Moments in Time with Dave The Saga of 70 Delta – The Park’s First Patrol Airplane
David Van Cleve has many ties to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and Anza-Borrego Foundation. In the 1980s, he was an environmental scientist in the San Diego regional office, where he collaborated with park staff on many significant natural resource projects. In 1989, he was selected to serve as the superintendent of the state park. In 1994, his responsibilities were expanded to include management of six other state parks (Mt. San Jacinto, Cuyamaca Rancho, Palomar Mountain, Salton Sea, Picacho, and Indio Hills) in addition to Anza-Borrego. After retiring from state service, he worked for The Nature Conservancy as Ecoregional Director for the South Coast Ecoregion and added over 1,000 acres to the Park. Each month, Dave will fill in some important issues in the history Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which often dove-tail with the history of ABF. We are grateful for his wealth of knowledge of the Park and willingness to share with us!
And here is the saga of 70 Delta!
One of the Park’s most useful tools – again, unlike any other state park – is the patrol airplane. For a Park over 1,000 square miles in size, the efficient use of aircraft has resulted in lives saved, resources protected and managed, and even the prevention of the total destruction of Coyote Canyon – the Park’s signature riparian habitat.
Buckle up, mates, eyeball your fuel and oil, and double-check your parachutes. Oops – no parachutes on this plane.
In the 1970s, Park Superintendent Bud Getty began the quest for a patrol airplane for Anza-Borrego. After all – it made sense on many levels.
It turns out, however, that other state agencies that had successfully acquired aircraft were misusing them. Instead of their intended purpose, upper management was using them to travel around the state. Not a boondoggle, but every hour a plane was shuttling a manager to a meeting was an hour not spent on task. All of Bud’s requests were denied.
Bud’s successor, Jim Hendrix – no, not THAT Jim Hendrix – was a licensed pilot and kept his Cessna 182 hangared at the Borrego Springs airport. At the same time, Mark Jorgensen – ranger, interpreter, scientist – was serving on a committee whose goal was to protect the resources of the Santa Rosa Mountains, in the northern reaches of the Park. Chairing the committee was State Senator Robert Pressley. In those days before term limits, senior legislators wielded significant power.
Mark had the opportunity, along with the chutzpah, to ask Senator Pressley for help on securing a patrol airplane for the Park – not exactly the traditional budget request path (thank goodness). Pressley told Mark to write it up and present it to him. Since Park Superintendent Hendrix was knowledgeable about various aircraft and their capabilities, and Mark’s expertise was bighorn sheep and resource management, they crafted a powerful budget request. They did NOT submit it through “the proper channels.” Their research also revealed that the Border Patrol had excellent results with the Christen Husky – a clone of the old Piper Super Cub – manufactured in Afton, Wyoming.
Two seats, tandem (front-to-back), low stall speed, high wing (better for visibility), large tires, “trail dragger” landing gear, powerful 180 hp engine, fabric body – all features that would allow a pilot to fly slow and low and land in rugged locations.
Presley passed the request on to Senator Alfred Alquist, chair of the Senate budget committee.
Alquist’s chief of staff called and wanted to visit the Park. Jim Hendrix took the staffer on an aerial tour of the Park in his Cessna from the Mexican border to the Santa Rosa Mountains. He agreed that patrolling an immense desert park with aircraft made sense.
Amazingly, the request was approved in the budget. Still, the Park had to give up an extra ranger position due to “efficiency” – probably the bean counters’ revenge for not being kept in the loop.
The aircraft was ordered, and the factory agreed to deliver it to Borrego Springs. On its delivery flight from Wyoming, though, it sprang an oil leak. Oil covered the windshield. Flying blind is no fun, so to grab some visibility, the factory pilot opened a side window and landed on a highway. The factory sent a mechanic out for repairs, and the long-awaited plane finally arrived at the Park. The phrase “They do things a little different in Anza-Borrego” once again was proven true.
The bureaucrats’ desire for revenge was not over, though.
As you can imagine, it takes a while to convert a “ranger” position to a “ranger/pilot.” Many levels of approval. Once the position is approved, the hiring process is lengthy. The clock was ticking.
The state has a rule that equipment not being used would be removed from the department. So, the interminable hiring process put the whole project under threat. The plane was sitting in its hangar.
The word went out for volunteer pilots. State park employees with a pilot’s license were allowed to fly the Christen Husky on patrol. Finally, the Park hired Gene Hammock, who had a background in patrol aircraft used to monitor tule elk from the sky.
Gene was tasked with establishing the excellent yet often complex protocols for using the plane at the Park. But he was an outstanding aviator who loved flying and saved many lives as the park pilot. He always downplayed the serious nature of the job, but he was extremely careful. The plane was maintained very well, and Gene was intent on ensuring the program’s sustainability. He flew in unbelievable conditions, but he never flew into situations he did not think he and the plane could handle. He set the bar high for all the pilots who followed.”
Before Gene retired, he was involved in a situation that will live in perpetuity in park annals.
In the summer, pilots play a key role in visitor safety due to extreme heat. The pilot is always on the lookout for broken-down vehicles, since this situation can be life-threatening. Sure enough, Gene was flying Split Mountain one summer day and saw a Jeep with the hood up and no one around. He flew down the canyon a ways and noticed three pairs of human tracks hiking north. He soon located the three distressed hikers – two women and one man – who should have stayed with their vehicle. Gene got on the public address system and asked if everything was okay. They all waved, and Gene realized he had not asked the right question – he had no way of knowing whether their wave meant everything was okay…or not. So he circled around and, this time, told them that if they needed assistance, to wave an article of clothing over their heads. He reported that both women stripped off their tops and began waving them wildly. Gene also reported that one of the women was wearing a bra.
Unfortunately, Split Mountain is a very rugged area, and Gene could not land and provide the necessary life-saving measures personally, so he called for field rangers to respond as soon as possible. As fate would have it, the three stranded visitors were on vacation from Austria, and the ranger who was first on the scene, Manfred Knaak, spoke fluent German. The visitors, in their subsequent thank-you letter to park staff, expressed amazement that the pilot somehow figured out that he needed to call in a German-speaking ranger!
NEXT MONTH – Flying the Park with Ranger Jon Muench