. In the case of each, the natural thing to do is not the correct thing to do. Mountain Flying is very similar, in that the natural and intuitive strategy does not always equate to a good strategy.

The goal of our mountain flight training is to help you develop a different perspective with regards to navigating your aircraft through the mountains. This new perspective will help you develop conditioned responses to keep your aircraft safe as you navigate the mountains. The basic premise is simple....(1) stay in a position to turn to lowering terrain and (2) never fly past the point of no return. While these rules seem simple enough, it takes some practice to develop them into conditioned responses. This conditioning takes time and effort, that is, practice with an experienced mountain pilot. It is not something you go out and do once or twice and figure you have "it." But it is something you can be aware of so that you condition yourself. Keep repeating the rules to yourself, "Stay in a position to turn to lower terrain," while constantly evaluating the flight situation.

Redefining Aircraft Performance and Weather

The second really large area we focus our time on when teaching mountain flying is related to the areas of aircraft performance and weather. With regards to the topics of aircraft performance and weather the goal is to thoroughly review the knowledge areas, and focus specifically on how they apply to mountain flying. Additionally, we'll show you some techniques you can use to improve your flying specifically related to aircraft performance and weather.

Mountain Flying Syllabus
Our mountain flying training is custom tailored to each pilot. Every pilot is different is terms of what they plan to do, and the sort of aircraft they are using, as a result every mountain flying training session is a little different. For this reason we don't have a set training syllabus, however the training syllabus below will provide an overview of many of the topics we cover during mountain flight training. The goal of this course is to provide the pilot with the basic tools of knowledge, skill and judgment to fly safely in mountainous terrain, while having a challenging and rewarding experience.

Course Outline

Mountain Flying Strategy

  • Flight Planning
  • Navigation Strategies

Takeoff & Landing

  • Determining Density Altitude
  • Takoff and & Landing Performance
  • Climb Performance
  • Takeoff Startegy...Ground Effect? Flaps?
  • Engine Cooling Issues
  • Cross Wind Review
  • Runway Gradient & Effect on TO/Land
  • Constricted Approches
  • Determining Wind Direction and Intensity
  • Proper Techniques for Leaning

Flying through Rugged Terrain

  • Box Canyons
  • Canyon/Valley Turns
  • Evaluating and Crossing Ridges & Plateaus
  • Weather Factors

Mountain Weather

  • Circulation & Pressure Patterns
  • Orographic / Solar Effects
  • Winds and Mountain Wave
  • Diurnal Effect
  • Turbulence

Emergencies

  • Precautionary and Forced Landings
  • Surveying Landing Sites
  • Survival Planning

Practice at Mountain Airports

  • Leadville, Aspen, Telluride, Glenwood Springs, Steamboat Springs, Meeker, Grandby, Gunnison, Salida, and others depending upon student’s interest.

Instrument Rating Eagle Airport | Colorado Mountain Instrument Flying

Considerations When Planning IFR in the MountainsA couple years ago I had a Private Pilot come to Eagle for a two day mountain flight training course.  As with all pilots that attend this training, the starting place is a discussion about the type of flying they do, the flying they plan to do, skill level, their goals for the training, and their aircraft.

Based on these conversations I tailor the training to suit each pilot.  While every pilot will learn the same basics... mountain weather, density altitude, etc, some things will be different for each student.  For example a Malibu driver looking to fly to the Rockies mostly in the winter to ski will have a different training experience than a husky pilot looking for unimproved fields in the summer.  Along those same lines the experience will differ from a VFR pilot to a pilot planning to fly IFR.

In this case, the pilot I was working with had a very capable (turbine) aircraft.  He planned to fly instrument approaches and departures into mountain airports.

During the first day of training I asked the pilot to fly and instrument departure from Meeker airport.  This pilot promptly put on his foggles, throttled forward and got in the air.  Within about 15 seconds I knew he was not following the DP, and was just flying runway heading....(as he didn't have the chart out). I asked him to continue with his instrument departure but to please take the foggles of so he could see how this departure was playing out.

5 minutes later his comments were that "I guess maybe my aircraft doesn't have the performance to fly IFR out of mountain airports".  I politely responded that I didn't think aircraft performance was the issue.

The next few minutes was a chain of leading questions that lead nowhere.  As it turns out, this pilot had spent the last 10 years flying from flat land airports in an aircraft with incredible performance.  He was completely unaware that textual departure procedures even existed.  In fact he had never even noticed or looked at that section of the NOAA chart book.  For this pilot, if there was no SID that meant runway heading, contact atc.

For those of you Jepp users that I just lost... NOAA charts have all the DP's in the front of the book - not like Jepp charts that have them with the airport.

While this a somewhat comical situation, there is a moral to the story.  All pilots should seek mountain checkout, not just VFR, and not just those with aircraft short on performance.  I offer IFR mountain flying instruction as well as VFR mountain flying instruction.

Consider the how these are influenced by mountainous terrain:

  • MSA, MRA, MDA
  • SID / DP's - Climb Gradient / Density Altitude / Performance
  • Approaches - Steep - VDP's (visual descent points are common)
  • Missed Apporoaches - What happens if you go past a VDP and need to go missed? (This is sticky - I'll cover in the next post)
  • Circiling Approaches
  • Off-Angle Approaches (LOC, VOR and LDA)
  • Weather
  • Airframe Icing