The Harding Icefield is an expansive icefield located in the Kenai Mountains of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. It is also partially located in Kenai Fjords National Park. It is named for United States President Warren G. Harding.
On March the 24th 2018 took a little local flight. Wasn't planning on anything special, just decided to cruise around. One thing I wanted to do was time a climb from PAEN (Kenai Airport) to 10,000 feet MSL.
Kenai is located 89ft Above Sea Level-so didn't need to adjust the altimeter as such. As I lined up on runway 2-left realized I forgot to bring my stopwatch-so decided to do the climb anyway without timing it.
Take-off roll and immediately setup trim to climb out at 80 mph which the original builder has listed as best angle. Was cleared for a Right Crosswind departure so upon reaching 600 ft AGL turned right and continued my climb towards the Chugach National Forest (Kenai Peninsula Mountains) that are located on the Kenai Peninsula. Looking to the Southeast I noticed that the Harding Icefield was looking really good!
Upon reaching 14,500 ft MSL decided to start a slow descent towards the icefield. Leveled off at 13,000 MSL and started to take movies and photos. Below are 35 of the 200+ photos I took. I'll try to describe what is shown in the photo as they are posted.
First here are a couple of views of the route flown from my Garmin Area 660 screenshots and a map that has been modified to shown the route with some names added of the various points of interest:
On the map photo I tried to add some text showing points of interest, however I could not get the color of the text to change from yellow-ish to black-will have to investigate a little more of the manual for the photo editing program I have.
Before reaching the Icefield, flew to the South of Skilak Lake here are some photos showing it-you will see it again in some future photos after I reached the turnaround point and was heading North for the return flight. These photos are looking to the North.
To finish this first post, here are a couple of photos looking directly at the Icefield-notice the smooth looking snow?
Right after taking these last two photos I started taking movies, after flying over 50% of the field, remembered to start taking photos as well. Next post continues with more photos....
Best regards,
Mike Bauer
On March the 24th 2018 took a little local flight. Wasn't planning on anything special, just decided to cruise around. One thing I wanted to do was time a climb from PAEN (Kenai Airport) to 10,000 feet MSL.
Kenai is located 89ft Above Sea Level-so didn't need to adjust the altimeter as such. As I lined up on runway 2-left realized I forgot to bring my stopwatch-so decided to do the climb anyway without timing it.
Take-off roll and immediately setup trim to climb out at 80 mph which the original builder has listed as best angle. Was cleared for a Right Crosswind departure so upon reaching 600 ft AGL turned right and continued my climb towards the Chugach National Forest (Kenai Peninsula Mountains) that are located on the Kenai Peninsula. Looking to the Southeast I noticed that the Harding Icefield was looking really good!
Upon reaching 14,500 ft MSL decided to start a slow descent towards the icefield. Leveled off at 13,000 MSL and started to take movies and photos. Below are 35 of the 200+ photos I took. I'll try to describe what is shown in the photo as they are posted.
First here are a couple of views of the route flown from my Garmin Area 660 screenshots and a map that has been modified to shown the route with some names added of the various points of interest:
On the map photo I tried to add some text showing points of interest, however I could not get the color of the text to change from yellow-ish to black-will have to investigate a little more of the manual for the photo editing program I have.
Before reaching the Icefield, flew to the South of Skilak Lake here are some photos showing it-you will see it again in some future photos after I reached the turnaround point and was heading North for the return flight. These photos are looking to the North.
To finish this first post, here are a couple of photos looking directly at the Icefield-notice the smooth looking snow?
Right after taking these last two photos I started taking movies, after flying over 50% of the field, remembered to start taking photos as well. Next post continues with more photos....
Best regards,
Mike Bauer