On the Hook

Copyright (c) 1982 truth-or-consequences.com

Non-Fiction

Sold to "Washington Magazine"

In southern California, a traditional roofing material called "cedar shakes" has great value, and the helicopter is a financially viable means of getting the product out of the rugged, rain drenched woods of Washington and Oregon.

Many large cedar logging operations might designate two or three days a week as "fly day", days that are committed exclusively to the business of just connecting the slings of cedar blocks to the cargo hooks of the helicopters so that they can be lifted out of the forests and dropped onto waiting trucks. And as long as all the cutters show up on fly day, the operation runs smoothly. But it's usually the job of the foreman to take up the slack, to "ride the hook", which is to actually sit on the cargo hook of the helicopter, a bell shaped affair about eight inches in diameter, while it dangles airily on the end of a much too slender cable, from 20 to 150 feet in length, that is fastened to the bottom of the chopper. It's common for that foreman to log two or three hours of actual air time a day, as sling loads are often miles apart. When I was a logging foreman, riding the hook was "man's work". At least we thought so at the time.

There was the occasional, largely insignificant mishap. For instance the cable, where it attached to the belly of the helo, was equipped with an emergency release so that in case of an engine failure or some other problem, the whole cable could be dropped by the pilot. Some of the cable release devices jammed. Sometimes they got rusty. Sometimes they just inexplicably fell off. That's how I got the job, The foreman before me was the unwitting victim of one that "just fell off"....from about a thousand feet. He landed in a patch of dense brush, and for awhile they thought he might pull through. But he didn't. I replaced him. One day, after I'd become foreman, the hook fell off three times in an hour. Lucky no one was on it.

God knows where my brains and reasoning faculties were, I loved that hook! And I rode it everywhere.

There was a group of hearty foremen who saw their opportunity to be "men" as taking the roughest ride imaginable on the hook. And the pilots, most of them, obligingly indulged them. There were excursions through big, sharp blackberry stickers, the loggers yelping and twisting at the end of that thin cable as they brushed along at thirty miles an hour. They'd be raw and bleeding, stained black by the berry juice, their clothes in shreds, but they always came down smiling, knowing THAT one would be hard to beat. The green crews regarded us as "real men". They were so dumb.

And there were dunks in the lake. How long can any man hold his breath? Sometimes the logger would have enough, choking and gagging ten feet under, and come shinning up that cable, sputtering and trying to get a breath. The crews on shore would yowl and hoot, and the pilot, if he had any hair, dropped the helicopter just another fathom, and under the logger would go, to the great guffaws of the men. It was hilarious. At least we'd been bred to believe it must be.

There were trips through tree tops, a hundred and fifty feet off the ground, let's see if YOU can hang on. And we tough guys ate it up. I recall many times, looking down at the tops of the rotor blades, from my perch on that damnable hook.

I remember a particular incident wherein a man was being dangled in front of a slightly agitated little black bear, as a kind of bait, you see. The pilot chased the bear round and round with the man. The bear finally had enough, and took for the man at a dead run. The pilot was quick of reflex though, and got the man moving, five feet off the ground, at a speed equal to that of the bear, just. But there was too much attention fixed on the distance between the bear and the bait, either that or the pilot was nearly blind from hysteria, for that poor logger twisted and jerked about on that small hook like a fresh caught sardine, somewhat apprehensive of being eaten by the bear of course, but there happened in the path of the man a rather large stump. He whomped into it with considerable force, as the bear had been running like hell. The logger hit, remained motionless for an instant, glued to the smooth side of that stump like a wet washrag, and then slid crumpling to the ground. Simultaneously, the hook bounced off the stump and flung itself high in the air, right into the main rotor. It wound itself up like a string in a fan; the machine came down with an ungainly crash. Both men survived. The bear ambled smugly away. Those were carefree times. What grit we all had. What spirit. What men we all were. And what fools...

A week later the FAA descended upon us, and banned the riding of cargo hooks. We argued, however, that there was no regulation specifically preventing us from hanging on the skids. The FAA scurried dutifully away, mumbling something about smart ass loggers, and we went back to work.

I tried a number of variations that day; finally, the most expedient method seemed to be to simply place each hand over opposite sides of the landing skid, which was a fat, smooth, slick painted pipe about eight inches in diameter. The fingers of each hand were interlocked over the top of the pipe. Safety lines or harnesses would have been far too cumbersome and restricting and, indeed, never occurred to us anyway. We were loggers, after all.

And so for the first four hours of that day I hung rather precariously by little more than my fingernails from the slippery landing skid of a turbine Aleuette III, soaring from cliff to cliff, mountain top to mountain top, lofty ridge to lofty ridge, and it worked well enough. There were a few minor problems when the helo couldn't get low enough to set me down smoothly, and I would have to just let go, and fall some unknown distance into the brush, hoping all the while not to be skewered by some upthrusting sharp branch.

