What was the scariest or unnerving thing that happened to you during a solo flight in your training?

For me, I was doing a solo over to a towered airport to do some pattern work at a towered airport as my home one was uncontrolled.

It was a fairly routine flight that I’d done before and involved flying a couple thousand feet over a mountain range, not a big one, just the Blue Ridge Mountains

So I get there and do my pattern work and everything goes splendidly, I leave and when I’m breaking off from their pattern to head back I notice that clouds had rolled in over the mountains

I looked up and down the range by the nearest break in the clouds was miles away and while I could’ve made it I only had about 12 gallons in the tank at this point which was more than enough to make it back but still cutting it a bit too close for my liking

I ended up having to skirt between the clouds and the mountains at about 2,200 feet, just barely 1,000 feet over the mountains which was, again, way too close for my liking

Getting hit with some medium level turbulence from underneath the clouds while trying to maintain good altitude above the mountains scared me pretty damn good as I had not done much up to this point like this

(There was also something else that I did that day that, looking back, was really fucking stupid but I won’t mention it here)

But I’m curious what was it for you?

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