THE BEST RIDE EVER
By Mark McCullough

Flying high above the Colorado River, through Canyonlands and Cataract Canyon. The Needles to our left and, way over on the right, the Maze. Beautiful. Suddenly the pilot dives the Lama into a bomb run, two river rafts in his sights far ahead. We thread the steep walls of the canyon, flatten out just off the deck, and we give the tourists a high speed haircut as we roar by. Holy Crap! If someone would have stood up, we could have taken his head off!

This trip was in June sometime in the early 80s. We were moving from Moab to a new line in Escalante. The Sefel Portable crew was driving around, maybe 300 miles, but we were going by Lama on a shorter and more direct route. I think the pilot was Randy with Hoskings Exploration Helicopters. And the other two passengers might have been the Jorgenson twins, Brent and Brian. Or maybe Te´ was along, it’s been too many years to remember for sure. You might ask, “Why only three passengers in a Lama?” Well, the middle back seat was occupied by a giant red Gott cooler, strapped in and filled with ice and beer, good Colorado beer too, not the piss water they rent you in Utah.

Ahead of us now, Lake Powell rises up into the canyons. We never could have imagined how that lake looked, it just awestruck us. So we abandoned our plans to turn west at Hite and we set out to explore and have some fun. We flew through labyrinth canyons filled with deep blue water. We looked at glens and grottos and streaked walls. We hovered next to Anasazi ruins built high up on impossible cliffs. And we found a tall, thin spire, submerged, but for its flat top, a picture-perfect LZ and a fantastic spot to cannonball butt-naked into the cool water.

After swimming, we lifted off to head west but now I was feeling nauseous. The strobe of the main rotor flashing through the cabin for hours was making me airsick for the first time ever. That plus the fact that I was probably dehydrated because, even though we had all packed in the beer, not one of us had brought water or even food, not even a candy bar. So, before I could barf in the ship, Randy kept going down-lake until we spotted Bullfrog Marina. We powered down next to the campground and walked over to the store, bought some microwave burritos, and sat on the porch to eat. When we had just finished up, we watched a Park Service truck race up to the Lama. A ranger jumps out and he starts giving the ship the old stink-eye. Unbelievably, he reaches up and starts tugging on the tail rotor, thinking, I guess, that it would spin like a pinwheel for him. A real Ninety Day Wonder. The pilot drops his stuff and sprints straight across the parking lot, the rest of us close behind. Now the ranger is up to the front and he opens the bubble-door. I half expect empty beer cans to roll out onto his boots. But now Randy is on top of him, slams the door in his face and tells the ranger that he has no right to ever, ever, touch his ship. The Smokey tries to save face, he insists we are totally out of line, says that there have been complaints from around the lake, we are in a restricted area, and why the hell didn’t we land at the airstrip up on the butte? Now the pilot starts chewing him a new one. That wasn’t us on the lake, needledick, and one of his passengers was sick and he had to make an emergency pit-stop before he goes tits-up on him, and he is doing much better now and we are out of here anyway, and adios, asshole! We pile in and get the hell out of there while the slack-jawed yokel tries to write up a citation. We dust him and head west, out over the badlands.

Sitting in the back now, I nod off and catch a catnap. Waking up and looking around, I see way to the right and north, the cliffs that front the southern end of the Aquarius Plateau. I had worked Panguitch and Escalante the summer before and now I realize that we are seriously off course. I get the pilot’s attention and hang my arm in front of him pointing to the cliffs off to our starboard. He isn’t convinced and points to the fuel gauge. Oh shit! The way it’s going now, we will have to put down soon out here in the back of nowhere and spend the night out, if not much longer, because who the hell would look for us out in the middle of the Kaiporowits? I try to persuade him to turn. He shouts “Are you sure?” and after my enthusiastic nod, he gives me one long look, shrugs his shoulders, then turns ninety degrees north. We are all nervous now, just sitting and watching the fuel needle dropping. And wondering if we will ever see a road.

Then three things happen in a row. The red light comes on inside the fuel gauge. Christ! Next, the highway just appears, bam!, underneath us. Next, the pilot turns around to me with a huge grin on his face. The survey crew has radioed to him, they have us spotted and we are to turn right again, up the highway. In a couple more minutes we are putting skids to dirt in Escalante. As we all stepped out and had another toast, I thought back on the river and the lake and the canyons and my good, good, friends. And then I realized, I just had the BEST RIDE EVER!

Do you think I embellished this tale somewhat? Hell yeah! I embellish everything now in my old age. But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!