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Watusi
Social climber
Joshua Tree, CA
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Jun 30, 2005 - 09:23am PT
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Whoa!! Me and BVB had our share of that stuff!! It did pack a whallop!
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arete
Trad climber
Estes Park, Colorado
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The ranting against drug use and users has always struck me as quite interesting. Most of the people I knew in my youth smoked pot and used other "controlled" substances. And yet most of them turned out rather normal (well... as normal as anyone who throws themselves repeatedly against vertical walls of stone could possibly be). I myself gave all that stuff up many years ago. I have also known a few who overdid it and wasted away.
The thing is, those few were highly self destructive individuals and the rest were not. There is a widespread misconception among people (like chainsaw) that drugs destroyed their lives -- TOTALLY UNTRUE -- THEY DESTROYED THEMSELVES.
If I could wave my magic wand and eliminate all controlled substances right this minute, such people would still find a thousand different ways to destroy themselves.... alcohol, paint thinner, violence, psychosis, suicide, rock climbing.... you name it.
I'm very unimpressed by the ranting. Tunnel vision.
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Licky
Social climber
California
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bhilden...if you are still around and reading this, drop me a PM, your email addy doesn't work anylonger.
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Sanjan
Boulder climber
a prissy pit
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May 28, 2008 - 12:56pm PT
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" The ranger who is generally credited with giving out the 411 on the crash lost his life in an "accident" while on a night-time search/rescue. " i remember this part of the story circulating through the valley at the time . the version i heard implicated climbers in the yosar team , but at face-value they would not even have motive . for my own lowly part i only found a piece of the wing when on a backpack trip around the clark range . i wish i'd brought it back to put on ebay .
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Meow Now
Trad climber
Emerald City
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The pot was the crap and produced a massive headache.
I don't know who would have bought this sh#t cuz it was crap; saturated with jet fuel and oil.
At least it went to a good cause. No one deserved it more than the climbers.
Meow Now
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jul 10, 2011 - 12:34am PT
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i wish i'd brought it back to put on ebay .
HaHaHa! I bet that woulda brought at least a buck fiddy.
Now, go find Amelia's Lockheed and we'll talk investments.
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Linette St Vrain
climber
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Apr 21, 2012 - 10:31pm PT
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Just wanted to give you yet another side to this tale... I was the Park photographer in the spring of '77. I had just started working for the NPS interp. division on taking slides for the ranger campfire talks and exhibits. A member of the LEO came to me and asked what my photgraphic background was. "I have a BA degree". I replied. So you can take decent photos and attest to their authenticity, he asked. Sure! This was to be my first job in a summer of lots of evidence shots and helicopter rides.
I flew up to the lake the first week in April. to start photographing the operation and recovery. Like the previous author had said, it looked like a surreal landscape. Holes in the Ice, gear everywhere and rangers tagging and bagging it all. I was 23 at the time with no law enforcement experience (none wanted) and I was following the Western Division Chiefs of DEA, NPS, DOJ, FBI and a few other initials I have since forgotten. The Park Service told me not to say anything to anybody when they flew me down a week later and that I was expected to testify in SF later that year. As I walked out of El Cap meadow, people asked me how much dope was still there (lots..) Did they find the pilot (just that day, when I fell through the ice and found the wing) and other stuff that I'm sure the Park Service didn't think anyone knew.
Never heard anymore about it after I turned in the film. Except for one other thing... I took the photos of the recovery of the SAR ranger who died later that year.
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John Calkins
climber
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I was the Camp 4 ranger at the time and did not die on a night rescue...My friend, Jack Dorn, a climber on the rescue site did during an early morning rescue at Lost Arrow Direct...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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The rumor as told by Chainsaw is pretty laughable, but then we all love a good
laugh. If the weed had been grown in California it makes zero sense to drive
it to Columbia in order to load it into a unique airplane for delivery within
the US. If nothing dope dealers are rational and all about the bottom line.
Why transport the dope in a very expensive airplane with all its attendant risks?
A truck is much cheaper and trucks always fly below the radar. Now the use of
the plane to bring it in from Mexico makes good sense - risky but acceptable.
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BobDodds
Trad climber
VA
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Aug 30, 2013 - 08:01pm PT
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That year, coincident with Airplane money, lots of Valley climbers happened to come to Eldorado Springs. I talked to Vern Clevenger, Kevin Worrall, and Del Johns, in Eldorado Springs. Kevin was staying at Mike Lowe's stone house at the end of the road. I knew Vern and Del from the Valley, and had a picture of Kevin Worrall climbing Stoned Groove just before I did. Del and "Roger" had been with me, I think, on what was probably everybody's first climb one spring.
Del worked at Yvon Chouinard's GPIW. One day around the same time Del was in Colorado, Chouinard himself was at Lowe Alpine Systems talking to Jeff and Mike Lowe. I went climbing with Del in Eldorado Springs and Boulder Canyon. The first day, Del told me about Jack Dorn, from Grand Junction I believe, whom we had known in the Valley. Del also said that Roger, last name forgotten by me, was in prison for pharma grade coke.
Jeff Long was there as well, and he mailed a non-fiction story about California climbers not climbing, to Playboy magazine. I had met Jeff in 1971 or 1972 in a backyard on the northeast corner of CU--he threw the football and our mutual friend George Mainzer and I took turns at receiver and defender. After Jeff had tried that, he changed to fictional story about a Colorado free solo climber, and the rest about the plane crash and Jack falling, as if he had fallen off the wide trail Yosemite Falls, and Lost Arrow.
