Nuggets In The Scree

The story of Jared's trip to Haiti and the human rights work there can be found at www.behindthemountain.blogspot.com . The tale of Jared and Mattie in Sri Lanka working in tsunami relief is at www.makingadifferance.blogspot.com . Wildmeridian will continue to feature the same mix of rambling, musing, and muttering it always has.

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Location: Missoula, Montana, United States

Friday, December 08, 2006

Pegasus

So because the sea ice is rapidly melting (it is a seasonal thing, not so much the global warming thing, that is apparent else where), the trail out to the historic hut at Cape Evans is closed to recreational travel, therefor the rec department has been offering trips onto the permanant ice shelf where a C-121 Super Constellation (largish cargo plane) crashed in 1970. Coming in on final approach past the point of safe return for fuel to get back to New Zealand, the crew could see the storm coming from across the sound and lost visual of the runway moments before landing. They circled, hoping for a break in the weather until fuel forced them down on an instrument approach. They might have landed well in spite of all that had not snow drifted across the runway during the storm, breaking off their front landing gear and causing the plane to skid and slide and shear off one wing and both propellers. But no fatalities and only minor injuries. If course they were now in a wrecked plane in the middle of the ice shelf in a white out storm, but eventually theu were found and rescued. Later the plane was drug about a mile away from the airfield, as the commander on site thought it bad for morale to have a wrecked plane sitting at the edge of the runway. Now the recreation department offers trips out to the plane where people can crawl about on the wreckage and slide down the snow banks on the fuselage.

Incidentally, the name of the plane was Pegasus.


1 Comments:

Blogger Guillermo said...

Sliding and climbing is all well and good, but will they let you shoot at it?

Speaking of which, are there any weapons on station? How are you policed?

12:23 PM  

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