Discovering Spada Lake

August 16, 2020 — A week ago, Derek and I took a flight out to Ranger Creek on the northeast slope of Mt. Rainier. It was an amazing adventure, and Derek couldn't stop talking about it. Unfortunately, that left Crystal feeling a bit left out. She wanted in on the action.

I don't need any excuse to go out and fly, so the problem at this point was figuring out what to do. We wanted to fly into the mountains again, but to change things up we decided to head out toward the north cascades. We looked at options such as Mears Field (3W5), Darrington Municipal (1S2), and Skykomish State (S88).

While perusing charts, my eye was drawn to a large body of water north of the town of Sultan, called Spada Lake. After doing a bit of research, I learned that there's a dam at the west end, and the few pictures I was able to find showed a breathtakingly beautiful view.

The final plan was to land at Skykomish State, but with a short detour out to Spada Lake on the way.

As you can see, it was a perfect day to fly. We had the entire area to ourselves, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at both the raw natural beauty and the human engineering that combined to make this place what it is today.

It didn't feel right to play the cockpit audio of us just gushing on about how amazing this place is. Video doesn't do it justice either, but I do hope it helps to convey something of what we felt.

This is exactly the kind of thing that drew me to helicopters to begin with. Low level flying, no stall speeds to worry about, and access to amazing places that most people will never be able to see.