On October 1st, 1966, at about 8:30 pm, West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashed here. It was on approach to Portland Airport when something went wrong with their autopilot and they descended too low. All 13 passengers and 5 crew died in the crash. Wikipedia has a good, if dry, account of the final moments on the accompanying web page. When you get here though , and think about how 18 people died right here in a blink of an eye...Tell me if yours are dry. I can't think of such a large loss of life in the MHNF other than the group up on Mt. Hood in the 80s. Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary.
Please treat this special place as hallowed ground. Take nothing but pictures, and the info for the cache.
Park at the waypoint, or back at the Old Baldy trailhead, and head North on the Plaza Trail. If you park at the parking waypoint you'll walk up the old road to another "Secret" at the first stage. The old Plaza Guard Station used to be here. It was the hub of communications for the lookouts nearby, and was responsible for the trails in the area. If you watch for it as you walk, you can still see the old phone wire laying on the ground, and the insulators in the trees. There's no info to gather here, just a neat spot with the Dr. Suess looking chimney. After here the trail heads up a gentle slope to a crest. On the way down the hill be sure to stop at Sheephead Rock for a spectacular view of Mt. Hood, and a good portion of the Wilderness. You can see the lookout site on Salmon Mtn., as well as Salmon Butte, and the Devil's Peak. From here the trail does a few switchbacks before following a ridge. At about 2.75 m, is the intersection with the Salmon Mtn. Trail. Head up this steep, but thankfully short trail to a point where it levels out just before going downhill. Just to your right is a very inviting flat spot to rest at. From here the wreckage is just about 100 yards away, and is the only off-trail part of the adventure. This place has been notoriously hard to find, I missed it the first time, but with exact coords, and I flagged a pretty much straight line, it shouldn't be an issue. When you enter the clearing, you may be surprised at how much was left. GZ should be more or less straight across from you. you are looking for an upturned tireless wheel still attached to the landing gear. I found many numbers and letters on this wheel with which to formulate a puzzle. My reason for these caches is to show willing people some really neat spots, but with no caches allowed in the wilderness, I like the puzzle method best. So, to make this as simple as possible, the words "WARNING deflate before loosening nuts" is on the face of the wheel. Just after nuts is "ASSY", and a seven digit number. We're only interested in the first six digits. The first # will be A, then the second will be "B" and so on to F as the sixth #.
The cache is to be found at: N 45 13.ABC, W 122 00.DEF
The first # -1=A
The second #+3 =B
The third # +0 =C
The fourth # +6 =D
The fifth # -6 =E
The sixth # +5 =F
The sums will take you back near the old campground and the parking area. Another small silver for the FTF