A few times, too, the pilot was unable to get low enough to pick me up, and I was reduced to climbing some great Hemlock or Cedar or tall Douglas Fir, and then jumping a small distance from an upper limb to the skid. But that too, worked well enough, was good for the reflexes, even. And my status as all 'round "tough guy" didn't suffer either.

I remember I'd been carried out into a flat area a couple of miles off the road; I'd hooked up all the slings out there, and was waiting for the pilot to ferry me back to the road where my truck and my lunch waited. Soon enough he dropped his last sling and came whomping back.

He hunkered down as low as he could get, but I couldn't reach the skid. I climbed up on top of the highest stump I could find, still no luck. There were no climbable trees within several hundred yards, and it was lunch time, I was hungry. There were barely two miles to go anyway, and it was flat ground, he'd carry me low and slow, I reasoned. We were just going over to the road, after all... I jumped from the top of that stump several times, but could never quite get my fingers to interlock over the top of the skid. The pilot was getting a little frustrated, he just couldn't get any lower, and was actually clipping some bushes with the rotor tips. We were wasting precious seconds of expensive air time, and I sure as hell wasn't going to spend my lunch hour walking out of the bush, so I made one last, daring leap, and caught the big pipe, barely. My fingers overlapped at the tips no more than one joint length.

I had just started to reposition my grip when the helicopter lurched under the load, sending a spray and flutter of chopped bushes in all directions. The pilot yanked the cyclic, hauled an armful of collective, and before I could strengthen my grip we were off under a considerable G load. I almost dropped off right then and there. I dug my fingernails into the hard, slick paint, and held on tight.

In a whoosh we leaped to an altitude of fifty feet. We gathered speed, accelerating with a powerful pull. Out over the flatlands we soared, albeit a little too high for my tastes. My grip was precarious at best. If I dropped from there, there'd be broken bones, almost for sure. I dug deeper Into that paint.

At three hundred feet and ninety miles an hour I began to become downright concerned. The bastard! Couldn't he see that my grip was poor? It slowly dawned on me that if I dropped, there wouldn't be the usual scratches and bruises, cuts and contusions, I could die! I probably would! My breath came a little quicker, I freshened my grip, and we continued to climb.

At about eight hundred feet of altitude and 120 knots a sudden wave of nausea swept me. I tried to swallow, but couldn't. I looked far ahead, and with a horrifying start, realized our destination. There'd been a lone sling load up at the top of a distant ridge for weeks, forgotten on some long past fly day. He was going for it then.

There was considerable turbulence that day; the ship rocked almost violently, and my body began to swing and sway beneath it. I tried to check the motion, but felt as though I could not jeopardize my tenuous grip with any unnecessary wriggling of my own. I just hung on.

The top of the ridge was ten miles away, and three thousand feet above the valley floor we had just left. The pilot was taking a direct course, climbing steadily as he went. My whole insides tingled. Perspiration began to stream down my face. I felt hot. My tongue felt like a balloon blowing up inside my mouth. My breath came short and quick. I seemed to smell blood, like I'd been hit in the head. Somehow I knew....this was it.

I thought of trying to swing my legs up and around the landing skid, but I was facing forward, and the wind against me was very strong.

I thought of trying to turn around, to swing my legs up that way, but that would have required that I let go with one hand, if just for an instant; I would have surely slipped off.

I tried to close my arms over the top of the skid, but my long sleeve shirt was slippery on the paint of the skid; I slid back three feet before I caught myself.

I tried to look up to the pilot, but my outstretched arms were held too tightly together as a result of the hurricane like wind pulling me backward and downward. My head wouldn't tilt back far enough to look up.

I thought of trying to signal him, to wave at him. But couldn't spare the hand to do so .

I thought of trying to swing my dangling legs around enough so that he'd realize something was amiss, but was sure I would inadvertently twist off and fall, I was hanging by a thread as it was and I was already like a rag in a hurricane.

I thought of screaming. I did so. Until I was hoarse. Either the sound never escaped my lips, or it was obliterated by the scream of the turbine, and the percussions of the rotors and the wind which drove it back into my throat. I could not hear myself.

I looked again to the mountain top, eight miles away. The journey was twenty percent completed. My strength was eighty percent depleted. My wits and reasoning sanity were ninety percent gone. I believe I was crying. I could never hope to reach that ridge.

The helicopter lurched and shook even more violently in the turbulence at twelve hundred feet. My fingers no longer touched at the tips. Every movement, every sway and pitch and unnatural yaw of the machine loosed my grip another fraction of an inch. The smooth pipe became slippery with the sweat of my hands, and with every wrenching twist of the chopper, my anxiety squared itself, and perspiration flowed more freely from my palms, and every drop caused my grip to become more tenuous, and every degree of grip that I lost caused me to perspire all the more. It was a vicious cycle, a deadly cycle.

At six miles I was sure I could not hang on another mile. There was no mistake then; my hands were coming off the skid. One good bump in the air would shake me free.

