An Eclectic Mind

Wild horses, antelope, and sheep — oh, my!

I flew from Grand Canyon Airport to Page Municipal Airport (at Lake Powell) again yesterday.

Each time I make this trip, I follow pretty much the same route, hugging the southeast corner of the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) until I get to the Little Colorado River Gorge and then heading pretty much due north. I wind up just outside the SFRA near Marble Canyon so I can show off Navajo Bridge and Lees Ferry before a quick flight past Horseshoe Bend, the Glen Canyon Dam, and Wahweap Marina. If the wind is in my favor, I can touch down at Page within an hour of departure from Grand Canyon. The same distance by car would take about 2-1/2 to 3 hours.

The terrain for most of this flight — from the Little Colorado River Gorge north, in fact — is high desert — technically the famous “Painted Desert” — and relatively barren. There are, however, some interesting features if you look hard for them. Since I’m always trying to point out interesting things for my passengers to see, I look very hard.

Ruins are relatively common. Round rock foundations are the remains of ancient hogans. (This area is on the Navajo reservation.) There are also the remains of animal enclosures, usually build with the same rock. There are complete hogans, some of which may still be occupied for at least part of the year, and ranches with hogans, sheds, outhouses, animal enclosures, and other buildings. All of these things are scattered across an immense landscape that takes more than 30 minutes to cross at 120 miles per hour.

There are also animals.

One of the questions I’m asked quite often by passengers is whether I see wildlife from the helicopter. I do, but not so often as to make it a common occurrence. It depends on where I’m flying, what time of day it is, and how hard I’m looking for wildlife.

Take antelope, for example. There are a few “prairies” north of I-40 and west of Mt. Kendricks in northern Arizona where, if I look hard enough, I can usually spot a herd of antelope. I know where to look and I remember to look. They’re hard to spot because their color matches the terrain so well. It usually takes movement to spot them. When I see them and point them out, my passengers never see them at first. I have to slow down, turn around, and drop a few hundred feet as we approach the herd. That gets them running a bit so my passengers can see them. As soon as they’re spotted — and photographed, if the passengers remember to whip out a camera — I move away. It’s not my goal to terrify the antelope population of northern arizona by buzzing them with a helicopter.

(When I flew at the Grand Canyon, I always saw at least one elk a day in the forest on one of my first or last flights for the day. My passengers never saw them and, since swooping around to show them wasn’t possible, I simply stopped pointing them out. It would be my own private treat.)

There are wild horses in numerous places throughout Arizona. I wrote a bit about them here. They’re also on the route I take from the Grand Canyon to Page. Today, my passengers and I spotted at least four herds of them — the most ever. They’re a lot easier to spot than antelope because of their size and color. But they’re also a lot easier to confuse with cattle. I look for long legs and long, thick tails.

There are domesticated sheep in various places throughout northern Arizona. We flew over a good-sized herd tended by four dogs today. They were a lot farther south than I expected — I usually see them farther north. This could be a different herd, of course. There were about 50 animals in that herd and the dogs did a pretty good job of keeping them together, even when my helicopter spooked them. (Yes, I had to do a circle for my passengers to see them; they were pretty small.)

In the past, I’ve also seen javelinas (pronounced have-a-leenas) from the air. They’re usually in herds of a dozen or more animals and I’ve only spotted them when I was alone, flying a lot lower than I do with passengers on board.

Of course, I don’t have photos of any of this. I’m flying and my hands are usually busy. My passengers never seem to remember to send me their shots. But one of these days, I’ll have some photos to share.

Flying, Travels with Maria animals, Arizona, desert, Grand Canyon, helicopters, Navajo, Page

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Jack and the thunderstorm.

I made this photo of our dog, Jack, up at Howard Mesa a few weeks ago. Mike and I had gone for a walk with him along one of the dirt roads on the mesa top. As we walked, a storm was coming in. The clouds looked menacing overhead. I used a wide-angle lens (16mm) to add the distortion you see here, hoping for a kind of surreal effect. Not sure if I achieved it, but this is one of my favorite pictures of Jack the Dog.

About the Photos animals, Found Photos, Howard Mesa, photography

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How I spent yesterday morning.

