Splash Down on Muddy Lake

During the eighties I was a radio technician and we installed and serviced telecommunication systems in the vast undeveloped parts of northern Canada. From small communities to mineral mines and exploration camps in the middle of nowhere we travelled in a variety of small aircraft to get to and from our work sites in all weather conditions year-round. This is a recounting of one of those trips.

It was in the middle of summer when Chevron Minerals decided the gold deposit they found in the mountains near the BC, Yukon border was viable to be developed into a producing mine. We got the contract to provide telecommunication from the mine site to the outside world. The nearest community being Atlin BC some one hundred miles away, but there was no road access to this remote region, so aircraft were the only method available. There was no airstrip in the mountainous terrain, but a small fluid field was a short distance from the mine property.

We loaded our equipment and gear into the back of the old Taku Air DHC2 Beaver floatplane tied to the dock on Atlin Lake. Our pilot was Dick Bond an aged gentleman with many thousands of hours of flight time recorded in his logbook. He was described by the local newspaper to be: “...the definition of the old bold pilot. He was a feisty, wiry, chain smoking coffee drinker who'd had more close calls than Bayer's got pills.” He and his daughter Theresa owned and operated Taku Air the small local airline that served the needs of gold prospectors, sheep and goat hunters and contractors such as myself needing a ride into the steep jagged back country.

My work partner Lee was a newly certified private pilot and he climbed into the back seat of the Beaver while I assumed the forward left seat. Dick finished his cigarette, tossing the butt into the lake and climbed up the two metal rungs and took his place behind the yolk of the plane. He started the engine and let it warm up as he scanned the various gauges on the dash displaying the status of the loud, powerful radial engine spinning at 2300 RPMs just a few inches ahead of my knees. All good and buckled up we taxied out from the dock and turned into the wind.

“We are a bit heavy,” Dick said as we raced along the lake’s surface. At speed he rotated the little plane and we climbed to around 3000 ft and turned east to where the mine site was located. Golden Bear was not yet a real mine, it was a prospecting spike camp of canvas tents and a cook shack, it was located next to the small mountain puddle, named Muddy Lake that would serve as our landing destination.

An uneventful 45-minute flight put us on approach to that small lake and we were back about four miles as Dick set us on the glide path. This would be a good time to mention Dick’s smoking had gifted him to suffer from Emphysema which would cause him to go into long forceful coughing fits that seemed to last a very long time.

We were about two miles from the lake when Dick began to cough a bit, then in greater volume and force he heaved as he struggled to get air into his lungs before he coughed it out all too soon. I turned to look at him and his face was hinting a pale blue, I suspect from oxygen starvation. And then he fell back into his seat and went silent.

“Looks like I picked the wrong seat,” said Lee from behind me.

“What’s the stall speed,” I asked him as it was clear that I would be following his instructions to put us hopefully safely on the deck. It was at that time that everything went into slow motion as my focus and attention to detail was turned up to high. I checked the air speed and altitude and Lee assured me we were in good shape…so far.

The lake was getting closer and I could see the surface was slightly rippled from a breeze out of the south. It was a crosswind that would have little effect Lee informed. “Focus on the speed and how much lake we don’t have to land on,”

It was a small lake a little less than a mile in diameter with rocky shores. Thankfully there was no wood, ice or other debris to be seen floating on the surface, nor was there a ring of trees surrounding the lake which was getting smaller the more I studied it.

“Drop us down to 400 feet and slow the air speed,” Lee directed me. I pushed the throttle in a bit and the slowing revs of the engine reported success. A slight push on the yoke seemed to take forever to get us lower, but eventually we got into the 400-foot line. Lee reached through the seats and adjusted the flaps to landing position. The plane slowed more, and Lee said to keep it steady and maintain this speed.

Dick began coughing again and I recall thinking “Good, he’s still alive.” As my focus was looking through the windshield, not risking a side glance at the pilot.

The lake was coming up fast, perhaps as fast as my heart rate was, Lee was coaching me all the while giving me directions on maintaining our speed, elevation and attitude. Just as we flew over the shoreline Lee told me to slow us down and hold the elevation steady as our speed decreased further.

We dropped slowly to just a few feet above the lake surface and I was preparing for the next tense steps when Dick straightened up, grabbed the yoke, pushed in the throttle control and we glided to a perfect landing at a safe distance from the beach.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he said quietly and went into another coughing fit.

Thankfully, that was the only adventure on that job, and we made it back to Atlin with no problems.

Dick died a few months later and that was the last time we flew to Golden Bear Mine in a fixed wing. The work we were to do required helicopter support, so it was a whole new list of risks to contend with. But I’m here writing this for you now, so I obviously lived through my exciting and dangerous travels here in the North. I have similar adventure stories I can share and thankfully everybody involved goes home with all their fingers and toes.

After spending hundreds of hours in small frail aircraft travelling into the hidden places of darkest Canada in stupid weather conditions and landing on runways that were little more than wide places between the trees or on steep mountainside runways, the carcases of failed attempts parked on the sides of the ‘runway’. Some had been stripped of their engines and other expensive parts.

The vast barren Tundra was a whole new set of challenges. It is a place where you truly feel small, frail and of little significance in the indescribable place where it is the most beautiful nothing you will ever see. The Aurora dancing above with the Milky Way as the gleaming background.

I am happy to report despite some hard landings and a couple mechanical faults, I and all who I travelled with me made it home safe and sound. We did leave two helicopters on the mountaintops; one due to a technical failure and the other was pilot error when a collision of a rotor blade and a guy cable holding a transmitter repeater to the top of the rock. The cable won the match and the chopper suffered some serious damage to the drive system and internal framing. Have you ever seen a dragonfly after it hit a windshield? Well a crashed chopper looks remarkably similar.

Sadly, that old Taku Air Beaver met its end with Dick’s daughter Theresa at the controls in 1986. She and four others lost their lives attempting to land on Dease Lake, northern British Columbia where the crash was attributed to a glassy water surface making it difficult to judge the true height above the water where a misjudgement in the plane's attitude caused it to nosedive into the lake