Departure from Basin Harbor, VT, October 11, 2009

Two friends and I planned a scenic flight for Sunday. One of my friends hadn't flown in a small plane before, so I was hoping for the forecasted clear skies and calm winds. Instead, we got low ceilings for the first half of the trip, including rain at points, and a great deal of turbulence. We left Glens Falls, flew along Lake George and Lake Champlain to Basin Harbor. We landed at Basin Harbor too early for lunch at the restaurant, so we took a walk to the lodge for coffee, then back to the restaurant. We departed a couple of hours after arriving.

When it came time to depart, the wind sock was showing a direct crosswind for runway 2-20. I sat and watched the sock for a few minutes, trying to determine if it was generally favoring one direction or the other, since it was swinging about quite a bit but it was about even. Based on the sock and trees and the winds, I estimated a 15 knot direct crosswind with gusts to maybe 20 knots.

I had landed on runway 20 earlier, since the winds had been from the south. But, given a coin toss, this time I decided to go with 2. There are tall trees that line the first half of 2 and even though the runway is quite wide, I felt that they might give some protection from the wind and I decided that I'd rather have a crosswind in the air than on the ground.

We took off and found that the trees did lessen the wind somewhat but the full force was felt as soon as we cleared the tops. Once we were high enough, I turned west over the lake and then south to depart toward Glens Falls.