Hidden Courage (Atlantis) (8 page)

The flight sectional had markings all over the route he was flying. Because there were no real landmarks to follow through the mountains, and he couldn’t fly over them anyway due to their height, Jack had to find the latitude and longitude of each bend in the valley’s floor and plug them into his GPSs to find his way through the mountains to his destination. He had programmed all the data into the receivers the day before, so all he needed to do was to push a button to bring up the next set of numbers to fly when he had passed the previous checkpoint.

Even with this, the flight was still a very stressful one. He needed to continuously cross-check the map with what he was looking at in front of him against the
GPS
readout to ensure he didn’t stray from his course. Any mistakes in mountains of this size could be fatal. He needed to be on course all the time, and doing it in an environment that contained no visual references that could confirm his locations.

Jack’s destination was marked with a big ‘B’ in red ink on the sectional. It wasn’t a destination per se, as it was simply a location defined by latitude and longitude. He called it Destination B only because it was an easy thing to refer to it by, as in the routing is from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’, the ‘A’ being the airport he had just departed from.

The winds that flow through mountains cannot follow a straight line as they do in low-level elevations. Instead, they move through, ricocheting off one mountain to the next, finding a path of least resistance until they are through to the other side. This kind of irregular flow creates violent turbulence that can make flying a light airplane through them an arduous task on the best of days.

Jack had his hands full. He was working the stick and rudder in all directions, trying to keep his altitude and course steady, while reading the
GPS
and confirming with the map. Every now and then he’d receive a tremendous shot from the side that would knock his wings almost vertical to the ground.

Instinctively, Jack added hard opposite stick and rudder, flipping the plane 180 degrees from one side to the other, bringing himself back on course, then hauling the wings back 90 degrees to level flight. This kind of flying wasn’t much fun. It was hard and it was frightening. Jack was staring at death by the minute.

Nervous and sweating, Jack followed one valley east for about fifteen minutes. He then banked hard and turned down another, heading south. He followed this nondescript valley as the
GPS
directed him to do so, while cross-checking the map. With more turbulence and even higher mountains, he negotiated his way though until he came upon the end of the valley. It was blocked by a saddle between two larger mountains, and Jack felt a sense of dread as he stared at it. The saddle blocked the end of the valley like a dam, and its height looked to be at least 12,000 feet, the adjacent mountains much higher and capped by snow.

“Holy shit,” Jack yelled out in surprise.

He advanced the throttle to gain altitude. He’d been flying at about 12,000 feet already and had hoped that the pass would be slightly lower, but the map was correct. If he continued on at that altitude, he would crash into the saddle and die.

He slowly climbed to 12,500 feet. It wasn’t a comfortable clearance, but it would be enough, he felt. As he neared the saddle, the turbulence kicked up and flowed like a river over the top of the saddle and back down into the valley on the other side.

“What the HELL!” Jack called out in surprise.

Suddenly, Jack got caught in the downward flow into the valley. He flashed a look at the altimeter and realized he was losing altitude as the wind pushed him lower. At the rate he was descending, he knew he wasn’t going to clear the mountain pass. Jack surveyed the narrow valley behind him. He thought about turning around and flying back down the valley to gain a higher altitude, but realized that there wasn’t enough room to do so. The valley just wasn’t wide enough for him to make a U-turn.

Frantically, he pushed the throttle to full power and pulled back on the stick. At that high altitude already, the performance of the tiny plane was unimpressive. With only a minute before impact, he was still losing altitude. He looked at the side of the mountain on his left. There was less than 200 feet between his wingtip and the rocky face.

Carefully, he entered a shallow bank toward the mountainside, hoping to find a spot with less of a downdraft. While fighting the turbulence to keep his wings steady, he looked down at the altimeter and noticed it had stop descending. Holding his position, he watched as the altitude slowly inched back up to 12,000 feet.

“Come on, baby, climb, CLIMB,” Jack yelled out, as fear raged inside him.

He was so close to the saddle that he could now see the high elevation scrub brush that dotted the top, as well as several large boulders. Jack watched in horror as he closed on the ridge.

“Oh no, I’m gonna hit,” Jack exclaimed in disbelief.

In his panicked state, he searched for a location that would yield the softest impact. On the right side of the saddle was a ragged cliff and some boulders. On the left side of the saddle, he spotted some dense looking bushes hugging the steep upward sloping terrain. This was it. If he was going to crash, the brush would be his only chance for survival.

As he flew along the left side of the mountain, he banked slightly right toward the saddle and headed for the brush. Suddenly, he caught a slight updraft. Looking out in front of him, he was now moving slightly higher than the saddle.

Jack saw a glimmer of hope.

Jack knew that, on his present course, he was going to impact the mountain. His chance of survival was practically nonexistent. His only hope for survival was the slight updraft he was now flying in. He calculated that if he continued on his course and banked sharply toward the saddle at the last possible second, he might clear it before the downdraft forced him to impact the mountain.

Jack was mere feet from the side of the mountain, his wingtip nearly touching it as he flew. He could see he was a couple hundred feet above the saddle and inching higher. It was now or never.

