I knew the trip West after AirVenture from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to North Big Horn County Airport (U68) in Cowley, Wyoming, would bring this flat-land pilot closer to mountain peaks than I’d been for a while and require some changes in my normal operating procedures. With MEAs (minimum en route altitudes) over the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains as high as 12,000 feet, there would be a potential for ice in any clouds even in August, so I’d be more comfortable flying VFR on the last leg from Rapid City, South Dakota. If there was any weather over the mountains I’d be between a rock and a hard place, so I was careful to leave plenty of slack in my schedule.
What I hadn’t anticipated was that on the first leg from Green Bay to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, while there would be no “rocks,” there would be two “hard places” between which I’d have to thread my way. During my preflight weather briefing, the flight service specialist warned me of sigmets for severe storms that scribed wide areas both north and south of my course. I decided, since the weather at Green Bay was good and either a return or diversionary landing along the route were viable options, to go ahead and at least begin the trip.
