Years ago a friend of mine was flying down the Chilkat river and planned to climb hard and cross over this steel bridge. The pilot completely forgot about the old cable car crossing several hundred yards upstream. He spotted the main cable and pulled up hard, clearing the 1 1/8 line but hooked the 3/8 endless line that pulled the car back and forth. He struck it just about dead center on the prop hub and cut one of the cables, the other end hung on his landing gear.

He rendered about 800 feet of 3/8 steel cable accrues the main gear of his Luscombe while in a full power, full up staggering flight. If memory serves me he ended up going under the bridge.

He finished his flight wondering if the gear leg was sawn through and would fall off on landing. After a very gentle landing he found he had cut clear through the fairing and about half through the gear leg.

A sobering thought huh>

Shane

Anyone familiar with this area will agree that flying that low through the canyon was very risky. Flying low enough to go under this cable was not an option because of the banking necessary to follow the contour of the canyon. He would have been dragging a wing through the water.

Every river has these cables and trolley carts. A person climbs into the cart and pulleys himself to the middle of the river and lets a meter down by rope into the main current to measure the CFM's. Good thing the guy wasn't taking a reading on that day.

Wire strike protection serves no purpose here as the cable is around one inch diameter and made of steel.

I remember once when a blizzard went through here and it was snowing horizontally. Went out the next day when the weather broke. Came to an area I was very familiar with and knew there was a powerline close by but couldn't see it. Decided I wasn't going to continue what I was doing until I could find the darn powerline, so I got a little altitude and started looking. Turns out the horizontal snow had completely covered one side of the powerpoles as well as the line providing perfect camouflage with the snow covered ground. Approaching it from the other side where snow didn't stick made it easy to spot.

Someone also stated it is better to fly under powerlines. If you do you better make sure your lined up in the middle between powerpoles. If you don't it's not the powerline that will get you but the guy lines supporting the poles.

Cell phone towers are popping up everywhere, along with new transmission lines. Just because you were familiar with an area yesterday provides no assurance it will be the same tomorrow.