My partner and I hiked back to the wreck of the Gambler's Special on Wednesday. It is the wreck site of flight 708, a DC-3 that crashed near Mt Whitney in 1969. An Air Force helo also crashed there during the recovery efforts. Several other CAP aircraft crashed during the long search and more lives were lost. It has been day hiked a few times that I know of, but that canyon gets very few vistors.

We brought overnight gear with us and spent the night at the tarn near where the recovery helo crashed. That canyon is one of the most beautiful places on earth and well worth the two years of work it took to get back there.

We took seven hours to get in with no real concern for time. We only needed to set up camp in the daylight so we tried to enjoy the hike as much as possible, considering how incredibly difficult it is. It is ALWAYS up. Always. Elevation gain runs from 1200-1800 feet per mile. The terrain is rough 95% of the time.

We set up camp near the tarn and took a nap. The 1st wreckage we saw was a piece of rotor blade in the water near our camp site. The helo is slowly making its way downhill.

My partner took a swim in the tarn, we had some hot food and decided to explore some. The original plan had us exploring both wreck sites in the morning and then leaving after lunch. We were both feeling so good after the short nap we decided to check out the helo and "maybe" the DC-3. We left with some water, gloves, camera and a register we brought for the site. I placed a pic of the DC-3 with the names of those lost on the back in a waterproof container.

We followed the helo trail uphill until we could find nothing else. Two minutes later we saw the first piece of the DC-3 and followed the trail. We ended up in a few places that I did not feel safe in. A boulder the size of a small car moved when I walked on it. Luckily it didn't fall. All of the rocks in this area are very loose and most are big. We went as high as I felt was safe considering the time of day and made our way back following the pieces.

At one point I set my camera down and it slide into the rocks. It had all of the route pics, helo pics and 90% of the DC-3 pics on it. To make it worse we brought no headlamp and I feared we were losing daylight. We spent 15 minutes moving rocks and searching. Finally, nearly 3-4 feet down below foot level I spotted it and was just barely able to pull it out. I was a lot more careful with the wrist strap after that.

We finished up at the site and headed down, which because we didn't have enough daylight to backtrack we had a short section of some class three down climbing.

We slowly made our way back to our camp and started cooking dinner. My Jet Boil stove, which has made many trips with me and is kept spotlessly clean, somehow caught fire. I was able to secure the fuel valve and there was no damage. After double checking it we used it the rest of the trip without further problems. While cleaning up from dinner we found a spent .22 shell laying on the ground. A search via headlamp and again in the morning reveled no more. No idea why it would be by that pristine tarn - it wasn't drunk rednecks, that's for sure.

I slept good that night under perfectly clear skies, but my partner had problems with altitude. At first light we packed up and headed down. The route is harder to follow downhill and we got off of it several times. Actually, we would be off the route we took in over 75% of the time on the way down. Getting back to the truck in just over four hours was a great feeling, because making it out safe is my number one goal every time.

We took several hundred pics over the day and half and I will post some to my Flickr page shortly. There are many that I don't wish to post publicly and I will password protect those.

We were very respectful of both sites and made sure everything was left where we found it. We of course took nothing.

I'll admit, I was drawn to this site mainly because of the difficulty of reaching it, but I am humbled to be able to stand there and to have a moment of silence at the site. Even with the wrecks of two aircraft in that canyon, it is by far the best place I have ever hiked to......................................DUG