9:16 P.M. (MST)
South of War Eagle Mountain.
I WAS WIRED TIGHT, hands locked on the yoke, doing everything I could to outthink and outfly what was happening to us.
Right from the start, our “short hop” to Mountain Home from KREO hit problems, big ones. A few minutes in the air, as we crossed over the first of the Owyhee Mountains, weather formed again dead ahead of us, almost as if it were coming out of hiding.
No longer were the skies friendly and safe. The turbulence was worse than anything we had gone through, very rough stuff. I would take a triple ride on the Apocalypse at Six Flags Magic Mountain before going through this turbulence again.
That’s when Heather shouted, “Mom! Your door is not shut!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Somehow, getting in and out of the passenger side in Rome, the girls had shut the door but had failed to completely latch it, something that had never happened in our years of flying together. Struggling against the turbulence, Jayann and Heather fought to get the thing latched.
Not good. Foreboding.
At 8600 feet and in a slight climb, I kept my cool, staying calm and matter-of-fact, flying the plane while putting into practice the many lessons learned over the years, saying to myself, “If I can get us over the Owyhees, the rest will be downhill. Piece of cake from there.” I held our course, keeping LIMA stabilized while constantly checking for ice on the wings. Scanning the horizon, seeing monstrous cumulus clouds forming very rapidly and already reducing my visibility in certain directions, I knew on a gut level that I was in for a fight.
What gave me a reasonable level of comfort was that when a cloud formed, I could still see the terrain in that direction. Yes. The turbulence we were going through was way more than I expected, but I was still confident that I had the skills as a pilot to get us to Mountain Home. In addition, given that highest mountain peak, towering at 8400 feet, was still south of us, I reasoned that we were going to be fine.
Then. But then…
A towering cumulus cloud formed very fast directly in our path. Hmm.
Run into that thing and I would be flying at zero visibility. Immediately I turned LIMA south at a sharp angle, only to see another cloud forming right in front of us. My heart started racing. I had flown in some tricky situations before but nothing quite this bad.
I was playing chess with the weather and losing.
Turbulence became extreme as air currents were ripped right out from under us, literally leaving us with nothing to fly on, causing LIMA to drop hundreds of feet at a shot, terrifying Heather and Jayann. After the first drop, I managed to stabilize the plane and get LIMA back to about 9000 feet. But this whole deal was not good.
Then the stakes went up another notch.
Seeing the cloud to the south rising fast, I realized that we were not going to be able to outrun it. In minutes it would block us off, even blind me to what lay ahead. Quickly, I checked behind me, in the vain hope that perhaps I could turn around. No. In seconds the clouds there had created a solid wall; the option of turning around no longer existed.
Heather, holding her legs tight underneath her, cried in fear, her life flashing before her. I focused on trying to get us out of this mess, not wanting to think about the fact that my daughter’s greatest fears were being realized. Over the headset, Jayann’s voice tried to reassure her. “It’s okay. We are going to be okay.” But Jayann saw the concern on my face. She knew we needed help.
That’s when she prayed, “Dear Lord, this is a lot scarier than we thought it was going to be. It is a lot rougher, and we are afraid. Please calm our hearts and minds. Bring us safely through this. I know that You are going to protect us. Please put Your angels on our wings, and You will get us through this. Amen.”
“Amen,” I agreed. As did Heather.
What seemed inevitable was. In seconds, clouds swallowed us, resulting in me flying blind, zero visibility in front, only a little below. When LIMA broke through the clouds, we saw something terrifying.
We were heading straight into a mountain. Nose in.
I broke LIMA hard right, using every skill I had to control her, but we barely cleared the ridge, less than 500 feet, very close to the trees. We were trapped in a dangerous situation of flying in the thin line of space below the clouds and just above the terrain. “Scud running.” Not what any pilot wanted.
All of my training echoed in my ears: “As a private pilot, you shouldn’t even be in the clouds unless you are instrument rated. If you have a problem with a plane, you have to find a place to bring it down.” Which was exactly what I was doing. I was looking for somewhere to land. Problem was we were flying over rugged mountains covered in timber.
I had never planned to be in this situation.
Second by second, holding my calm, I did everything I knew to do. Checked for ice on the wings. Scanned the instrument panel for my flight conditions. Responded to the turbulence. But everything was going from bad to worse. I was losing visibility. The space between the clouds and the mountains was becoming less and less.
I was at maximum mental pilot load, knowing full well that I was responsible for calling the shots. I had gotten us into this mess, this “no man’s zone.” I was in the air, desperately wishing we were on the ground. I tried to fight off the thought, “Jayann, Heather, and I could die in the next few minutes.”
LIMA cleared another ridge. I glanced at my GPS. We were 29 minutes from Mountain Home.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, our speed collapsed. One second, we were going 110 mph; now we were at 40 mph. A reverse current had ripped the airflow right out from under our wings. As hard as LIMA had tried to get us through this nightmare, she was now stalling.
The stall horn blared. My controls went to mush. We were falling from the skies.
Yet, as if seeing a slide show in my head, I knew what to do. With the little control I had left, I pitched LIMA’s nose down, not up, because that is what you do in a stall. You put the nose down to try to get some lift.
I begged for some of that lift under our wings. LIMA kept falling, falling, falling down toward a ravine until, then, yes, I felt some life back in the controls. Immediately I reared LIMA’s nose up as hard as I could.
It was a race now between LIMA’s ability to accelerate and the ground rushing up from below.
Would we make it? Did we have enough power to rise up out of the stall in time? The engine was running as hard as it could…50 mph…60 mph…75 mph. I was literally leaning backward on the yoke. But my faithful plane didn’t have enough horsepower.
Then, I knew. We were going to slam into the mountain. We simply did not have enough altitude to recover from the stall. As trees and terrain raced toward us, there was nothing left for me to do but say goodbye to my wife and daughter.
“I am sorry. I don’t think we are going to make it. I love you.”