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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 30, 2009 - 04:22am PT
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Sully, you get my email?
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sully
Trad climber
CA
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Aug 30, 2009 - 10:56am PT
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Licky- My supertopo emails aren't going through. Haven't gotten an email from you. What to do...
Sully
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tonesfrommars
climber
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Aug 30, 2009 - 03:38pm PT
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EPIC thread! I'm gonna publish it verbatim and make a quick buck.
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 3, 2009 - 02:48pm PT
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Sully, use this email addy: ricknie@aol.com
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 7, 2009 - 02:33am PT
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You've all read the posting of "His Badness" regarding this event.
This weekend I'll be meeting with one of the original partners of
Jon Glisky, long before His Badness was playing.
His stories are about what went on before the big plane
was purchased. Stay tuned...
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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And Ghost, there are still quite a few loose ends that I'm trying to tie up. Have you ever tried to write a historical book?
It's possible that you know things about writing and editing publications of a historical nature, and indeed writing and editing generally, that ghost doesn't. But it ain't at all likely. Trust me.
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aguacaliente
climber
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Licky,
A book or a big research project accumulates a hideous amount of detail and loose ends that it is tempting to run down and there is always some more piece of research that can be done. Exploring is more fun than the drudgery of shaping facts into a book that reads well, but you can't put that off forever. Eventually the level of ever-expanding detail becomes a huge dead weight that drags down the author and the project. Only you can decide when to stop exploring and finish writing, but if you ever want to communicate what you found to other people, eventually you're going to have to cut the rope.
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Jim Wilcox
Boulder climber
Santa Barbara
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Doesn't matter if it was done and printed, not the greatest time to release anything, economy wise.
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 7, 2009 - 09:43pm PT
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Rok...you been reading my email when I wasn't in again!
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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And he hasn't even begun to look into the wolf angle.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Please! Everyone knows that the wolves were dumped in Idaho and the dope in California. All those California ecofreak climbers just wish there had been wolves at the crash site to keep away the rangers.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Didn't Rox become involved with that plane crash in an effort to keep the wolf from the door? isn't that where and how it all began?
"The plane came by and I got on that's how it all began...
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 11, 2009 - 12:15am PT
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I think he had in his hands the remote control that night.
And then were was......9/11
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Jim Wilcox
Boulder climber
Santa Barbara
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Sep 11, 2009 - 01:01am PT
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Found this awhile ago. Looks like a slide show presentation Farabee may have done. The relevant photos start at 79. If you look at all 94 frames there's a few that'll make you wince.
slide show
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 12, 2009 - 03:29am PT
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Just when you think people are straight with you, you realize that
very quickly there is more to the story.
Thanks...
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Slowhand
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Licky -
I friend of mine who lived in the valley for years was one of the people who originally dicovered the wing of the plane in '77. I have told this story a hundred times and recently shared it with a friend on a weekend boating trip (admittedly, some details of my telling may have gotten a bit fuzzy, but the essence is acturate). Today, I decided to do a search on the web and ran across this forum thread.
I worked in the dining room at the Ahwahnee in the summer of '75. It was a summer job between semesters at Southern Illinois University, where I studied photography. A couple of weeks before leaving Yosemite for school there came a knock at the door of my tent cabin. It was two brothers from Chicago, where I grew up. They had heard from a mutual friend that I was living in Yosemite and had come with the intention of making the valley their home. I introduced them to the manager at the Ahwahnee dining room and they were hired on the spot.
I left the valley, finished school and returned to Yosemite valley in June of 1977. This time it was I who came knocking on their tent cabin door. My friends were still living in Yosemite, working at the Ahwahnee. Immediately, they told me about their winter overnight trip in the backcountry, finding the wing of the plane, and returning to the valley and alerting the authorities. At that point, they were unaware the crashed plane was part of a drug smuggling operation.
I had another friend (from my school) who was the night desk person at Yosemite Lodge. The men who were doing the recovery at the lake (possibly customs agents, not sure of the agency) were staying at the Lodge. This friend was getting daily briefs from the recovery crew as they returned to their rooms at the end of the day. One day, while I was visiting that June, he told me they had recovered the bodies of the pilots.
The story I was told by my friends who found the wing, was that park rangers had investigated the crash at the lake, discovered the drugs, and returned to Yosemite Village with some of the evidence. Apparently, they had deemed the conditions too harsh to begin a recovery at that time. The pot they had brought back to the valley was stored in a building that had once been a jail in the village. It wasn't long before word of the seized contriband leaked to the small valley community and my friends, who knew where evidence had come from.
I sat in their tent cabin that June and watched a slide show with photos of their trip to the lake, them posing with the wing, etc. A friend of there's had been to Nepal on profits from what they called "PCP", plane crash pot. According to them, the guy who had made out the best was the guy selling the "I Got Mine..." t-shirts. There were rumors of a large quanity of cocaine sealed in fire extinguishers that sank to the bottom of the lake.
If you haven't already talked to my friends (they weren't climbers), I'm not sure I would be much help in contacting them. I haven't seen them in 30+ years. I've often wondered if they still have the 35mm slides from the lake. My recollection is that they have the entire pre-recovery part of the story at the lake documented in those photographs. Good luck with the book. Would love to be on the mailing list if you're keeping one.
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 7, 2009 - 10:01pm PT
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Thanks Slowhand. It was good to speak with you last night.
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Licky
Mountain climber
California
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 8, 2009 - 01:19am PT
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Rok..you are absolutley correct.
It appears that because this was right after the end of the cold war, the Russians had joined forces with the Canadians to bring Mexican dope through Alaska using old USSR submarines. They were staging the dope in the Aleutians using old crab boats for cover. The dope was destined for the north coast of Japan. Eventually the Japanese were going to hide the dope in new Hondas, Toyotas, and Datsuns that were destined for the secret inland port of Mexico City.
I'm still piecing it all together, but I'm getting close.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I heard they were running it across the border strapped to wolves.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Licky-
As some one who has lived in Japan 25 years, I seriously doubt the Japanese angle. Their quality control standards are just too high. Meeting up with a delivery boat on the way across the Pacific and planting it then might be feasible. Then again, the whole thing might have been an undercover sting featuring the Yakuza in cahoots with the Japanese police so the latter would look the other way on their lucrative Pachinko parlor and brothel business.
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