Oped»
Commemorating lesser events
JUN 02 -
The 50th anniversary of the first successful expedition to Mt. Dhaulagiri (8167m / 13 May 1960) was celebrated recently. It was a great achievement especially as the mountain was deemed impossible given the number of failed attempts earlier. Dhaulagiri was even recognised as the tallest mountain in 1808. It remained unchallenged until dislodged by Kanchenjunga 30 years later. On failing to conquer Dhaulagiri the French salvaged their pride, in 1950, by crossing over to the other side of Kaligandaki and claiming Annarpurna-1 instead! In this piece I intend to highlight aspects of Nepali aviation history associated with Dhaulagiri expedition and one related to Makalu.
The 1960 Swiss expedition was important for that fact that it was the first time an aircraft was used to lift men and equipments up to the camp at 5700m. The aircraft chosen for the purpose was the first ever built single engine “Pilatus PC-6 Porter” with conventional piston engine unlike the more powerful turboprop versions of later years. Carrying a mystic name “Yeti” it was painted in bright Yellow and Red. The purpose of using an aircraft was primarily to save time and also expenses.
“Yeti” even set a new world record by landing at an altitude of 5760m on the northern side of the Dhaulagiri. The Porter crashed while taking off after its 17th trip and that was just a week before Dhaulagiri was finally scaled. It would have been a different story had the accident happened earlier. Predictably most of the essential supplies were already flown in by then. 1973 Italian’s expedition to Sagarmatha did even better as they brought in helicopter to facilitate climbing. There is more to the similarity, the helicopter also crashed in at 6100m and big heap of scrap is still left behind scarring the landscape. It is said that the Italians did every thing with the copter except actually hoisting members on to world’s top spot!
Pilatus Porter’s history is intrinsically linked with the Dhaulagiri expedition and a group of Pilatus buffs want to bring down the historical remains and then ship it back to Switzerland for restoration. The team had even visited the site in 2000. Ten years after, the mangled remains of HB-FAN still stuck there.
I had in my earlier article (TKP / 07/03/2008) mentioned the lesser known event of the same Porter landing at Tundikhel. There were many people there who were thrilled to see the small plane land and take off literally from the city centre. Tundikhel used to be a magnificent green then in contrast to what it has been turned into. It was a pity that there was no proof which corroborated the landing despite the fact that a huge crowd had actually witnessed it. A proof would be ideal even if the event was not a significant feat by any standard. While the historic landing, that ushered Nepal into “aviation age”, is based on “hearsay” why should one bother about Tundikhel landing, you may ask.
But all this has suddenly changed with surfacing of Pilatus aircraft promotional video in the web! The video clip lasts little over four and half minutes and the moments of its Tundikhel debut is embedded in the middle and appears without warning! The expedition leader and one of the summitter also feature in the video and are introduced as “pilots”! The visual shows the Porter, on ground near Bhadrakali with gleaming Singhadurbar in the back ground. The voice then goes on to say that the Pilatus had landed in a square in front of the King’s palace. It shows a huge building in the back ground to prove its point while thousands swarm around the Pilatus. The clip does not show the white building in full but it does appear big. The “palace” appears too close and it somehow did not look right. After a lot of head scratching it suddenly became clear that it was the, now demolished, Anchaladhis Karyalaya after all.
It is no less interesting to watch the PC-6 in red and yellow on its take off run at Pokhara with a fleeting view of an IAC’s Dakota in the back ground. We are in the dark about the arrival date of Pilatus Porter or the reason why it landed at Tundikhel. It must have arrived by March or April that year. Surely that makes the 50th anniversary of the “lesser event” fall earlier to the main 13 May event! The video can be accessed if searched with caption “Flying expedition to Nepal”.
Let us fast forward to May 2002 and stop around Makalu region and remember a helicopter gone missing on 31 May. It was heading to Lukla from Makalu base camp and had ten people on board. Let me proceed to explain the background story.
It was by a mere chance that I stumbled upon co-ordinates of the place pinned as the helicopter crash site. Strangely it was from an unlikely source. But more surprisingly the particular comment had no relation, whatsoever, with the blog topic (Kunda’s East-West Blog / “Sitting on top of a volcano”). It ran as follows: “..... came across a caption which pointed at helicopter wreckage above the Lukchi Valley, southwest of the Popti pass. Might it be that of the as-yet-untraced helicopter (if I’m not wrong) which went missing in the Makalu area a couple of years back? The coordinates of the site on Google Earth are roughly 27o 47’ 33.20” N and 87o 17’ 19.98”; elevation about 12960 ft.”
We do not know who put in the information and if it was true. Had the missing helicopter been found it would have made big news headline. As it has not, it is might as well be the work of a lone trekker unaware of the facts. But this is unlikely as the guide would surely know about the incident and would have immediately raised the alarm. As for the given caption it is not seen in the version of Google Earth that most of us use for free. I would not know if it was only available in paid up version.
The given spot appears way off
north by almost 5 nautical miles from the logical river course the helicopter was likely to follow. It might as well be a red herring but it would still make sense to check around the vicinity of the given coordinates to put the anxiety of the living family members to rest. Locating the wreckage will never be a matter of small significance to them. But let us not underestimate the “alertness” of the government agencies as they might have scouted the area in question already. Did they find any thing? We are dying to know.
harjyal@yahoo.com
Posted on: 2010-06-03 08:00
Headlines
Advertisements
