In July, I hiked into the woods outside of Portland, Oregon to see the remains of an airliner that crashed into a hillside sixty years ago. It was a brand new DC-9 being flown by two experienced airline pilots on a familiar route from Eugene to Portland. All 18 aboard the flight were killed. But why the plane was flying so low remains a mystery to this day.

While my climb to West Coast Airlines Flight 956 with friends, Peter Frick-Wright and Taylor Zajonc, was the most recent, I have visited and written about air crash sites in Europe, Africa, Australia and Iceland. The story about my climb with Peter and Taylor appears in today’s Seattle Times.

Taylor Zajonc, left and Peter Frick-Wright on the trail to Flight 956

In the past, when military and general aviation aircraft crashed, they were frequently left in place. Nick Veronico, the son of pilots, a pilot himself, and the author of many books, including Wreckchasing 101 and Wreckchasing 102, estimates there could be tens of thousands of planes deteriorating in forests, lakes, deserts and mountains.

“It would be safe to say multiple thousands are still out there. Some have never been found,” he told me.

This is not the case for commercial airliners, except in cases like Flight 956, where retrieving the plane was simply too difficult.

I suspect most people associated with the airline and the investigation expected that given its remote resting place in the Clackamas Wilderness, the plane would remain undisturbed and soon be blanketed by the fecund flora for which the Pacific Northwest is known.

If so, they were wrong. Long before I left my boot prints on the hillside, hundreds or perhaps thousands of intrepid hikers had already left theirs’.

During my reporting, I spoke or texted with many people who visited the site of Flight 956 and even more who set out on a weekend jaunt with the coordinates of some other air crash site programmed into Google maps.

Ken Potter, left, with Don Hinton searching for the F-89 Scorpion

Among them is retired businessman Ken Potter. Shortly after interviewing him at his home in Canby, Oregon he invited me to drive 7 hours north where he and his friend Don Hinton of Spokane would be searching for a missing F-89 Scorpion in the forest near the US – Canada border. He had to know I would say yes. But he is just as enthusiastic about introducing the hobby to folks not involved in aviation.

Joymene Neal, 46, is an avid hiker with no particular interest in crashes or airplanes. Even so, she agreed to accompany Potter crash hunting twice. “There’s a sense of, it’s cool to see the airplane, but also it’s sad because someone got badly injured or died.” She told me. “And you wonder what the story was.”

On the other side of the country, Melanie Maruzzella, a 29-year-old marketing and development professional from upstate New York, got into wreckchasing while hiking with her dad. The first wreck she found was a small private plane. “It felt like a big adventure, like out of a movie,” she told me.  “We were going to find this plane crash in the middle of the woods. And we were really excited to find it.”

Melanie Maruzzella front and right in turquoise shirt with her father, far right.

That opened the door for father and daughter to do more research and find more planes, though Maruzzella told me her mom thinks “it’s a weird hobby.”

The many people who attend Nick Veronico’s annual Aviation Archaeology and Wreckchasing Symposium might argue with that. For the past 12 years, they have been showing up in Las Vegas to talk about how they find lost airplanes and share what they have learned.

Sometimes they find parts that can be used to restore historic aircraft. Other times they talk about the crash victim’s families they have escorted to view the wreckage.

Several years ago, Potter found the remains of an A-6 that went down in Oregon in 1973. He tracked down the two men who survived the accident and offered to take them to the site. Only Gene Hall, of Vancouver, wanted to go, but he brought his son and brother with him to share the story of his memorable night.

Nick Veronico a wreckchaster and aviation author

“It’s not just 6 crazy guys and gals doing it,” Veronico told me of wreck chasers, “A lot of people are doing this. The web is full of people doing crash investigations on their own and hikes. And local towns, if they have a crash site, are starting to realize the historical significance of it.”

Photo of the West Coast Airlines DC-9 that crashed in 1966

A theory of what happened to West Coast Airlines Flight 956

When people ask me about air disasters, it is usually, “What happened?” Frankly, that’s the easy question. Before embarking on my climb to the site of the West Coast crash, I spent several months reading the accident report, news accounts and talking to people familiar with the early version of the DC-9.

On arrival, I was surprised by the wreckage. It is roughly positioned as it would be in flight and remarkably intact. The damage indicates that the DC-9 didn’t so much hit the hill, as become entangled in trees. Limbs are embedded in the wings and one engine cowling is ruffled like a curtain from contact with something as the plane was still moving through the air.

To the more difficult question, “Why were the pilots so low in high terrain?” there are two components. Air traffic control made a last-minute change to the approach, sending the pilots scrambling to make a near circular turn east toward Mt. Hood, rather than the short turn west to the approach the crew expected.

The second factor is centered in the cockpit. Both pilots were new to jets and the DC-9 was a particularly challenging one. In an article for Air Facts Journal, writer and pilot Jeff Hill said he’d heard the plane called a “crazy mighty mouse,” and he agreed because it was small and light but had powerful engines.

Don Alldredge was the pilot flying Flight 956.  He’d previously flown for Empire and American. Photo courtesy Brad Alldredge

Don Alldredge, the pilot flying, was an experienced airline pilot. He was on his final check ride with 17 hours on the DC-9. The check pilot, Charles C. Warren had just 50 hours.

“A DC-9 flight from Eugene to Portland would be a very busy one for an experienced crew in the best of circumstances,” said John Wade, a retired airline captain who flew the DC-9 early in  his career. “It’s a very short stage length with a lot to accomplish in a short period of time. They had a lot on their plate to deal with and little experience to call upon to accomplish it.”

This cockpit dynamic, the faster, mightier, high-tech DC-9, the limited visibility, the unusual instruction to make a full circle turn away from the airport and the pilots’ confusion about their altitude were surely contributors to the crash. And Wade’s conclusion is just as accurate as well as self-evident.

“It is safe to say they weren’t where they thought they were.” It is as conclusive an answer to the question, “why” as there will ever be.