Chukar Flat

The strip is at about 900ft MSL along the John Day river. There are petroglyphs down river a short walking distance.

FROM BCP:

The strip is located at N45-13.6, W120-32.6. It lies on a silty bar on the east side of the river. The flat is about a quarter mile long and 100 yards wide. It is covered with low brush and grass. Upstream, to the south, the river makes a bend to the East within 1/4 mile. Downstream 3/4 mile, to the north, the river bends to the West. This makes the upstream approach or takeoff easier.

The runway is a little bumpy. It is silty soft, but even small tires wouldn't sink in much. I wouldn't want to use it if it was wet, but the sandy silt would probably drain pretty fast after the rain was over. Grass and very low brush was pretty much covering the runway, but there weren't any surprises like rocks or holes. I paced off the runway at 1000'. The south end has perhaps another 100 feet of bumpy stuff until you hit a low fence. The north end has more like 200 feet to the fence.

The lone tree has a picnic table under it, and there are a couple of weatherproof boxes with fishing stuff, soggy toilet paper, old issues of AOPA magazine, a pair of sneakers, and four chunks of charcoal.

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The majority of Chuckar Flat airstrip is on private land. The upstream portion (150 feet or so) is on BLM land. Several years ago the BLM was pretty aggressive about keeping aircraft out of there. Five or six years ago some idiot BLM land manager chopped up the upstream end of the runway without considering the safety ramifications of doing so. It is still pretty bumpy up there.

The rancher who owns the land of the downstream portion is an excellent gentleman and is generous enough to share this awesome spot with the pilot community. While he is the man, we can expect for this this privilege to be available, and it should be treated with the utmost respect in hopes that his family will continue to allow access once he is not the decision maker.

There is a lot of boat traffic on the river from March until about mid June, depending on the flows. This is when the BLM has their strongest presence in this area. My hopes are that we use it with a low profile and keep our planes off of the BLM portion of the strip if possible during this period in an effort to stay off of their radar. This limits the strip length to about 700 feet in length. If winds are favoring a downstream takeoff, which they often are, that is the only time that using the BLM portion is really necessary for most STOL planes. It's not a great environment for non-STOL aircraft.