This (and most, actually) of the photos are from stonehillnews. I barely did any photographing on this trip.
I'm looking for the UC-78 that went down in 1944. It crash-landed on a bed of brush, and everyone survived, except the aircraft, which was written off. Very little specific information about the location is available, so we're following-up on wildly speculative theories. On this day we'd follow one of the branches of Big Rock Creek all the way up, to the PCT. Today much of the left side of this gully is brushy. However, in the 1952 (the year of the old aerials I found), much of it was forested, except the upper end, so that's where stuff would be found. If this is the right area, that is.
At the very bottom is a flagged-out trail that very quickly devolves to intermittent deer track. The climb is steep, but straightforward.
There's water at and below ~7800ft (labeled "White Fir spring" on the topos). More brush in the drainage itself near the top:
And there's a nice, grassy meadow almost all the way at the PCT
Alright, so there wasn't a lot of human-made stuff here, even the balloons were few and far between. Near the top (i.e. where we should be seeing stuff) I found this thing in the drainage
It's two sheets of metal foil, with some insulating fiberglass between. And with some stitching to hold the sandwich together. I've seen similar things before in parts that needed thermal insulation, like near the engine or the exhaust manifolds. And a bit above that was this thing
I was excited, but stonehillnews was skeptical, and I'm thinking that he's probably right: this is PROBABLY a backpacker's plate.
We looked around for a while both in the drainage (above and below) and in the surrounding manzanita/whitethorn beds. Nothing. I want to say that if the crash site were here, we'd be finding more stuff. But we weren't. Yet we did find SOME stuff. So... has anybody seen any old backpacking equipment that used the metal foil/fiberglass construction for anything? Could this be a firefighting something? Was fiberglass even available as a material in the 1940s? Also, what was the state of the PCT in 1944? I imagine the trail existed already, right?
We popped out just West of the Hawkins ridge junction to this cool view straight ahead.
To the right was a more unfortunate view:
We stared at it with binoculars for a while. Saw the flames climbing up, out of the Cogswell dam area. And saw the tiny airplanes drop retardant. Eventually we turned back, and drove out. There was a CHP road block at Islip Saddle, so we got out via Wrightwood. stonehillnews: anything to add?
