Location

Mountain FlyingI cannot emphasize enough the value you receive by actually getting your float training in this confined mountainous location --- experiencing the closeness of the mountains --- personally encountering the mountain winds --- and learning where the wind shears occur and how to avoid them. The lessons you receive here will develop confidence in your future ability to handle and recognize why mountain flying is indeed a skill that should be developed under instruction, not learned by trial and error. These lessons can be applied to all of your flying --- not just flying floats. It'll make you a better pilot, for sure.

You’re receiving two courses in one - Mountain Flying and your Single Engine Sea Rating!

You’ll fly on and off six different lakes - all just a few minutes from our base on Upper Trail Lake in Moose Pass. These are listed from the largest to the smallest.

We are 97 miles south of Anchorage just off the Seward Highway in Moose Pass, on the Kenai Peninsula, in the Chugach National Forest. You can drive, or take a bus, or charter us to pick you up at Lake Hood.

C-172 over Kenai Lake

Cub to Johnson Lake

Over Crescent Lake

Approaching Grant Lake

Moose Pass from the Seward Sectional Moose Pass area of the Seward Sectional, Click to enlarge

Bench Lake and Lower Trail Lake photos here soon.

Alaska Weather Cam

On the following site, click on Anchorage, then click on Seward. It's located 30 miles south of Moose Pass. But remember, we usually have better and higher weather than Seward does. We're farther from the ocean.

Alaska Weather Cams

Important Message to Alaska Pilots regarding Lake Hood

Vern%20signature%20photo "The airlines and the military have invested millions of dollars designing simulators to provide realistic training devices. I just moved to Trail Lake to provide you a genuine mountain flying and bush flying experience."

I love Lake Hood. When I first started flying as a charter pilot/guide for the late Jack Lee’s Air Service and instructing off Lake Hood in 1973, watching and listening to the float planes, especially the Beavers, thrilled me, and it still does.

Cub Flying to Bench and Johnson Lakes

But by 1991, watching, listening, waiting for ATC clearance, the long taxi, waiting for Rust’s fleet or the gaggle of float planes on weekends, was costing my students valuable time from their dual session. Also it was cutting into their time and money they had budgeted for their lessons. Now, in 2011, it is even more congested.

Trail Lake

CubIntoTrailLake Cub Approaching Trail Lake

Trail Lake in Moose Pass, Alaska, located 97 miles south of Anchorage along the Seward Highway, is in the heart of the beautiful Kenai Peninsula. It's surrounded by rugged steep mountains, glaciers and ice fields. Here, usually for the first time in a pilot's career, he or she has the opportunity to fly in tight mountain passes and to actually take off and land in the tiny lakes at the bottom of these canyons. Simply, there is nowhere else we know of that offers such a valuable learning experience--not only do you learn float flying but life saving techniques that apply to all of your flying!