then make our way down the rock face and back into the pines.
“Piece of cake,” Wojewodski said, tightening the waist belt on his pack.
It was no piece of cake.
That one mile translated to a grueling, sweat-soaking, seventy-minute endurance test which probably would’ve taken considerably less time had I not lost my footing and slid about thirty feet down a sheer rock slope, twisting my football-damaged right knee and scraping up my left elbow. Wood and his colleagues had to rope me back up.
“Anything damaged?” Bree Kelly asked, checking me over.
“Only my pride.”
I stuffed the pain in a compartment deep in my brain and continued on.
“Anybody who thinks global warming is a hoax needs to come up here and have a look,” Wood said as we trudged single file behind him. “Fifty years ago, this whole area was covered with glaciers. They’re all melting, going away. Could be that’s why you saw whatever it was you saw.”
“Assuming you didn’t imagine it,” Bree Walker said.
W OJEWODSKI SPOTTED the debris first. The four of us had spread out line abreast, twenty meters apart, advancing slowly through the trees, when he yelled out, “Hey, I think I got something!”
I could see instantly what he’d found: remnants of a nacelle, the protective, cigar-shaped structure that protects an airplane engine. The shredded, unpainted aluminum, and what was left of the big radial engine it once housed, were wedged against a large pine and partially buried as though driven into the ground by some great force. Gouged in the earth behind the wreckage was a shallow trench twenty meters or so in length and no more than about a foot deep. This was where the nacelle had first struck the ground and been dragged along like the keel board from a sailboat before slamming to a stop against the tree. The thick blanket of pine needles that had fallen onto the trench and the nacelle, all but obscuring both from above, told me that they’d been there a long time, perhaps decades. The depth of the trench told me that the airplane to which the nacelle had once been attached had probably impacted the earth at a relatively shallow angle, as though the pilot had been flying more or less straight and level when he crashed.
Scattered to my left and similarly buried under years of pine needles, I could easily make out twisted pieces of airplane skin and frame: wing spars and ribs and what appeared to have once been an elegantly rounded wingtip.
“Hey, you guys! Hey, over here!”
I turned and saw Wood in a narrow draw, down slope, far to my right. He was waving frantically, motioning for us to come quickly. I ran as fast as my banged-up knee would allow.
There, in the shadow of the ridgeline that towered above us, partially covered over by snow and broken pine branches, was the mostly intact fuselage of a venerable, twin-engine Beechcraft, a Model 18. The empennage, or tail assembly, looked to have been sheared off.
As I approached it from the rear, I could see that the plane had come to rest on its belly, listing slightly to the left, the ground around it strewn with jagged pieces of aluminum and other debris shed upon impact. The fuselage door, aft of where the wings had ripped away when the plane went into the trees, was canted open, dangling by a single hinge. Inside the door was an open wooden crate, approximately three feet by three feet. On the ground directly outside the door was what looked to be one side of the crate. The tail number—NC1569—was evidence that the plane was more than 60 years old. Federal aviation authorities stopped adding the letter “C” to aircraft “N” registrations soon after World War II.
Through the shattered cockpit windows I gazed down at the mummified remains of the pilot, whose body was only partially decomposed thanks to the glacial conditions where his aircraft had come to rest. He was slumped forward, still strapped into the left seat. The right front quadrant of his chalky skull
“Piece of cake,” Wojewodski said, tightening the waist belt on his pack.
It was no piece of cake.
That one mile translated to a grueling, sweat-soaking, seventy-minute endurance test which probably would’ve taken considerably less time had I not lost my footing and slid about thirty feet down a sheer rock slope, twisting my football-damaged right knee and scraping up my left elbow. Wood and his colleagues had to rope me back up.
“Anything damaged?” Bree Kelly asked, checking me over.
“Only my pride.”
I stuffed the pain in a compartment deep in my brain and continued on.
“Anybody who thinks global warming is a hoax needs to come up here and have a look,” Wood said as we trudged single file behind him. “Fifty years ago, this whole area was covered with glaciers. They’re all melting, going away. Could be that’s why you saw whatever it was you saw.”
“Assuming you didn’t imagine it,” Bree Walker said.
W OJEWODSKI SPOTTED the debris first. The four of us had spread out line abreast, twenty meters apart, advancing slowly through the trees, when he yelled out, “Hey, I think I got something!”
I could see instantly what he’d found: remnants of a nacelle, the protective, cigar-shaped structure that protects an airplane engine. The shredded, unpainted aluminum, and what was left of the big radial engine it once housed, were wedged against a large pine and partially buried as though driven into the ground by some great force. Gouged in the earth behind the wreckage was a shallow trench twenty meters or so in length and no more than about a foot deep. This was where the nacelle had first struck the ground and been dragged along like the keel board from a sailboat before slamming to a stop against the tree. The thick blanket of pine needles that had fallen onto the trench and the nacelle, all but obscuring both from above, told me that they’d been there a long time, perhaps decades. The depth of the trench told me that the airplane to which the nacelle had once been attached had probably impacted the earth at a relatively shallow angle, as though the pilot had been flying more or less straight and level when he crashed.
Scattered to my left and similarly buried under years of pine needles, I could easily make out twisted pieces of airplane skin and frame: wing spars and ribs and what appeared to have once been an elegantly rounded wingtip.
“Hey, you guys! Hey, over here!”
I turned and saw Wood in a narrow draw, down slope, far to my right. He was waving frantically, motioning for us to come quickly. I ran as fast as my banged-up knee would allow.
There, in the shadow of the ridgeline that towered above us, partially covered over by snow and broken pine branches, was the mostly intact fuselage of a venerable, twin-engine Beechcraft, a Model 18. The empennage, or tail assembly, looked to have been sheared off.
As I approached it from the rear, I could see that the plane had come to rest on its belly, listing slightly to the left, the ground around it strewn with jagged pieces of aluminum and other debris shed upon impact. The fuselage door, aft of where the wings had ripped away when the plane went into the trees, was canted open, dangling by a single hinge. Inside the door was an open wooden crate, approximately three feet by three feet. On the ground directly outside the door was what looked to be one side of the crate. The tail number—NC1569—was evidence that the plane was more than 60 years old. Federal aviation authorities stopped adding the letter “C” to aircraft “N” registrations soon after World War II.
Through the shattered cockpit windows I gazed down at the mummified remains of the pilot, whose body was only partially decomposed thanks to the glacial conditions where his aircraft had come to rest. He was slumped forward, still strapped into the left seat. The right front quadrant of his chalky skull
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