I began to fancy that I should let go quickly, get it over with! Why prolong it? I hadn't breathed for half a minute. Our altitude was fourteen hundred feet, half way up. I wondered how long it would take to hit. I knew I'd be conscious all the way to the ground­­ I could sense it. I would rather have gone into shock and been wholly oblivious of the long free fall.

There would not be the slightest hope of getting lucky. I knew there were only seconds...

As I looked at the ground, at the tiny, bug like, indistinguishable cars and stumps, I was suddenly struck with an insanely ingenious plan. Almost directly below was a river; I could see it, long and twisting for twenty miles in either direction. Could there be a chance in the water? There was otherwise no hope at all... I would choose my moment, take painstaking aim, and drop for it. Any chance of survival, no matter how astronomically small, was a miracle.

I watched as we moved over the target. The wind blew tears in streams back along my face and into my hair. I wondered how much forward momentum my body would maintain when I let go­­ how far would I travel? It was like leading a goose with a shotgun. How far is enough?

The point came near. I could maintain my grip perhaps half a minute more beyond the drop point­­ I could miss my river, and have another thirty seconds of life. Or I could risk it all for a billion to one shot. That was the hardest choice I have ever pondered.

I watched the river; it came almost directly below. I turned my head left and right as much as I dared, locked between my aching arms, trying to get a better perspective of it, to be more sure of my aim. I was trembling uncontrollably.

Ready....ready....almost there....Oh God....ready...

Suddenly I was weightless. I had dropped and not even been aware of letting go... But the sound of the chopper stayed with me. I'd figured I would fall away quickly; I'd thought I would catch glimpses of it continuing onward as I tumbled through thin air­­ but there was still the vibration of it in my hands!

The strain on my aching fingers was half of what it had been a moment before. My legs seemed to float up behind me like towels in a breeze as we spiraled downward. The back of my head bumped against the bottom of the hollow skid. The lessening of the strain on my grip would give me another 60 seconds at least, I reasoned. And for a moment I forgot about the river. I believed the helicopter's engine had failed and I would soon die in the crash as it pounded me into the ground. How ironic.

We circled lower and lower, and the easing on my fingertips was such a delight that I simply existed in that moment. I was delirious in just finding the strength to hang on another instant. Every second was profound joy. And suddenly there was something hard under my feet. I felt it. I knew it to be the ground, yet I was unwilling to accept it.

Was I dead? Had it all been some hallucination, some wild dream while I fell screaming to the earth?

I fell down and hit my head sharply, thudding against the warm earth, friendly earth. I had the oddest urge to put some of it in my mouth. I could hear the turbine wind down, and the whomps of the main rotors slowed. I calculated that I was alive.

The pilot came and shook me. I felt my mouth smile.

In due course I sat up. I sat there in the moist grass, legs outstretched before me, numb. Soon the pilot helped me to my feet. I started for the helo, but he took my arm and motioned me toward the small creek, a dozen feet away. Leaning heavily on him, I stumbled numbly to its bank, and there in the grass was a bright orange object­­ my stocking cap. All real loggers wore them. Mine had blown off, and he had set me down for no other reason than to pick it up. I snatched it up, and as I did so, glanced into the water­­ the river I had seen from so far above. It was twenty feet across­­ and half a foot deep at its center. I felt a solid thud in the back of my head­­ didn't care at all.

The sun and the bright blue sky looked so fine as I opened my eyes, and gazed straight ahead. The sun was so warm on my face, so friendly. A few puffy cumulus drifted by overhead. I like the sun.

A year later I learned to fly helicopters­­

­­from INSIDE the aircraft.

 

Note: The pilot was Eugene Dahlberg. He was killed in Arizona many years later while spraying lettuce crops at night. An engine failed, he was heavily loaded with a fresh tank of pesticide, and he hit some wires while autorotating down in the dark. Including shoot downs in Vietnam, I believe this was his eleventh, and final, crash. There was one crash that went unreported however. I was hooking slings for him on the knoll of a steep, deep valley, high in the mountains, when a freak williwah downdraft caught him and he plopped down onto my head. The bird wasn't badly damaged. He hiked out while I was unconscious and procured another bird, and came back and, being unable to land, tapped my chest repeatedly with the toe of one landing skid until I woke up (I thought I was being attacked by a bear and fought viciously for a minute or two). I climbed up on the skid, then into the copilot seat, gushing blood all over the controls, and he flew me out to a landing where a logging truck gave me a lift to the hospital. I was back at work after getting stiched up, and finished my shift. Oddly, this wiped out my short term memory and I had to be told why I was there and what I was doing on that day. Gene felt badly about the incident, and I milked it for all it was worth, which is how I learned to fly. Gene was the best friend anyone could have ever hoped for. Even though I hated his wife, and she hated me (and pretty much everyone else on the planet), I am deeply, profoundly, forever sorry for her loss.

 

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