At 5 AM yesterday morning, I was at Wickenburg Airport (E25), filling two 5.5-gallon plastic fuel cans with 100LL. I had already topped off the helicopter’s tanks and it was sitting on the ramp, waiting for me in the predawn darkness. I was scheduled to do a wildlife survey in northern Arizona at 6:30. I’d have to pick up my passenger at Williams, AZ (KCMR), an hour away by helicopter. There was no fuel at Williams, and the closest fuel stop to Williams and our survey area was 20 NM north at Valle (40G). The FBO didn’t open until 8 AM, so I wouldn’t be able to get fuel before then. The survey area was 40 NM from fuel at Valle. I wanted my client to get as much air time as possible before our first refueling stop, so I figured I’d put the 11 gallons of 100LL that I carried with me into the tanks when I arrived in Williams.

So that explains why I was at the self-serve island, filling two plastic gas cans before dawn.

A while later, I was airborne, heading north to Williams. The two gas cans were strapped into the back passenger seats. They were good cans and wouldn’t leak on my leather seats. On board was an overnight bag, in case the job went two days, a 6-pack cooler full of bottled water, and the usual survival gear. I was listening to Steely Dan on my iPod as the sun rose at my 2 o’clock position. Moments later, I crossed the ridge east of Antelope Peak, clearing it by a mere 100 feet. From there, I sped north at 110 knots airspeed to get to Williams as quickly as possible.

At Williams, AZ

I had a tail wind and the wind was blowing pretty good at Williams. 210 at 9 gusting to 18 is what the AWOS reported. There was no one in the pattern. There never is at Williams. I made all my calls, then came around from the north to land into the wind on the big, empty ramp.

The terminal, which is very nice but completely underutilized, was unlocked. “Out of Service” signs appeared on both restrooms and the water fountain. I peeked into a stall in the Ladies room. There was water in the toilet bowl. That meant it would flush, even if it didn’t refill. I had to go so I took my chances. It worked fine. That made me wonder why the signs were there.

I was topping off the tanks with those two cans of fuel when my passenger arrived. He showed me maps and we made a plan. The main part of the job was to fly down the side of a 1,000-foot cliff face, 50 to 200 feet off the top, depending on where the rock ledges were. The cliff ran north to south. The wind was coming out of the south. Although my client suggested starting from the south, I pointed out that if we started from the north, the cliff face would be on his side of the aircraft and I’d be able to fly into the wind. That would make things easier all around. He agreed.

I added some oil, burning my fingers on the hot dip stick. We climbed in, I started up, and we took off, into the wind. A westerly heading put us on course for the survey area.

It was about a 30-minute flight. We chatted about this and that. My client was a youngish guy — certainly younger than me — and had spent more than 200 hours in airplanes and 20 hours in helicopters doing surveys like the one we were doing. As the morning wore on, he’d share a lot of his knowledge about raptors — specifically red-tailed hawks and golden eagles — with me.

The Survey

Satellite view of the cliff face we flew down.

We reached the survey area and I geared my mind down from 110-knot flight through 60-knots and finally down to about 20-knots. We’d survey the cliff face at this slow speed, about 50 to 100 feet away from the rock wall.

While this sounds very dangerous, it really wasn’t bad at all. Although it had been windy at Williams, it wasn’t very windy along the cliff. That might be because the wind was coming from the southeast and the tilted mesa beyond the cliff was blocking the wind, or, more likely, it simply might not have been as windy this far west. So It wasn’t as if I had to fight the wind. Flying was easy.

There were just two of us on board, so I had plenty of power, even though I was flying at about 7,000 feet MSL. I was even able to bring the helicopter into a rock, solid out-of-ground-effect hover a few times as needed.

Best of all, if I had any kind of problem — loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE), settling with power, engine failure — I could easily build speed by pulling away from the cliff face to my right, where a huge, open, flat valley offered unlimited landing zones at least 500 feet below us.

Frankly, I couldn’t have asked for a better setup for this kind of work. It gave me an opportunity to practice simple flying skills — especially OGE hovering and sideways flight — without having to battle the wind or worry about escape routes.