I wondered if Roger really found much cocaine at a drug store, and how a climber could fall off an atv trail.
Kevin said he soloed Stovelegs on LSD. I never met any good climbers who used meth, though, as far as chainsaw here. Before climbing, I had opted out of everything but a little mj, after using Hawaiian woodrose, STP, DMT, mescaline, psylosibin, LSD, PCP, as a CIA brat. I remember Paraquat, so maybe you can rate Airplane versus Paraquat.
I thought climbers should have money, because we belonged, like eagles in the sky, and bears in the C4S parking lot. I remember that Jim Bridwell got in trouble at the mountain shop, and I did not think of those who worked there as being as worthy of income. When I worked at EMS in Boston, everybody was stealing, including the CEO, who stole the business from a family. When we had a sale at Denver EMS, one of the top insiders walked out with $100k cash and left the checks and credit cards for IRS. Back in Boston, a guy with handlebar stache and an afghan hound and a Bentley, assumed to be above material needs, was removing an equal amount of cash for every credit card slip he ever handled. Three guys started a shop in the Sierras with kayaks and stuff they took out the back door in Boston.
Other climbers worked in the AK pipeline, WY oilfields, at OB and NOLS, Jeff Lowe and Kevin Donald's International Alpine School.
Bob Carmichael, NFL Films, tried to break into TV with a pilot for PBS called Outside the Arena. He supported a lot of climbers for a month in making that pilot.
Greg Lowe was making 16mm film to take to Hollywood, or Robert Redford, Greg having been a stuntman in Grizzly Adams. Greg's film showed him and myself demonstrating free solo climbing in Colorado and Idaho, hopefully for a movie of some sort. I raised about $100 toward that venture, by hosting Greg's freestyle ski films in Denver and Boulder.
Canning and scarfing, and maybe it's a home, and not a minivan. Nils Anderson of Everett WA let me stay in his VW bus after wet snow collapsed my plastic tube tent the first time I went to Yosemite. Later I read his obit in Mountain, saying his name out loud. The cashier said he had been the last one to see Nils, and said don't go up, there's a storm coming in, toward the Matterhorn. "Maybe it's not really a minivan", cowboy in the Pontiac Montana commercial sure looked and sounded like Mike Weis.
Kevin Donald was Cabela Man and Volvo Man.
Bev Johnson made $5000 on a Mountain Dew commercial. She came back to the Valley after two years smoke jumping. After using up a one-way plane ticket to Fresno, I was hitch-hiking toward a rock. A brief interview profiled her as ready to lead Lunatic Fringe. She bought the drinks afterward. "Something to write home about", she said. She was back, not just geographically, but she was back to "stoked". Climbers always come back, we said.
Jane Wilson was a National Geographic centerfold, for about the same as scarfing and canning money.
The first honest real money for canners and scarfers, or eagles and bears who belong, might have been John Bachar's rumoured $100k/yr for Fiere and all.
Lynn Hill says "karma", and look at her. My nanny word at the time was, drug money is Pandora's Box. On the other hand, mj laws are like a backup knot.
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:28pm PT
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i was there easter sunday 1976 i was there with two guys from san fran and i was busting holes in the ice.
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:32pm PT
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You must mean Easter 1977. The plane crash was in December 1976. I heard that a chainsaw was used on Easter 1977.
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:34pm PT
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might have been 1977 but i always thought it was 76 oh well could have been all the bud !
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:45pm PT
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I know it went down in dec 76 i was a local read about it in a small artical in the fresno bee but my birthday in jan so i'm always confused about what year it is.
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:54pm PT
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lodestar lumber, "I got mine at lower merced lake"
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Synchronicity
Trad climber
British Columbia, Canada
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:57pm PT
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I was told by an older friend (who knew the person in question) that a certain well-known Canadian climber was among the first up there, and it was supposedly he who used a chainsaw to get through the ice. The story i heard of how he got his "wares" back across the border to Canada was equally entertaining. Any Squamish climbers that could confirm this, or know who I might be referring to?
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 07:10pm PT
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Names are very hard to remember from so long ago and such a crazy time. but no one ever said they were from canadia, but the names dave and liz may help.
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webhead
climber
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Sep 16, 2014 - 07:30pm PT
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If you doubt me I will discribe my first view of the lake. When i came upon the north shore of the lake i could not see anything but i knew something was different because there were big slabs of ice stacked upon each other like pressure ridges. as i steped onto the lake and walked about a hundred yards i could see around the bend in the lake it was then i saw a tail of an airplane sticking out of the ice and two people waving me off my course i learned later they were trying to guide me past holes in the ice.
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squishy
Mountain climber
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Sep 20, 2016 - 03:10pm PT
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while I find this story fascinating, I fear it's going to be a let down when the books and movie finally comes out. All these prideful climbers all wrapped up in bull instead of focusing on simply telling the story.
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Caveman
climber
Cumberland Plateau
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Sep 20, 2016 - 06:42pm PT
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Interesting stories. Several have mentioned jet fuel. It appears that the Howard 500 was powered by two Pratt and Whitney R 2800 Double Wasps. Badass engines! As far as I know they are run on avgas though and not jet fuel. Must have been harsh smoking the stuff!
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