Sunday 7/8:
Get ready for some REAL fishing. We’ve decided to spend at least one more day at Muncho Lake to fish for the wily Lake Trout. The record out of this lake is 50#. A couple of those, and we could have a real fish dinner. During brunch (we’re typically not up in time for breakfast) we watch one of the seaplanes operated by the lodge take off. They’ve got two single engine seaplanes and a land-based twin-engine plane that uses a short, unpaved runway. The planes fly people into nearby lakes for wilderness fishing and fly-over tours of the local mountains. Watching the seaplane take off is fascinating, and I get some good pictures. I casually suggest that maybe we should take such a flight. The scenery from the air must be spectacular. After brunch we begin sorting through our fishing gear. We put fresh line on the relevant reels and dig through the tackle to find stuff that’s appropriate for this lake (single, barb-less hooks only). As we’re sorting, Nancy hears the land-based plane start up, and she’s watching over the trees beyond the lodge to see it take off. We here the engine rev up, Nancy sees a wing against the mountains, then the engine quits, and suddenly there’s a huge plume of thick, black smoke. We jump in the Jeep and rush to the site (less than ½ mile) and find that the plane has crashed in a gravel field next to the road. A dozen or so people are already there. I ask a guy who’s limping away from the burning plane if he’s the pilot, and he says, “Yes”. I ask if there were other people on board and if they’re OK, and he says, “The passenger…he’s dead…he’s lying outside of the plane…I was lucky, I was near the door.” There was nothing anyone could do except watch the raging inferno gut the plane. Except for the tail section, the plane was quickly and totally-consumed by the fire.
We have so many thoughts in the aftermath of witnessing this tragedy--most importantly, profound sympathy for the passenger’s family. He apparently was here with his wife and grown daughter. We imagine that they’re on vacation, perhaps a trip they’ve dreamed about for a lifetime. He decides to fish or just do a fly-over and leaves after breakfast. Perhaps the wife and daughter watched the plane take off—how horrible would that have been. We surmise that the plane took off, had a mechanical malfunction, that the pilot turned the plane around attempting to land, and that the plane hit a power line along the highway (it was clear from the crash scene that he had hit this wire and unlikely that he would have hit it during a normal takeoff). But, we actually know very few of the details. Within 15 minutes of the crash, while the plane was burning ferociously, one of the lodge managers (who I think/hope was in shock) admonished everyone “not to speak to the press” and in the evening when I asked the Swiss lady a simple question about the crash, she said she “couldn’t discuss the details”. It’s amazing that the litigious world in which we live extends to remote Muncho Lake, and that even here, on the edge of the wilderness, people are concerned about the legal implications of a tragedy even as the fire rages on.
It was at least an hour later, Nancy and I were back at our campsite, when the medivac helicopter for the pilot came (who I don’t think was badly injured). About the same time, an ambulance arrived to deal with the body of the passenger. We city folks expect services like this to be around the corner, but here in Muncho Lake, the nearest hospital and fire station are 3 hours away. So if you have a crisis, you deal with it yourself or accept the consequences.
Hours later, to escape, we decided to resume our fishing plans. Headed out on the lake in Das Bot with high expectations. Muncho Lake is billed as a great fishing lake so we had reason to be enthusiastic. We trolled, we cast, we cajoled, we scolded…no fish. But the lake is beautiful, clear turquoise waters cradled by mountains on either side, and it helped ease our minds after the morning’s events.
