Have you ever wondered about the jet contrails above you?

No this is not a conspiracy posting saying that the government is undertaking some type of social biological warfare campaign against its citizens, so if that is what you are looking for you will be disappointed.


As I have written ad nauseum, Marlys and have/take the opportunity to sit on the patio most afternoons and contemplate the area. Most times we will see contrails crossing the sky, depending on the conditions at the flight levels being used.

One of the questions we always seem to ask is I wonder where the jets have come from, or are going to. Being the king of all things trivial and having a semi-aeronautical leaning, I decided to check out what a high altitude enroute chart would say for the area.

The enroute chart in question is the H-3 and not wanting to make a trip to a special trip to a FBO or buy on on-line with a little googling I found the following and took a screen shot.

Most of the traffic we see is in the east-west-east corridor, which seems to indicate that the Blue Mesa junction is probably in play. The black lines represent the airways that are used by aircraft flying at a flight level altitude. I bet you all thought it was a free for all up there, but it isn't, these are like highways in the sky. BTW Blue Mesa is located by Gunnison. This though doesn't mean that all traffic is transiting that point.

Here is the low level charts showing airways that transit the area. As you can see there are many opportunities for looking at contrails, but probably not by those aircraft flying on the lower airways as they are probably not jets/turbo props. The blue lines represent the low level airways, but pilots don't necessarily have to use them.

We do though have military aircraft in the area that make some interesting passes below the peaks (which make them pretty hard to pick out.

The warning for the 11,700 tall Waugh Mountain is pretty evident, coming west out of the Canon City airport on the lower right edge of the chart. Like on the water these are called charts. Charts are maps for a specific purpose, e.g. shipping, aircraft, etc.