Creekstone Press Publications
Excerpts from They Call Me Lopey: A Saga of Wilderness Flying
Heavy Loads
The heaviest thing I ever moved with an airplane was a D7 CAT. Ron Wells, another pilot with Trans-Provincial, two engineers, and I did it using two Otters on wheel skis and several thick, wooden planks on the floor of each plane. The contract called for us to move the big dozer from Burrage Creek, about 200 miles north of Terrace, to Snippaker Creek, about 35 minutes flying time to the west. The short distance meant we could carry less fuel, giving us more weight capacity for the parts.
The man in charge of dismantling the CAT had an excellent crew. As they took the machine apart, they weighed every piece using a scale mounted on a crane. Armed with that information we could make up loads of about 2,000 pounds each. Then we had to get the plane into the air. The strip at Burrage Creek has a deep gorge at either end. That meant we didn’t have to fight to stay above the trees on takeoff but an engine failure would have been disastrous. The Burrage strip was ploughed so we used the wheels for takeoff and then put the skis down for landing at Snippaker. The Snippaker strip, built alongside a creek, had a distinct bend in the middle. Some fancy footwork on the rudder pedals was required if you wanted to avoid going into the creek.
We used a widening in one part of the Snippaker runway to unload the dozer parts but there was room for only one plane at a time on the actual strip. We tried to arrange things so that the empty plane had taken off from Snippaker before the loaded plane landed but on one occasion Ron took a bit longer to unload than usual and I had to land. I waited until he had pulled out of the loading area and was taxing down the runway away from me. When he reached the end of the runway he would turn around and power up for takeoff. I was headed for the off-loading spot but hadn’t quite made it as Ron came roaring down the runway towards me. I guess he figured there would be room to pass, or else he just couldn’t see properly, but as he accelerated to takeoff speed, and I taxied down the strip towards him, I realized our right wings were going to hit. And because you can’t just stop a plane on skis once there’s forward momentum, a collision seemed inevitable. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Just as the two wings were about the smack into one another, Ron’s right ski hit a snowy hummock on the runway and his right wing rose over the top of my wing. He completed his takeoff, headed back to Burrage Creek for another load and left me shaking in wonder.
While that incident left the planes unscathed, we were not so lucky when we transported the bulldozer’s blade. The mechanics had welded some iron bars down the backside of the blade to hold it upright in Ron’s plane. While his unloading assistant was trying to wedge the blade out of the plane with a big pry bar, the stabilizer bars broke off. The blade fell over, knocking the pry bar out of the assistant’s hands and nearly crushing his legs before coming to rest against the metal framing of the heater duct. The assistant was able to climb out from behind the blade but the pry bar had punched a hole in the side of the plane. While all this was happening, I landed and taxied in behind Ron. Fortunately the damage to the Otter wasn’t structural. We used jacks and winches to get the blade out of the plane and Ron then flew back to Burrage and patched up the hole.
Thanks to excellent weather it only took us a week to move the D7. There were a few other anxious moments associated with moving the bulldozer’s winch and engine. Each of these items weighed about 2,900 pounds and we needed every inch of the Burrage runway, and a lot of nerve, to get the planes into the air. The mechanics put the bulldozer together in the spring and one of its first jobs was to straighten out the Snippaker runway.
The D7 move was not without incident but there was a cooperative and careful approach to that job. This was not the case when we were hired to move a D6 from the airstrip at Mackenzie to Black Lake, a site two hours away. That machine, once we got it moved, was used to build the Sturdee airstrip. I had a miserable load foreman for the job who was always pushing me to overload the aircraft. On one trip he tried to load over 5,000 pounds into the Otter. Had I not been keeping track, there’s little doubt I would have crashed at the end of the runway.
During my time flying the Wenner Gren mineral survey we sometimes stayed at Sawmill Lake, just north of the village of Telegraph Creek. The lake was suitable for small loads but heavy afternoon winds and cross currents made it too dangerous when working with bigger loads. So, when we were hired to move a large number of full fuel barrels from Telegraph Creek to Trapper Lake, about 60 miles to the west, I knew I’d have to fly off the Stikine River. I have landed on and taken off from big rivers – the Mackenzie, the Skeena, the Fraser – but none was as tricky as the Stikine, especially at the dock we used, just below the village.
It was a good dock but the river at that point is fast and narrow. On my first trip out with the Otter I was pointed upriver and knew I’d have to get turned around for takeoff into the wind. I got released from the dock and almost immediately realized I couldn’t turn fast enough to get around before hitting the rocks on the far shore. Applying more power just hastened my trip to the rocks. That left me with only one option; I shut down the engine and let the wind turn the plane. It worked that time but I needed a better plan.
On subsequent trips I let the engine warm up at the dock, then untied the front rope and let the current swing the aircraft about 45 degrees before getting my helper to untie the back rope. I told him to keep an axe handy in case he had trouble with the rope and to cut it quick. The current at that point of the river could easily have broken the back off the float if the rope was still attached to it and the dock. This method worked well, especially on afternoons when there was a brisk, upriver wind. With the water flowing downstream at about 10 miles an hour and a 20-mile-an-hour wind at my nose, the plane would lift off the river in seconds. I would then turn and head upriver, flying close to the walls of the Stikine Canyon above the village, catching the updrafts created by the wind.