It took at least an hour to travel down the cliff face from north to south. There was a radar dome at the very south end and we could clearly hear it in our headsets, the closer we got to it. By the time we were within 1/4 mile, the sound was very annoying. I dropped beneath it to round the end of the mesa and it silenced. I realized that this was what “below the radar” really meant.

On the other side, we followed the edge of the mesa, which wasn’t nearly as well defined, north. Again, there wasn’t much wind. There also wasn’t much wildlife to survey. We popped over the top of the mesa and began following small canyons on its east side. We were looking for raptor nests. We’d found some on the cliff face, but they could also be in tall trees.

The mesa-top stuff was low-level — probably 50 to 100 feet AGL — at 30 to 60 knots airspeed. This is considerably more dangerous than the cliff face work we did earlier. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to recover from a settling with power or engine failure incident at that low airspeed/altitude combination. One of the reasons I got the job to work for this client is that I was willing to do this kind of flying. The first company they called — a flight school — refused to let its pilots fly like this. I’m willing to take this risk, so their loss is my gain.

At one point, I landed in a wide canyon so I could strip off my outer shirt. It was getting hot in the cockpit, flying so slowly with the sun shining in. We also dipped in the cooler for cold water. I didn’t bother shutting down. It was a 5 minute break and we got right back to business when we were done.

We’d flown for 2 hours from Williams when I decided it was time to go back for fuel. We traced a route northward to the edge of the survey area, then cut east to Valle. I used my GPS to pick the most direct route. There wasn’t much of interest along the way. Northern Arizona has lots of high desert plateau areas that are covered with dried grasses and a sprinkling of trees.

It took about 25 miles to get to Valle. We had a tail wind.

At Valle

Valle Airport is about 25 miles south of the Grand Canyon. I won’t pretend to know its history. I do know, however, that it’s home of the Planes of Fame Museum, which is an excellent little warbird museum. And I know that the lobby of the airport terminal is absolutely crammed with antique cars and trucks in museum quality condition.

And there were no “Out of Service” signs on the rest rooms.

The FBO guy filled the helicopter tanks and the two fuel cans. The idea with the cans was that if I flew too long on the survey and we couldn’t make it all the way back to Valle to get fuel, I could always land out in the desert, shut down, and add the 11 gallons. That would get me another 40 minutes of flight time, which was enough to reach any number of fueling locations.

I paid for the fuel and we went back outside. The FBO guy had managed to drench the fuel cans with fuel, so I had to dry them off and close them tightly before I could load them back in. I put shop towels under them to protect the seats. Still, one of them leaked a tiny bit during the flight that followed — not enough to do any damage, but enough for me to catch the occasional smell of 100LL.

We headed west again. It took nearly 35 minutes to reach the survey area. We had a head wind.

More Survey Stuff and the Flight Home

We spent the next two hours inching our way along the same cliff face. The light was better now and we spotted another nest. We also did another nearby cliff face and spent a bunch of time zigzagging along the mesa top. We found three more nests up there. The wind had also picked up, so the flying was a bit more challenging. But I’ve flown worse.

Then we headed south to check another area. We found an active prairie dog village there.

And then we were done.

I dropped my passenger off without shutting down. It was 85 NM back to Wickenburg from that point and my goal was to get there without having to detour for fuel or stop to tap into that 11 gallons on board. I bee-lined it, cruising at my best range speed of 100 knots.

For a while, as I flew over empty desert, I thought I might not make it. I considered the kind of place I could land and refuel without bothering anyone. There was no airport on or near my flight path. There wasn’t much of anything other than small mountain ranges, canyons, and rocky outcroppings. I passed over only 3 paved roads.

Then I was 15 miles north of Wickenburg, with about 8 gallons of fuel on board. No problem.

I landed and shut down. It was 95°F on the ramp. I put the helicopter away.

I’d flown 6.5 revenue hours and had learned a hell of a lot about birds.

Flying animals, Arizona, helicopters, Williams

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Showing off.

I bought Alex the Bird a stand that he can hang out on in my office. The idea was really to take it down to Rear Window (our Phoenix condo) so he can hang out with me when I work there. He really hates it there and I know he’d like it better if he could spend more time with me. But since neither of us spend much time at Rear Window, the stand hasn’t made it down there yet.

