It was Sunday morning and time to head home. I had been fishing in British Columbia over the previous four days with some of my friends. There were four airplanes in our group, my T-tail Piper Lance II, a Bellanca Aries, a Cessna 210 and a Piper Dakota. We were located about 70 miles southwest of Williams Lake at a fishing camp I visit three or four times a year. I had been going there for a number of years, so I was very familiar with the dirt runway that had been carved out amongst the 50-foot-plus-high lodgepole pines.
The fishing as usual was great, however, all weekend my mind had been occupied with some problems that were waiting for me on my return to California. The runway was close to 3,500 feet long with about a 400-foot overrun at the northeast end that was all tall grass and shrubs, and then there were the pine trees. The southwest departure was over the lake, however, we just about always took off to the northeast as we would head to Williams Lake for fuel. The runway was crowned so no matter which way you went, you would go uphill and then down and there was invariably no wind. Field elevation was close to 4,000 feet above sea level, the morning air was cool so there was no real density altitude issue.
