LancairTalk

This weekend was a perfect example of why I enjoy having an airplane. A few
weeks ago we bought an Aire Super Puma raft and
this weekend we put the raft into the Columbia and flew to Hood River to raft
the White Salmon river.
Hood River is only about 115NM from Seattle direct, but by the normal roads you
need to drive over 225 miles and it usually takes over 4 hours. The flight from
Boeing Field (KBFI) to Hood River (4S2) was only 40 minutes and that was at
fairly low power settings and with a detour to take a loop around Mt. St.
Helens.

The raft fits well in the airplane- the raft itself weighs 106 pounds and
with all of our gear we are at about 150 pounds. It is super easy to remove the
rear seats from a Columbia and with one seat gone there is plenty of room to put
the raft, paddles, and more in. The rear baggage door isn’t huge but the
passenger doors are really big so I’m pretty sure you could fit just about
anything in the airplane with both back seats out. I’m pretty sure we could fit
the raft in the baggage compartment and carry four passengers if they were small
and had much of the other gear on their laps, but with the raft 3 passengers is
the most realistic.

The scenery was just gorgeous and rafting the white salmon couldn’t be
better- the day was 85 degrees and beautiful. I’ve included a few extra shots
from passing Mt. St. Helens and from the ground at the Hood River airport. We
are looking forward to using the airplane for easy access to other NW rafting
like the Deschutes, Tieton, Merced, American, and the Salmon in Idaho.

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