by Tom Rathke
I have flown many hours and made many flights in the Rocky Mountains and have always dreaded the possibility of the helicopter retrieve. It has, knock on wood, never been necessary for me. So, imagine my surprise when I thought it would be necessary out in the desert!
For years I had been offering rides in the sheltered valleys of northern Utah. Like many ski resorts, an abundance of balloon ride operations congregate there. I had grown tired of that and decided to move my business to Moab, in the southeast corner of the state. Moab has long been popular for white water rafting on the Colorado River and off road Jeeping activities in the surrounding picturesque wonderland. Now it claims to be the mountain biking capital of the world.
Because the area is filled with national parks and wilderness study areas and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, I needed to get a commercial use permit that included an environmental assessment. Due to all the government hassles, I decided to get permits for the largest area I could - over 600 square miles. This proved to be a great move, not because of the hassles of obtaining permits, but because of the unique flying conditions of the area.
Moab is a small town that lies at 4000 feet MSL in a valley next to the Colorado River. To the north is Arches National Park, to the west is Canyonlands National Park, to the east are the La Sal Mountains that rise to above 11,000 feet MSL, and to the south is BLM land riddled with private land owned primarily by balloon-hating environmentalists. Additionally, scattered throughout are Wilderness Study Areas where no wheeled travel is allowed. Note that everything mentioned so far is NOT a landing site for a hot air balloon!
Geo-political problems aside, the topography made flight and retrieval a challenge as well. With the multitude of canyons and the La Sal mountains just 10 miles away, the winds were constantly changing. Rock surfaces heated and cooled, mountain drainage started and subsided, and thermals came and went. You get the picture. So why would anyone want to fly here? Why not?!
The truth of the matter was that I finally found a site 20 miles south of Moab where I could inflate on a consistent basis. It was sheltered, scenic, and it allowed flight in a 360 degree radius without ending up in a red zone in the first ten minutes of flight. No two flights were ever the same. I could go out on two consecutive days, with the identical forecast and the identical conditions, and not fly the same direction. Now that's fun!
On one flight in particular, I managed to float lazily out of the protected cove where we had launched, and hit a northerly wind that shot us straight into the Behind-The-Rocks WSA. I was not allowed below 1000 feet AGL and was drifting slowly through the lengthy area. As the sun rose higher, the winds died down and I knew that thermal activity would soon begin. We finally drifted over the Colorado River. It was situated below us in a 500 foot deep canyon with no shoreline except for a narrow two-lane road. I was flying a Balloon Works 90 with a 4.9 basket and four ten-gallon tanks. There were four of us in the balloon and we had been in the air for an hour and a half. Fuel was getting low.
My chase crew was on the road beneath me and there was very treacherous, limited access on the other side of the canyon. I descended into the canyon in an attempt to land on the road. Wrong! The west side of the river that the road was on had been absorbing sunlight all morning long. The heat emitted by the rock was acting like a cushion that would push me back over the water. Several times I would ascend to catch the slow wind and get pushed back over the road. Each time I descended faster, hoping to get low enough so I could throw a line to the crew before getting pushed over the water. Nothing. I was screwed. With little fuel left and no landing sites, I actually contemplated the ramifications of ditching the balloon in the river. I nixed the idea because it was too swift, and we had no life vests on board (not something you consider when ballooning in the desert).
Each time I made this loop, I drifted further down river. I finally gave up and decided to fly just above water level on the remaining fuel. I was hoping that the river would bend to the left and the balloon would continue straight just long enough to make it to shore. There I could let the passengers depart and maybe fly long enough to get to a wider part of the canyon. No such luck! It was getting late in the morning. The winds were picking up. Ahead of me was a sand bar in the middle of the river. I had just enough fuel to get to the sand bar and do a rip out landing. The sand bar was just the right size to deflate the balloon on, and not much bigger. We landed, but we were in the middle of the Colorado River, above Lake Powell.
I summoned the chase on the radio and they went into town to get a raft. My crew, when not chasing me, were boatmen for the various white water rafting businesses in town. They returned with a raft and rescued my passengers. The passengers got a balloon ride with a bonus river trip at no extra cost! My crew returned to get me and the fuel tanks. We took the fuel tanks into town, refueled them, then returned to the balloon. But it had gotten too windy to fly. We paddled out to the balloon, reinstalled the fuel tanks, and packed up the envelope. Because bad weather was moving in, we covered everything with canvas covers, and left it.
Two days later, the weather was good enough for a flight. We paddled out to the balloon. The rains from the day before had shrunk the sand bar to half its former size. We brought a fan with us and inflated the balloon. With the basket in the water upstream and the crew on the crown line in the water downstream, only the envelope was kept dry! I stood the balloon up, took off from the sand bar and flew straight to my waiting truck and crew on shore. Total flight time: 4 minutes. We deflated and packed up the balloon. One crew person had been left on the sandbar with the inflator and raft. We followed him down river until he could make it to shore.
A unique retrieval indeed, and without a helicopter! The lesson I got from the experience is simple. When in flight over areas with limited landing sites, fuel management is of the essence. An instructor of mine had told me many years ago, that if you can't find the wind you needgo high. Had I climbed out to 10,000 feet MSL early, I would have found a wind that could have steered me into town. This philosophy has saved me on numerous occasions, but I let the scenery get the best of me. By the time I had reached the river I was too low on fuel to go high. Then to top it off I was reminded about hot and shady canyon walls and how they can stir things up.
In the end, everyone had a good time, no one was hurt, and lessons abound. I am grateful that it happened in the middle of nowhere. Otherwise the news media would surely have reported a crash in the middle of the Colorado River. Instead, I had only to endure the ribbing of town folk who had heard about the landing.