{"id":33764,"date":"2015-08-29T06:14:24","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T12:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=33764"},"modified":"2015-08-29T06:58:28","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T12:58:28","slug":"great-views-few-birds-and-near-disaster-on-skyline-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/29\/great-views-few-birds-and-near-disaster-on-skyline-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Views, Few Birds And Near Disaster On Skyline Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

A trek\u00a0over Skyline Drive yesterday morning held a jaw-dropping surprise in Farmington Canyon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"farmington<\/p>\n

Skyline Drive is an extremely rough gravel\/dirt road (in unusually poor condition this year)\u00a0that\u00a0traverses the spine of\u00a0a portion of\u00a0the Wasatch Mountains from the foothills behind Bountiful, Utah to Farmington\u00a0Canyon. On a clear day the views from up top are truly expansive and impressive.<\/p>\n

This shot includes some areas that many of my viewers may recognize by name because I often photograph birds there.\u00a0The\u00a0impoundments of Farmington Bay WMA can be seen directly behind the foreground cliff, Antelope Island (no longer an island due to the drought)\u00a0is in the middle background, Stansbury Island in the far background and\u00a0a portion of Bountiful, Utah is at left. \u00a0Local birders and photographers\u00a0will likely be familiar with the FAA radar installation (I\u00a0call it the “golf ball”) adjacent to Glover\u00a0Pond and\u00a0marked by the red arrow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"turkey<\/p>\n

The primary goal of\u00a0the\u00a0trip was birds, especially migrating raptors, but I essentially came up empty. The only birds I photographed were these Turkey Vultures as they sunned themselves and preened in a dead tree – definitely not an image I’m proud of.<\/p>\n

So we headed for home via Farmington Canyon. Imagine my total\u00a0surprise when\u00a0I came around a switchback in the narrow, rough road and found a helicopter on the road directly in front of me.\u00a0My jaw literally dropped.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"helicopter<\/p>\n

I pulled up to the helicopter (an Enstrom 480)\u00a0and talked to one of the two gentlemen standing next to it (these photos were taken later from slightly below after I had passed the helicopter). They had been flying over the canyon when they lost all engine power. The guy I talked to had been the\u00a0pilot but when the emergency occurred his companion took over because he was the “more experienced pilot”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"helicopter<\/p>\n

They autorotated<\/a> (uses the action of air moving through the rotor\u00a0rather than engine power)\u00a0down and managed to set the helicopter on the road at this spot which is essentially a ledge carved out of the side of the canyon with a steep drop-off on one side and a near vertical wall of rocks on the other. When they landed the tips of their main rotor were within about a foot of those rocks and the left hand skid was very near the drop-off. They literally had no wiggle room and they landed there without power.<\/p>\n

I spent about 10 minutes talking to the gentleman on the left in this photo (he seemed like a very nice guy). They had already called for a helicopter mechanic to repair their bird so they could get out of there\u00a0and they had some time to kill until he arrived. This\u00a0fellow was one cool cucumber – when he saw my big lens sitting next to me he seemed as interested in talking about birds as he did in discussing his adventure. When I asked him how\u00a0his blood pressure was he said “it’s been lower” but that was the only indication I had from him that his experience had been a harrowing one.<\/p>\n

There was enough room (barely) for me to squeak my pickup\u00a0by the helicopter between it and the rocks by driving under the rotor so I continued on my way. But during the drive home I couldn’t get this incident out of my mind. What a terrifying experience it must have been to know you had lost power and had one chance to set down safely on this extremely narrow road in a devilishly steep canyon.<\/p>\n

I was and remain impressed by the skill and training of the pilot and the coolness under pressure of both gentlemen.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A trek over Skyline Drive held a jaw-dropping surprise in Farmington Canyon.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334],"tags":[2650,2649,2648,1008,2647,2533,870],"class_list":["post-33764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","tag-auto-rotate","tag-engine-failure","tag-enstrom-480","tag-farmington-bay-waterfowl-management-area","tag-farmington-canyon","tag-helicopter","tag-skyline-drive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/helicopter-2328-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-8MA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155261,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33764\/revisions\/155261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}