Wednesday, Race day #3 continued

Our flight out of Elko was smooth and the skies were clear.  Steering away from the Humboldt river, National Forest and the Ruby Mountains, our course to the NNE meant that we were soon over Utah with the Sawtooth National Forest to the North and the Great Salt Lake to the South.

But-  didn't even want to consider going down because the tall peaks were still to come.  Continuing on we passed through the SE corner of Idaho and into Wyoming.  Climb, climb, climb.  According to the Bad Elf GPS device that we carried to monitor our timing, we hit 12,700 feet.  Fresh snow coated the mountain tops and high (too low) clouds were all around.  Subsequent reports confirmed that we we did well to get out of Elko when we did.  Some other teams had trouble proceeding on course, had to divert or hold short.  

We made it over the mountains, crossing the Rockies in the Wyoming Range and through Bridgerton National Forest.  Flying over and through the tall peaks was tense.  The possibility of down drafts, hypoxia and diminishing visibility created a renewed level of concern amongst the team.  And then relief to come down into the valley that lies between the Wind River Range ahead and the ridges we had just passed.

The rest of the day proceeded with haste turnarounds and not much time for chillaxing.  The Air Race Classic publishes our proscribed sunrise and sunset times.  Teams may not depart before the ARC sunrise and must complete the day's final fly-by by sunset.  After stalling for >24 hours in Elko we knew that if we were going to complete the race by the terminus deadline, we needed to fly four legs on Wednesday and the remaining three on Thursday.  Between the arrival and departure timing flybys at the three turnaround stops on Wednesday we spent 44, 52, and 34 minutes on the ground in Pinedale, Scottsbluff and Norflolk, respectively!  All of these times included taxi to and fro, fueling the plane, paying for the fuel, thanking the stop teams eand taking care of personal needs for refreshments etc.  

Our departure fly-by at Norfolk was at 18:36.  Sunset in Iowa City was 20:43. This meant we had 2 hours and 7 minutes to complete the leg and fly-by procedure.  We made it with 42 seconds to spare and stumbled in to Iowa City just in the nick of time.  What a tremendous relief.  The team was exhausted, hungry and exhilarated.  Three more to go!!  Pizza delivery to the hotel at 10:30 PM?  Why not?  Yummy.  

Our 5:30 pick-up to return to the airport came too soon and also just in time.  Having arrived just before cut-off the previous night we were last on the RON (remain overnight) list and so anticipated being last to depart that morning.  ARC came and went while we watched the weather ahead.  Typical thunderstormy activity was concerning to all of the aviatrices.  Hooray for an ice-free plane!