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building strips and such
Posted by bushrat on Jan 12 2006
Rick,
I know a guy whose dad started an air-taxi back in the early 1950s. He and his brothers took it over, and it's still a going business. Not going to mention the name. They've spent countless hours putting in sheep strips and gravel-bar strips. I've helped on one occassion to "build" a strip in sheep mtns. This one was for hauling out meat only, not for landing hunters. I hiked in with the pilot, took us four days to get there, two days to "build" the tiny strip. "Building" a strip often involves filling in holes or smoothing out rough spots, either on a ridgeline or a gravel bar. A lot of shovel work. Helps to have a wheelbarrow! This work can be quite labor intensive. Every year we have to "rebuild" our gravel strip here after breakup, pull drift off it, fill in holes, smooth out berms. Last spring, that took us a full week working four hours per day, three people. In the past, certain guys (whether private pilots or commercial operators) put in strips in various places over time. Back then the credo was that if they put the time and effort into doing it, then it was "their" strip regardless if that was legal or not. They were going to land hunters out there and didn't want anyone else doing so during hunting season. Every pilot and air-taxi knew the unwritten rules and abided by them for the most part. Many private pilots work with air-taxis in sharing some strips. Both private pilots and air-taxis on occassion save each other's butts in times of emergencies...at least this is the way it used to be.
An analogy of this could be a trapline: once a guy spent the time to blaze trails on public land then it was considered "his" line. Even though by law you could get away with trapping "his" line, if you did so you were not only going to run into conflicts of the fisticuffs (or worse) kind, but your name would be mud among other trappers. So it is with this airstrip thing.
A few falls ago, a couple weeks before hunting season, a pilot/air-taxi owner landed on "our" strip and said he wanted to fly hunters in. The gall! Since our strip was so good, so well marked with windsock and all, it would be easier and safer for him to fly hunters out, land them here, and then tell them to hunt downriver from us. The option he gave me was that I could either give him permission to land hunters here, or else he'd land them above us and they'd compete with us for our much-needed moose. Needless to say I was ticked off. It was a no-win situation. I said I'd rather he not fly hunters out here at all! We argued. I'm usually pretty reasonable in person <grin>. But in the end I said, okay, land them here but with the understanding that they are gonna go a mile or two below us before they start hunting. He said fine, he'd fill them in, they were out-of-state hunters, a party of three. I told him to tell the hunters we'd invite them up to the cabin for dinner when they were here. A few days before he's due to fly in, I get an email saying that these hunters are bringing a small outboard along with their two rafts and intend to camp out on the airstrip and hunt upriver from me! He says, sorry, nothing he can do, he just found out when they phoned about fitting the outboard in the plane. Tough luck, he says, but that is the deal and he's still flying them out, and that if I try to put logs or anything on the airstrip to prevent him landing he'll call the cops etc. This is how bad things have gotten with some pilots and air-taxis. There is no "respect" anymore like the old days, no sense of decency. I was mad beyond belief. And it wasn't really the hunters' fault; they had no idea what they were getting into. I wasn't sure what I would do or say when they landed, but it wasn't going to be pretty. Two days before pilot is due, he crashes his other plane taking out hunters. Plane totalled, but thankfull no on seriously injured. He had to cancel all his other work that fall. We were saved.
All this by way of saying that I think Mike has a point about putting in strips and quasi-ownership by unwritten credo. But nowadays there is just too much competition and too many other unethical pilots and air-taxis who can and will land on strips used by others for thirty years and reap the benefits of their hard work over time in keeping these strips up. In sheep country, there are only so many places to land a cub safely, whether in the valley bottoms or a ridgeline. Some guides have spent a lot of man-hours putting in strips to fly clients out to a basecamp. Yes, these are on public land. Some of these strips are amazing and you can land a 185 on them. Private pilots and air-taxis that take advantage of other mens' hard work and land on top of them while they are there are bad apples in my book. And the ones who land there prior to the season opening, knowing full well the situation, are just as bad.
Selah, Mark
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