Flight Sim again

I was stuck for something to do for an hour or two yesterday and ended up firing up Flight Sim X for the first time in a couple months. Remembering what an old friend told me about flying a 75 horsepower airplane over the divide in his youth, I thought I'd try to duplicate his route, and in the same flight, find Devil's Thumb.

I failed at the second task, but had a good time looking around. I took off from Kremmling, headed east to Granby, then south towards Fraser. My plan was to head east again at Devil's Thumb Ranch north of Fraser and start looking around. By the time I got to that area I found I didn't have the altitude to safely cross the continental divide. I took a wide circle of the Fraser River valley in a steeper climb trying for 13,000 feet and got it. Heading east again I thoroughly scanned the mountains but failed to see anything resembling Devil's Thumb, a rock prominence I'd seen from the ranch when I skied there back in the day. Over the divide I found myself just south of the Brainerd Lake area

I headed for Nederland, to the south, so I could turn west towards the town of Eldora and follow the drainage up towards the Fourth of July mine. (I think this is where my friend made his crossing.) This returned me to the headwaters of the Fraser River south of Winter Park. Not that it's a big thing, but it would have been fun to have seen the ski runs on the mountain as I headed north for a landing (successful!) at Granby.

Two things caught my attention on this flight. First was that snow had been laid on the landscape. The snowline seemed to be around 9,000 feet. That's not really consistent with our conditions right now, but still, that's a pretty neat trick. Second was that when looking towards the low sun you get simulated internal lens reflections of the sun showing up in the view which shift as the imaginary camera pans around. Another neat trick. And a third one I'd forgotten about -- the shadow of the plane during landing and taxiing. It's true to the low sun angle too. Pretty neat!

Lens reflections entering Fraser River valley