Gliding earthward at a sharp angle until he was within a few hundred feet of the ground, the pilot discovered that he was in the vicinity of the Last Chance mine. Picking out as a landing place what he thought was a patch of low brush, the pilot steered his ship in that direction. As he flew low over this area, Vance congratulated himself on having such a level spot on which to land.
Pilot Claire K. Vance
Skimming along the tops of the brush at sixty miles an hour, the ordinary landing speed of a De Haviland, Vance’s wheels finally touched the tips of the brush, cutting down the momentum of the big machine. Then, as Vance settled lower and lower, the plane was tripped like a roped steer. Brought up short in this way, the ship, with the heavy engine in the forward part of the fuselage, now turned on its back, and unceremoniously dumped Vance out on his head.
The pilot, entirely unhurt, found that he had landed in a big patch of manzanita brush, six feet high and heavy in proportion. Here he was, almost sixty miles from the nearest town—and the nights are cold along the Nevada-California line.
After learning that his landing gear, upper wings, and propeller had been damaged and that he could not hope to cut a path to freedom in the darkness, Vance decided to build a fire and camp near the machine. When he finally got the fire started, the pilot had only two matches left. This one fact indicates the close escape he had from freezing to death in the blizzard, or worst still, of becoming lost while fighting his way out of the manzanita brush in the darkness.
A less resourceful aviator might have wandered about until he died of exhaustion.
Vance lay awake all night feeding the fire with manzanita brush. He had landed about half a mile from the edge of the brush nearest the mine, instead of in the center of the patch. With the first ray of dawn Vance struck off toward the nearest edge of the brush, and within an hour had covered the half mile that separated him from freedom. At the mine, the surprised superintendent loaned him two mules, one to ride and the other to carry the 350 pounds of mail. One of the miners volunteered to ride out with him to bring back the mules. It was eighteen miles from the Last Chance mine to Michigan Bluff. This was covered on mule-back. There Vance caught a stage to Colfax, California—forty miles—where he put his mail aboard the eastbound Limited.
There are five radio systems to keep track on the air mail pilots as they wing swiftly from one edge of the United States to the other.