Anyway, I realized that with him standing behind me, I could probably get some good photos of him with my computer’s built-in iSight camera. So I took a shot.

Then I realized that I could also make a movie with the camera. So I fired up iMovie and recorded directly from the iSight into an iMovie file. Here’s the result. Alex can talk up a storm when he’s in the mood, but he wasn’t at his best this evening. I’ll try again another time.

Days in My Life, Multimedia animals, birds, videos

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We give away our chickens.

I’ve had chickens on and off for the past 8 or so years. We had them for fresh eggs; we never ate the chickens.

My first batch was 8 little chicks I raised from 2-days old. They spent the first eight weeks or so in our garage, under a heat lamp. We visited with them and played with them. On warm days, when I was working in the yard, I brought them out to scratch in the dirt. They had names.

We added a chicken coop to a shed near our horse corral and put them in it when it got warm enough. During the day, we’d leave the coop door open and the chickens would come out and scratch around in the dirt and horse poop.

Then one day, three of them were gone.

It was coyotes, of course. They’d discovered the chickens, which were easy prey. Coyotes grab their prey and make off with them. One year, with another batch of chickens, I actually saw a coyote running off with a chicken in its mouth.

No more days on the loose.

A friend and I built a fenced-in yard for them with a ramp from the coop into the yard. That kept the coyotes out — they didn’t seem to want to work at digging under the fence to get at the chickens.

But it didn’t stop the neighbor’s dogs. One Thanksgiving day, the doorbell rang and my neighbors brood of children were standing there. “Our dogs are eating your chickens,” they announced. We ran down to the coop to find the dogs in the yard, chasing the chickens around. They hadn’t gotten any of the chickens yet and they ran off before we could grab them.

We put electric wire around the base of the yard’s fence. The neighborhood dogs got to meet that wire one-by-one and didn’t come back.

Meanwhile, we were going through batches of chickens. They don’t live forever, you know. Sometimes they’d simply disappear. We put bird netting over the top of the yard — no small task, since a few trees grow in there. When we got down to just one chicken, we’d give it away. A few months later, we’d start again with chicks. But I never got too attached to them, since I knew what would eventually happen.

We also started getting roosters, hoping they’d work with the chickens to keep the flock going. We did have one hen get broody and hatch two chicks. She wasn’t a good mom. The other chickens soon killed the babies.

Last time this year, I took delivery of over a dozen chicks. I raised them and set them up in the coop/yard as I do every year. They started producing eggs in the late spring, not long after I went away for my summer job. My husband was soon giving away 3 dozen eggs a week. When I got home in the fall, they were still at it.

But then they started disappearing again. We couldn’t figure out how. Were they getting out, to be killed by dogs or coyotes? Or was something getting in? We checked the coop and yard regularly. We adjusted the bird netting. Each week, we’d lose one or two birds.

We were down to seven when we realized that it could be hawks getting in at the very top of the coop. There was an opening there about 6 inches tall, just under the roof. Small birds used this access way to get into the coop and eat scratch. Mike and I closed it up with chicken wire.

Two more birds disappeared. Now it had to be hawks coming in through the yard. There was no way we could completely cover the yard with bird netting — the trees in there were just too big and bushy. So I cut off access to the yard, limiting the chickens to an 8 x 8 coop that was open on three sides.

That’s when the chickens stopped laying eggs.

It’s also when we started spending a lot more time in Phoenix. Although the chickens can be on their own for up to a week — they have automatic water and their hanging feeder can hold a week or two worth of food (depending on the number of chickens, of course) — it was silly to have to worry about them when they weren’t doing their job. I couldn’t open up the yard again; I’d just start losing them again. So I did the next best thing: I gave them away to a friend who also has chickens.

She lives in Wenden in farm country. Her chickens run lose in her back yard and seem very happy and healthy. Yes, she occasionally does pick one out for a good chicken dinner, but that’s life. I figured that my four hens and one rooster might go back to work for her — especially if they got an inkling of what might happen if they didn’t.

So now we’re chickenless.

Days in My Life animals

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