On Oct. 18, 1987, a group of four friends set out from the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport for a short sightseeing tour over Ruedi Reservoir. But an enjoyable afternoon flight quickly turned into a nightmare as they found themselves face to face with the gut-wrenching reality that they were about to crash land in a dense forest near Mount Yeckel, northeast of Aspen.
Steve Goldsmith, Kendall Christianson (now Henry), Dick Dahl and pilot Marianne Demolick were caught in a downdraft near Lenado, and found the mountain reaching up toward the undercarriage of their plane, ultimately pulling the small Cessna R172 Hawk XP single-engine plane into the trees with a fiery crash.
Miraculously, all four survived, and only one, Dahl, suffered serious injuries from second- and third-degree burns while trying to escape the crumpled aircraft.
According to an Aspen Times story from 1987, 20 people had lost their lives crashing in the vicinity of Lenado in the previous 24 years. Only one passenger survived in six prior crashes that took place in the area.
On Oct. 17 of this year, one day shy of the 28th anniversary of the fateful flight, Henry and Dahl hiked up into the woods near Mount Yeckel to search for the site of the crash so many years ago. Dahl had looked for the location in the late 1990s, and Henry, a long-time employee at the Aspen Daily News, struck out while trying to find it last year.
But Dahl said when the two combined their memories, they struck gold.
He said the first clue was finding trees that were broken off at the top, and then they spotted an electrical device sticking out of the ground below. Next Henry found part of the plane’s wheel and they knew they were back.
“I saw that and I knew we hit the mother lode,” Dahl said this week. “It was fun in the sense that we worked together and pooled our knowledge.”
Fateful flight
The group had rented the plane from then fixed-base operator Tailwinds Aviation at the airport for the tour. Demolick, then 32, had flown the route before and took the reins. According to an Aviation Safety magazine article from 1987, she had logged 221 total hours, including 44 in the Hawk XP, 28 of which as commanding pilot.
“Marianne was a pilot, and she’d flown this route a 100 times,” Dahl said. “But that was always with one passenger, and we had four of us.”
He added that Demolick asked all their weights, calculated the figure, and cut fuel load so the plane was light enough.
But Dahl, a pilot himself, said there were some mistakes from the start, adding that in hindsight they should have flown around the valley first to gain more elevation. He said the flight left around 3:30 p.m. and they were on the ground 15 minutes later.
“There were some pilot errors,” he said. “However, she did everything perfect after, and that is why we’re still alive today. … The mountain just outflew the plane.”
The crash occurred around 11,000 feet, and the land was climbing around 1,000 feet per mile in that area. But the plane was only gaining 285 to 300 feet per mile and they eventually got too low, Dahl said.
“We effectively could not out-climb the mountain,” he added. “I remember Kendall saying, ‘I don’t want to look at the moose at eye level.’”
Henry said that she could see the snow very well on the ground, and knew something wasn’t right.
“I think I said something like, ‘I didn’t come up here to look at deer tracks,’” she said.
Another costly error was that the plane approached the ridge near Sawmill Park at a 90-degree angle, and it should have been at a 45. Dahl said he then used pilot speak to ask Demolick to make sure there was a “backdoor” or way to turn around if they didn’t have enough clearance.
“I suspected we were in trouble, but I didn’t want to alarm the other passengers,” he said. “The plane just wouldn’t climb.”
Henry said she looked back and thought, “yeah, there’s no backdoor,” not understanding the true meaning of the term.
“I didn’t know they were talking about where to turn out,” she said. “In order to turn out, you lose altitude. And the ridge was long and wide.”
A federal air safety investigator later concluded that a downdraft caused the plane to lose elevation and crash.
Silence in the sky
Henry said she remembered how quiet the plane was as they descended into the treetops.
“I saw branches out of the side view, and so it was kind of rocky. But the first thing I heard was a pop, and I thought the wings flew off,” she said. “But what hit first were the wheels on the tops of the trees. … I was waiting to experience impact. So you’re thinking that everything is just going to blow up.”
Henry added that as the plane was going down, she became very “conscious of her space.” She said the next thing she knew the plane felt like it stopped, and then she was outside looking at the aircraft.
“I don’t know how I got out,” Henry said. “Then I saw it start on fire. Then Marianne came over next to me, and we’re looking at the plane together thinking it’s going to blow up because of the gas.”
Dahl also said he was surprised by how serene things were before the crash.
“Everything went quiet. We were thinking that this was it,” he said. “I started screaming after the crash because I was on fire. Trust me, I screamed afterwards.”
Henry and Demolick believed that both Goldsmith and Dahl were still inside, but then saw the former running through the woods.
“It was real quiet in the woods. It was surreal,” Henry said. “And then Steve yells ‘he’s (Dahl) going to die!’”
Dahl said that he was wedged by the seat and was being burned. He remembers someone trying to pull him out, but he was stuck.
He then grabbed a tree outside and tore himself out of the plane, breaking a few of his toes in the process.
“I escaped on adrenaline alone,” Dahl said. “I grabbed that tree and ripped myself out.”