Landings on the river were a bit trickier. Every one of them had to be made flying upstream with the wind at my tail. If I landed downstream and into the wind, I would not have been able to get the plane turned around to get back to the dock. As some landings were made in a 25-mile-an-hour downwind approach, great care had to be taken to prevent the plane swinging back into the wind. If I allowed this to happen, the floats would be sideways to the current, pushing them downriver. The top of the plane would be sideways to the wind, which was pushing in the opposite direction. If the plane started to list, and the wind got under the wing, then the plane would capsize and the pilot would be swimming to shore. It was not a scenario I wanted to experience.
Trapper Lake, where we delivered the fuel drums, had a few peculiarities of its own. The wind was always from the west and caused a terrifically strong down draft right in the middle of the lake. I dealt with this by taking off into the wind and then circling to the left at about 10 feet off the surface and well before getting to the middle of the lake. I would then head down wind towards a steep cliff that rose from the northeast end of the lake. As I approached the cliff, an updraft would carry me to 8,000 feet in a turn and a half and I could be back to Telegraph in no time. I loved playing with the mountain winds but avoided it when carrying passengers. It was just too scary for them.
Before I leave the Stikine country I should mention this is grizzly bear country. I once landed on the river to pick up some hunters. They hadn’t arrived so I beached the plane and was securing it to a tree when I noticed a huge grizzly tracks just feet away from me. They were over a foot wide and one of them was still filling with water. The bear was very big and very close. I stayed close to the aircraft until my passengers arrived.
Another hauling job that tested my flying skills was moving 700 fuel barrels over two winters to the top of a 6,000-foot mountain north of Thutade Lake. Destined for a number of mining camps in the area, the barrels contained aviation gas, stove oil, diesel for the bulldozers and engine oil. Snow conditions were such we could sometimes offload the barrels and be on our way in half an hour. Other times the snow was so deep we had to tramp a solid-surfaced pad on which to unload the drums and then snowshoe a track to get the Otter airborne. Of course the weather had to be all but perfect for these trips. A nice sunny day would provide good visibility and create a shadow effect for approaches and landings. White out conditions, however, meant you could over fly and go sliding down the backside of the mountain with a full load.
Another load I’ll never forget was a small Bell bubble helicopter. It had crashed near a lake southwest of the Kenney Dam and been dismantled by an insurance company engineer. It was my job to haul it out of the bush in pieces to a place where it could be repaired and put back into service. Easier said than done. We loaded the glass bubble, engine, blades, fuel tanks and other bits and pieces into the Otter and then tied the chopper’s tube frame under a wing strut and on top of one of the floats. The load was well under the plane’s weight limits and we had no trouble taking off into a stiff breeze.
That’s when the trouble started. The plane kept veering to the left and I was having a lot of trouble climbing to a safe height above the trees. I circled the lake twice, trying to gain altitude, without success. The helicopter’s fuselage, tied to the outside of the Otter, was creating a drag such as I’d never experienced before. I couldn’t climb and I could not get my ground speed above 80 miles an hour.
I had a couple of choices. Either abort the flight or limp my way to the nearest road, which was at the Kenney Dam. I opted for the dam. It should have been a 15 minute flight but it took me a half hour. The grade was downhill so I was able to maintain my altitude and stay well above the trees at the same time. But it wasn’t until the Ootsa Reservoir was in sight that I breathed easy. I was used to hauling boats and canoes on the Otter but this was a novel and distinctly unpleasant experience. No wonder those Bubble Bells were so slow.
Another example of an outside load causing considerable grief occurred one September. Pilot Scot Cameron and I were returning to Telkwa from Kitchener Lake with two Otters full of hunters, eight in all, and their game meat. We hit a storm as we approached Bear Lake and I followed the valley north of Babine Lake, touching down in the narrows near Smithers Landing. The valley leading into the Smithers area looked impassable. Scot tried to carry on to Granisle but weather turned him back. Both of us docked at Tukii Lodge and prepared to spend the night with owner Charlie Chaplin.
We had a great meal, and then played cards until about 10 p.m. At that point one of the hunters went to the outhouse and returned to report there were six inches of wet, sticky snow on the ground. My heart skipped a beat; both Scot and I jumped for the door at the same time and rushed outside. Both Otters had sunk to their tail fins under the weight of the snow. I grabbed a push broom, climbed up on the wing and started to remove the wet snow. After finishing one Otter I did the other. Meanwhile Scot pumped the water out of the submerged floats and by the time we finished, both planes were again resting at the proper angle in the water.
However, as I tried to climb down off the top of the aircraft, I slipped and tumbled right into the freezing lake, smashing one foot on a float as I fell. Helping hands got me onto the dock and I limped up to one of the cabins to change and warm up. By bedtime my right foot was bruised from the top of the arch to the bottom. The next morning I could not walk. One of the hunters lent me a snow boot to wear as I couldn’t get my own shoes on the swollen foot. Around dusk a snow plough got through to the lodge and the hunters took a bus back to town. I didn’t get back until the next day. While it wasn’t broken, my foot was black and forced me to take a few days off work. Better, I guess, than having to lift two Otters off the bottom of the lake.