”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.

The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.

NO FLIGHTS OF FANCY THESE – PART 4

“For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)

“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible”

Simon Newcomb (1835 – 1909)

While much of this space has been preoccupied with some of the adventures of bush plane take-offs it should be noted that safely arriving back onto Mother Earth was not necessarily the veritable piece of cake one might think, nor did landings guarantee to take place without being separated from one’s important if not vital parts. It is well to remember that the definition of, and indeed the reality of the process, is that an aircraft landing is a controlled crash. Control therefore becomes the vitally important adjective. While what gets most often talked about are the short take-off lengths and steep climb-outs of many STOL aircraft, the latter also possess the ability to land into extremely small landing areas. Pilots of float planes are not always given the option of landing their aircraft in a lake of their choice. If a camp that need fresh supplies happens to be on a smallish lake, so be it. As long as the aircraft, discharged of its load can safely get back in the air, then that becomes the critical factor. If the aircraft is collecting a load from that same lake, then that may be come problematic as has been earlier reviewed.

Most bush planes have giant flaps that span most of the length of each wing. Deploying these, help permit the low stall speeds these aircraft possess, allowing very and slow landing approaches if required, and permitting the aircraft to remain well clear of hills or the inevitable trees that frame most lakes before leveling out over the lake and executing the landing. While one might assume that landing on lakes that have become rough-watered from high winds might be dangerous, it is the opposite that is true. Water landings are in some ways easier than on land or snow. As long as the water is at least rippling with waves, no matter how small they may be, the pilot has a reference of where the surface of the lake is relative to the plane, as he would if landing on a runway. It remains but to level off a few feet above the surface, cut all speed and settle gently onto the surface. Even in rough waves the pilot will know at all times where his aircraft is in relation to the waves and can act appropriately to settle onto the water. The most dangerous water landings are therefore when the air is still and the lake’s surface like mirror glass. Under these conditions, the location of the lake’s surface relative to the aircraft is impossible to ascertain. A pilot conducting a stall landing as described might find himself doing so while still some ten or twenty feet above the lake’s surface. The results are most often disastrous as the aircraft smashes onto the lake’s surface. I have suffered this embarrassment myself, but thankfully only from a foot or less above the surface. Nevertheless the landing jolt is considerable.

What the pilot must do when conducting a glassy water landing is look sideways to the shore, the only reference at his disposal with which to gauge his height above the water. With continual reference to the shore, he then slowly flies his aircraft in a very shallow glide and under power onto the surface of the lake. It is perhaps the closest fitting analogy with landing as a “controlled crash.” It also requires a much longer landing area since some distance may be covered between the time the aircraft is leveled over the lake and the time it is flown onto the surface.

There is only one instance I can recall where landing on a ski-equipped aircraft was seemingly analogous to landing on a glassy water lake. It was in northern British Columbia at the site of a developing mine called the Johnny Mountain mine and which was located on a mountain of the same name. The airstrip was at an elevation of some 1,100 metres on a rolling piece of open ground called Johnny Flat. I remember the airstrip having the basic profile of an overturned saucer, higher in the middle than at the edges. The day I visited the property in 1988 it was snowing, blowing and the whole atmosphere was fog-like and surreal as we made our approach to the airstrip in a ski-equipped single engine Otter. Peering through the windshield on the co-pilot’s side, I kept wondering where the airstrip was. All I could see was a virtual whiteout! Then in the fog, a series of spruce boughs stuck into the snow could be glimpsed, more or less evenly spaced along a ragged line. As we headed down on our approach I began to realize that these boughs to our left must define that side of the airstrip but that was the only relationship between the plane and the ground that I could ascertain. The end of the airstrip and the sky were as one without definition. The pilot was obviously familiar with these conditions because while I was still pondering at what altitude we were, the plane bumped onto the snow none to lightly, bouncing along for some ways until we ground to a halt. I know of no crashes on that airstrip but it would not have surprised me if there had been.