He later would have two skin grafts for his burns, and spend two weeks in the hospital with an infection. Dahl would also read in an aviation magazine that the seats in the Cessna model they had flown in were prone to breaking loose, which was what happened and caused him to get pinned in the wreckage.
“Most people survive small plane crashes,” he said. “Where they die is in the fire afterwards.”
Dahl estimates that when the plane hit the tree that stopped it, they were only traveling at around 20 to 30 miles per hour. He said that Demolick knew exactly how to put them down in the timber, and what to hit to slow the aircraft down.
“We were very, very lucky,” Dahl said. “Marianne did everything perfect to save us.”
Finding a way off of the mountain
The group had brought emergency supplies, but those burned up inside the plane. They built a shelter, and a flaming tire was pulled out of the wreckage to ignite a campfire to keep them warm after the sun had set and the temperature plummeted.
“We got the tire to start a fire because we didn’t have any matches,” Dahl said. “We had a fire all night and it was snowing on us. The snow’s probably the only reason that the crash didn’t turn into a forest fire.”
The group placed an X on the ground in a nearby field to mark their location for searchers. But what they didn’t know was that the FBO never reported them missing.
Dahl got up the next morning before the others and started searching for Margy’s Hut, which he knew to be nearby. His shock had worn off, and the pain was kicking in and he knew then that he was in trouble.
“I hiked out because I had third-degree burns and knew I was in bad shape,” he said. “I knew there was a good chance that I would not survive another night out there.”
Dahl followed a steep trail, and ran across some locals, who then gave him a ride to the Diamond J Ranch in Meredith.
A hunter from Grand Junction stumbled upon the rest of the group, and led them down to his truck near Norrie. They too went to Diamond J and called police to tell them what had happened.
“We were real happy to see him,” Henry said with a laugh. “We jumped up and gave him a hug.”
By that time Dahl, though injured, was already getting into a helicopter to fly back to the crash site in hopes of rescuing the others.
“He was the one who was burnt and he’s the one who walked out first,” Henry said incredulously.
Dahl said that since the area is in wilderness, the wreckage had to be removed and he flew in a plane the next day to show an insurance company where it was located. The other pilots couldn’t even see the wreckage, and that’s when it hit him how dense the forest around the crash site was.
“If we would have died, the possibility of finding us would have been minute,” Dahl said.
He later sued the FBO for not reporting the group overdue.
“The National Transportation Safety Board states that if a plane that is rented is one-hour overdue, they must notify rescue,” Dahl said. “They never did. Their comment was that they thought Marianne had ‘taken the plane to Las Vegas.’”
He added that nobody knew they were missing until each of them didn’t show up for work the next day.
Moving on
Henry and Dahl each said the experience didn’t slow them down or prevent them from taking to the skies.
Dahl still flew often as a pilot, and Henry later jumped into a tiny plane to see the Nazca Lines in southern Peru.
“I’ve been able to go up again knowing that people fly all the time and the chances are pretty rare that it will happen again,” she said.
Efforts to reach Goldsmith for this story didn’t pan out, and when attempting to contact Demolick, it was learned that she died in 2009.
“She was very adventurous, she climbed mountains,” Dahl said. “It’s a real tragedy. She was a very nice person, and we all owe our lives to her.”
Henry smiled, and shed a few tears, when talking about taking a trip to Mexico years ago with Demolick.
And as for returning to the crash site, Dahl said that there was nothing foreboding about it, adding that it simply was fun. While there, he found a small piece of melted metal from the ground and took it as a keepsake.
A friend later told him that it was a piece of an airplane seat.
“There’s a 25 percent chance that it was part of the seat I was in,” Dahl said with a laugh. “After the crash, a good friend told me ‘don’t sweat the small stuff, and everything after two days ago is small stuff.’”
Original article can be found here: http://www.aspendailynews.com
NTSB Identification: DEN88LA011
The docket is stored on NTSB microfiche number 34312.
Accident occurred Sunday, October 18, 1987 in ASPEN, CO
Probable Cause Approval Date: 08/02/1988
Aircraft: CESSNA R172K, registration: N736KT
Injuries: 1 Minor, 3 Uninjured.
NTSB investigators may not have traveled in support of this investigation and used data provided by various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.
THE PLT RPRTD THAT THE FLT WAS HEADED NORTHEAST TOWARD MT YECKEL WHEN THE ACFT ENCOUNTERED WIND SHEAR & DOWNDRAFTS & WAS FORCED INTO TREES. RPRTDLY, THE ACFT WAS FLYING OVER RISING TERRAIN IN A CANYON AREA AT AN ELEV OF ABOUT 11,000' WHEN THE ACDNT OCCURRED. THE COMPUTED DENSITY ALT WAS 12,500'. ACCORDING TO THE OPERATOR'S MANUAL, THE PREDICTED RATE OF CLIMB FOR THAT ALT WAS 257' PER MIN.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
IN-FLIGHT PLANNING/DECISION..IMPROPER..PILOT IN COMMAND
Contributing Factors:
TERRAIN CONDITION..MOUNTAINOUS/HILLY
WEATHER CONDITION..HIGH DENSITY ALTITUDE
WEATHER CONDITION..UNFAVORABLE WIND
TERRAIN CONDITION..RISING
OBJECT..TREE(S)
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