In one fast movement, he snapped the stick full right and stomped on the rudder, breaking his flight path off right at the last second of impact. He was now out of danger of impacting the mountainside, having cleared it by a few feet, and was now skimming across its side as he headed into the downdraft.

Jack stared directly at the saddle. It formed a U shape, where the tops of the U were the mountaintops and the bottom of the U was the bottom of the saddle. He was rapidly descending from the left side of the U into the saddle, with less than one hundred feet of clearance. The further he moved into the downdraft, the faster he descended.

Frantically, Jack searched his mind, hoping to find another solution that would yield a safe outcome – but there was none to be had. He wasn’t sure if he was going to clear the saddle. It was going to be close.

As Jack began to enter the saddle, he watched the ground race up toward him. He glanced at his gauges and took note that his altitude was temporarily holding.

With his floats just feet above the rocky land, Jack worked the controls and anxiously waited for impact.

As he crossed the apex of the saddle, he could see the needles of the tiny pine trees that sparsely lined the top of the ridgeline.

Suddenly, the plane’s floats caught one of the bushes, causing it to slow and pitch slightly forward.

“Shit, noooo!” Jack blurted out.

Jack, quick in reflex, felt the sudden deceleration and instinctively pulled back on the stick, hard. As the momentum of the plane forced the floats through the brush, he heard the sickening sound of branches against metal.

Jack’s reflexive input on the controls raised the nose just in time to clear the ground. The floats broke free from the brush’s grasp as the saddle now began to drop away, down the other side of the valley.

The plane, having slowed form the soft hit, was now descending again, but descending down into the valley.

As the land began to fall away, Jack allowed his altitude to descend as he kept his nose low to build airspeed.

Moments later, the tiny plane had built up enough speed for Jack to raise the nose. He was now gaining altitude and in the clear. Far out in front of him, the valley now opened up and spread out wide before him.

“Yesss!” Jack yelled out in exhilaration. “Made it!”

Jack stared briefly at the broken twigs that clung to his floats.

“Wow, I don’t think I could get any closer without dying,” Jack said to himself.

Jack retrained his eyes on the valley ahead of him. With a sudden gasp, he saw it: Destination B.

“Oh my God, there it is!” Jack exclaimed.

Looking off to his right, he gazed upon the majestic mountain that had been the object of his dreams for over two years now.

Destination B was the highest mountain in the area, soaring 17,254 feet above sea level. The shape of the mountain was that of a pyramid, and it sat on a flat plateau like an altar. From a distance, it appeared as if something had scraped the snow off the mountain with a rake from top to bottom, creating long vertical furrows in its faces. The approach to the mountain looked difficult and the climb itself looked even harder due to the long, icy, fluted trenches that spanned the entire height of the mountain.

As Jack neared the mountain, he started to gain altitude. The maximum altitude the tiny plane could climb to was roughly 13,000 feet. It would take some time to get there, so he made large sweeping circles around the mountain as he inched higher. Thirty minutes later, he had finally reached the limit of the plane’s ability. He could fly no higher.

The valley around the mountain was as beautiful as it was rugged. There were deep canyons and rivers, as well as high snowcapped mountains that filled Jack’s field of view. At the lower elevations, he could see lush green forests and tiny rivers. At the higher elevations, the forests became sparse and less green, taking on a more brownish color due to bare ground showing through and becoming more visible as the vegetation thinned. Still higher, vegetation was limited to patches of scrub brush that dotted some mountaintops and passes. The elevation above 12,000 feet contained heavy snow and ice, a condition that remained all year long. As he circled Destination B, he marveled at its magnificence. Nowhere in the
US
could this kind of dramatic scenery be found. Jack was in awe of his surroundings and snapped dozens of photos as he flew.

By the time he leveled off, he had spotted a point of interest on the eastern side of the mountain. Even though the fluted trenches covered all sides of the mountain, there were two ridges, nearly 180 degrees apart, that rose up from the plateau below and connected to the mountain higher up. If someone were inclined to climb this magnificent beauty, they could eliminate half the arduous task of climbing from the bottom by traversing the easier terrain along the ridge, then continuing from the halfway point to the top.

At the base of the main mountain, and cradled between the two side ridges, sat a snowfield no bigger than a football field. It was relatively flat, but dropped off dramatically 3,000 feet or so below the plateau, then gradually descended over rough, rocky terrain to the valley floor below. As Jack flew slowly by it, he mentally etched it into his memory. Checking his altitude, then scanning back to the snowfield, Jack estimated that it sat at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet.

“Wow, that's over seven thousand feet of climbing from the plateau to the top of the mountain,” Jack said to himself. “That's a butt load of climbing.”

Rechecking his gauges, Jack noticed his fuel level at the halfway mark. He'd been flying for almost two hours and decided that he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances in such a hostile environment. With the push of a couple of buttons on the two
GPS
receivers, Jack dialed in his return route to the airport.

“A gas gauge is only accurate when it’s on empty,” Jack said, coining the old aviation adage.

He glanced back at the snowfield, then the ridge, and worked his eyes up the fluted snow cliffs to the summit, taking in the striking profile of the mountain one last time for the day.