Not so at the nearby Bronson Creek airstrip that provided access to a gold mine being developed by Cominco at about the same time. Situated at an elevation of 100 only metres, this gravel airstrip ran beside and perpendicular to the giant Stikine River. The landing pattern was that an approach be made along and over the river, followed then a ninety degree left turn and final landing approach to the airstrip. When frequently the Johnny Mt. airstrip was inaccessible due to bad weather at its elevation, the Bronson Creek airstrip at its lower elevation became an alternate landing strip. From there it was but a brief helicopter ride, often conducted in complete zero visibility up to the Johnny Mt. site. That short trip up the mountain, largely in the vertical mode was like going up a white elevator shaft. What first caught my attention however when I first landed at the Bronson Creek strip was the sight of three crashed aircraft reposing at the side of the runway as we flashed past on the landing. One of the aircraft was our old friend earlier noted, a Norseman on wheels. Although I was assured that no fatalities had taken place as a consequence of the accidents, it was sobering introduction to the airstrip’s site. (A bird’s eye view of a landing approach to the Bronson Creek airstrip can be seen by referring to the "Working Wilderness Series" portfolio on this website, and to a painting entitled "Turning Final To Bronson Creek Airstrip, Stikine River, British Columbia.")

The most dramatic landing I have ever seen however was one that was foolhardy and should never have been attempted. That plane and pilot survived still continues to amaze me after all these years. It was up in Ungava in northern Quebec, and at the same camp beside Lake Wapaniskan where the skidoo ferrying trip earlier mentioned had taken place. It was early in the summer and the lake’s winter ice had recently broken up and melted. For bush planes, while floats had now replaced the ski gear of the winter months, one thing had not changed and that was the incessant winds that blew all year around, and often at gale force levels. While landing and taking off into fairly strong winds is a normal part of bush flying, like everything in life, it does, or at least should have its limits.

Not apparently in the tale I have to tell. A Beaver float plane was due into camp, bringing fresh supplies from the town of Schefferville hundreds of miles to the south of us. That day the wind was blowing at strong gale force, somewhere in the vicinity of fifty miles per hour or more and gusting higher. While our camp tents were securely fastened to wood floors and half walls of plywood, the tent flies were being sorely tested as they threatened to be torn from the poles to which they were fastened. Out on the lake however, the wind was a howling affair that had built up three foot waves and torn their tops off in streaking lines of foam. This was no weather for a float plane and it was thus with more than mild surprise that a voice broke through on the camp radio identifying itself as our supply plane. Thinking that the pilot was to notify us of a turn around to try again the next day, we were astounded to hear that he was on final approach and intended to land as scheduled. Incredulous we scampered down to the lake’s shore to witness what we felt sure was oncoming disaster. A Beaver has a cruising speed of about 130 mph. Under maximum power it is alleged that it can reach 160 mph although I maintain that would have to be downhill with a tail wind! The aircraft normally sets down on the water somewhere around its stall speed, that being in the area of 60 mph depending on the aircraft’s configuration and other factors.

As we watched the Beaver approach in its attempt to land on the lake, it appeared to be almost immobile in the air as it fought to penetrate the gale force winds that buffeted the plane like a leaf blown from a branch. I cannot remember how many attempts at a landing were made. Engine howling under probably cruising power or higher, just as the aircraft seemed as though it might touch down, a gust would pick it and throw it into the air again as the pilot struggled to maintain stability. Powering up to turn and make a go around for another attempt, the wind caught the plane and blasted it past us overhead at a speed that probably was approaching the” do not exceed” velocity for the airframe. Time and again the wind produced failure and I was hoping that the pilot might give up and return south to its base, although if it did not do so soon, it may not have enough fuel on board to complete the return trip. We had aviation fuel at camp but that would do no good if the aircraft could not get down. If the plane did get down in one piece I began to despair how it could possibly manoeuvre in the steep, foam-flecked waves, never mind the chances of successfully corralling the aircraft and docking it without puncturing the floats should the waves that lashed the shore carry the plane onto the rocks at lake’s edge.

