I wanted to do something different with my Dad when he came to visit, and I had read about the remains of a plane crash on the slopes of Mount Yale. I looked up everything I could find about the crash (not much) and got a rough idea of the location, and we set out to find it. I don't know the story of the plane, but I read the crash occured in the 40's and the plane was a C-47 cargo plane.

Dad, Pepper, Jake and I drove up to the North Cottonwood Trailhead and started hiking along the trail to Mount Harvard. According to the sketchy directions I found on the Internet, we needed to go along the trail until it crossed the creek about a mile from the trailhead. After we reached the bridge we headed up into a steep avalanche gully directly to the south from the bridge. We were to cut over to the next avalanche chute to the west, but we didn't know how far to hike south before cutting over. We went up maybe 1/4 mile over dead tangled trees, then decided to cut through the woods to the west until we found the other next. Sure enough, after a short distance we broke out of the woods onto another chute.

Avalanche chutes are no fun to hike up: they're very steep and are covered with brush and downed trees. We put up a small cairn to mark the trail we took through the woods, and started across the slope to get to the middle. In a couple minutes we spotted the first piece of aircraft debris across the slope. While heading over to it, small scraps of aluminum became apparent closer to where we were standing. We examined the scraps then headed over to the large chunk of wreckage that we saw first. This is the piece Dad is posing by in the picture at the top of this page.

After checking out the debris we headed up the slope, passing many pieces of twisted aluminum along the way. Some of the pieces were more interesting than others.

Foto ©2002 by John C. Maki

The crash site is reputed to begin at around 12,000' and debris is strewn 2000' down the avalanche chute. We were hoping to find a piece of an engine or propeller, so we continued up the steep slope. At around 10,850' I crossed the small creek in the middle of the gully and stumbled across a single cylinder in the creek. I took some more pictures and we headed down the slope, satisfied with our discoveries.

Foto ©2002 by John C. Maki

Instead of cutting back east through the woods and finding the initial chute that we took from the bridge, we hiked down to the bottom of the gully and cut approximately northeast through the woods until we found the creek. A short distance later and we were back on the Harvard trail. A pleasant walk back down the trail and we were back in the car and on the way home.