Cache is hidden on the track flanking the hills to the South of Porters Pass en route to the great viewpoint at Trig M. Foggy Peak is prominent to the north, along with the Torlesse Range- on the right day this truly is the Empire of the Clouds.
The Iron Maiden song "Empire of the Clouds" is their longest track, an 18 minute long masterpiece on their 2016 album The Book of Souls. Truly an epic song to reflect an epic airship disaster
The track tells the story of the R101 airship, which crashed on its maiden (!) voyage in northern France on 5 October 1930. The song was written entirely by the band's lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, who initially intended it to be about "World War I fighter airplanes;" Dickinson abandoned the idea after using the same theme for the song "Death or Glory," also from The Book of Souls. At the time of recording, Dickinson was reading "a big, sort of encyclopedic crash report" of the R101, entitled To Ride the Storm, which gave him the idea for the song's eventual subject. Dickinson describes it as "A very poignant story, a very human story, a story of ambition and dreams."
As an aside among the many strings to his bow, Dickinson is the part owner of a modern day airship revival and there are series plans to bring these crack back in the modern, safe, environmentally responsible manner in competition to gas guzzling other modes of transportation.
The song received critical acclaim. PopMatters called it a "masterpiece" and "every bit as spellbinding as 1984’s 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' [from 1984's Powerslave]", while AllMusic described it as "a heavy metal suite, unlike anything in their catalogue”