Then after the umpteenth attempt, and barely making way against the gale, a probable downdraft smashed the Beaver onto the surface, its tail nearly buried in the wake and nose almost to the sky. What has never left my mind was the fact that at the time of touchdown on the waves, the Beaver was actually going backwards! Bouncing around like a rubber ball, the aircraft made no attempt to turn downwind which was just as well as that manoeuvre would almost certainly have caused it to capsize. Rather the pilot let the plane be swept back down the line of its approach until well downwind of our position on shore. At that point, with float rudders in the dropped position, power was applied and the plane slowly inched up wind toward us in a carefully crabbing fashion. Normally under more benign conditions of docking a float plane, its approach to a dock is from downwind under just enough power to maintain forward way. Close to the dock, the pilot cuts power, relying on the aircraft’s forward momentum to carry it dockside. Meanwhile the pilot exits the aircraft onto the float and throws a line to someone on the dock that he might catch a wing strut and secure the aircraft to the dock with the line.

In the howling wind that we were dealing with however, that procedure was but a pipe dream. Aside from serious concern that the dock itself might not hold in this storm and be blown away with us on it, fighting to control the aircraft as he was, there was no way that the pilot would be in a position to leave his post until the aircraft had been corralled at the dock, should it and us still be there. So how to bring this bucking beast into the fold? Risks would have to be taken by those on the dock or we were going to have a disaster on our hands. There was little communication possible as the wind blew words from our mouths unheard. Fortunately, both the pilot and those on shore knew what had to be done. With one person at the end of the dock with some line at the ready, the rest of us lined up shoulder to shoulder along the length of the dock. The pilot’s challenge was to bring his aircraft close to and past the end of the dock so that one onshore wing swung over the dock. It was then our task to grab hold of this wing strut while the man with the line secured it around the float’s bow cleat and then to the dock, and another line to the float’s stern cleat and the dock, while the pilot struggled to keep the plane in position. The feat managed, the plane, with its engine and propeller still turning over to help stabilize its position, was unloaded in what must have been record time. Boxes of food and other supplies were hastily tossed on shore in a jumbled, broken mess as the airplane and the waves tore at the dock, threatening to sweep it, people and plane into the maelstrom.

The unloading done, the lines were tossed off and the plane swept back down the lake, struggling to drift backwards from the shore that it might attain a safer position from which to head into the wind for take-off. During the entire docking and unloading process I don’t recall a word being exchanged by anyone, or if so the words were lost on the wind, their syllables scattered like winnowed chaff. Fascinated to the end, we stood on shore unable to turn from the spectacle. Seemingly buried in the waves, the pilot applied full power for take-off, although being upwind from the plane we heard nothing. That made that which was to follow all the more surreal. Silent to us in the howling gale, the plane inched forward for what seemed only metres when it suddenly was picked up by the wind and catapulted into the air, rising almost straight up like a helicopter! It was the most spectacular take-off I have ever witnessed. Engine screaming at full power, the plane passed us by overhead, moving at what seemed like a walking pace. Finally turning for home in vanished over the skyline and we turned to the task of carrying its load of supplies up to our camp.

There is a sad postscript to this tale, one that reinforces the adage of there being old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots in the bush flying business. The pilot of the Beaver had flown supplies to our camp on a number of occasions both before and after that wild day on the lake. A young, cheery, bright-eyed Newfoundlander named Chester for the purposes of this tale, we were to learn that he had a reputation for courting risk and daring in his flying habits. Unlike the novels of romance and unreality, this was not a reputation that was viewed with respect and approval by fellow bush pilots. The general consensus was that Chester was on a path that would not lead to old age. And indeed, sadly, a year or so later I was to learn that Chester had been killed while crashing his plane in Labrador. I doubt if he was much past thirty years old when he died.

TO BE CONTINUED

Copyright © 2009 Ian de W. Semple