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Learning how to fly. Assignment for Men's Journal. Words by Peter Heller. Photos by Andrew McGarry

 The airfield at ronan was a lonely strip of tarmac up against Montana"s Swan Mountains. I was glad to see it. Not because this was my first cross country solo and there hadn't been much open ground west of Flathead Lake (none, really, for an emergency landing). Not because the blue water had been sanded with wind or because the Cessna had bucked hard coming through the saddle, but because I had to pee. I taxied up to an old gas pump and shut her down. Nothing but open tarmac, a half dozen planes tied down, a few beat up buildings. I took a leak in the cheatgrass, sighing with relief. A rusted metal sign rat tled against a pole. I climbed back in, set the throttle knob, and turned the key. Two groans, then nothing. I tried twice more, then climbed out.There was no one for miles. I looked at the mountains and saw dark thunderheads gathering at the peaks. If I didn't get out of here soon, I'd be grounded. I imagined my solo, a requirement for my license, going down the tubes. Why hadn't I just pissed in the Coke bottle? I walked out into the middle of the open pavement, shoved my cap back on my head, and stood there like a lost mendicant. Then I saw an old blue Buick rattling out onto the ramp, at the edge of the hangars. I waved.He noticed and putted over. He was an old man, pushing 90. "Are you a pilot?” I asked. He nodded. "Think you could look at it?” He got out of the car stiffly. He was wearing a checked wool shirt and had the craggy, proud face of Robert Frost, even the shock of white hair. He leaned into the plane. "I'd like to try to start her.” He put his right foot on the strut step, thought about it, then hauled himself up into the seat. He pumped the throttle knob three times and, trembling just a little, turned the ignition. The prop spun slowly twice, balked, then caught and whirred.

The engine roared. "Great,” I cried. Then it occurred to me that only his feet on the brake pedals were keeping the plane from rolling forward. "But now you are up there and I'm down here.” We looked at each other. Silence. 'Okay,” I yelled over the engine. "hold back the plane; you climb out.” Gingerly, he stepped down. His right leg caught in a loop of cable from the headset. I let go with one hand and had to reach forward awkwardly to lift his foot out. The plane was tugging forward. I swung around the strut and jumped up in the seat. "Oh, man, thanks so much!” He looked up at me. "Your name? What's your name?” I yelled. I thought he mouthed Baer. Wayne Baer. I taxied out, waved, then waved again as I took off. He watched me, inscrutable. He was keeping his own counsel as to my odds as a pilot. As I circled back to the north I looked down; he was standing in the same place, watching me go, the only human being for miles. Two years ago flying into a grass airstrip called Schafer Meadows in Montana's Great Bear Wilderness, I got an idea. Three of us were going to paddle the Middle Fork of the Flathead for three days. The river was beautiful, pristine Class IV whitewater with grizzly scat in the camps and good fishing. But I was even more impressed with the flight in. We sailed in on a Cessna 206 through a notch in the mountains close enough to see the tracks of elk trailing through the fresh snow of a windswept spur. When our pilot landed he hugged the black timber of a ridge, checked the runway for browsing elk and deer, banked steeply, and pushed hard down into a bumpy strip that ended at the cone of a steep hill. It was spectacular. I remembered how in Alaska, when I'd run rivers, flying in had almost been my favorite part then, too. Up there, bush pilots were the heroes of the backcountry, and stories about their exploits were as common around campfires as tales of bears.

I asked Kyle, the pilot from Red Eagle Aviation, how a guy could learn to fly bush planes in the shortest time possible. He had a smoke-graveled voice and a Tom Selleck mustache. "Aw, give me three weeks and five grand and we'll get her done,” Kyle winked. He seemed only half serious. I wasnÕt. Not long ago I called Red Eagle again. For mountain flying there's no better place to learn. Dave Hoerner, who used to own the company and is still its chief pilot, agreed to put together a program for me. One of the nationÕs top wildlife pilots, Hoerner wrote the book on bush flying. ItÕs called Advanced Mountain Flying Techniques. He has logged 30,000 flight hours in the mountains, probably more than anyone else. "I want to get a private license with an emphasis on mountain flying,” I said. "We're in Kalispell, Montana.

It's all mountain flying.” Okay.” "Okay.” I blocked out three weeks, checked into the Aero Inn, which Hoerner trains the author over rugged backs up to the airfield, and pre-Glacier National Park. The veteran pilot prepared for full immersion. A private knows his professionÕs dangers well; his license requires 40 hours of flight

His own son died in a crash three years ago. time. Most people take a year or more of lessons for that alone. I'd do that and the ground school simultaneously, all in the extreme context of mountain flying. I'd go up two or three times a day. I'd study at night. I prayed I'd be a natural. I wasn't. Dave hoerner was gassing up his cessna 185 the morning I met him. It's a powerful single-engine six-seater thatÕs been modified to fly slowly without stalling and to land on short patches of ground. He can circle tightly over one wing at 50 knots, when most planes would simply drop out of the sky. On a good day he only needs 200 feet of runway to land. Hoerner is beefy, in his mid-50s, compact, and ox strong. He grew up here; he was a logger for about a decade and dropped one of the biggest trees ever taken out of these parts. ÒThere was enough board for three houses in that one tree,” he says. One day he passed the local flight school, got a wild hair, and signed up. That's all it took. He started spending a good chunk of his paycheck on lessons and flight time. ÒI might as well have been sticking a needle in my arm,” he says. "I told my wife, "I've gotta find a way to keep doing this to make a living.’ ”

He entered a niche — radio telemetry, tracking collared animals from the air — that few others did because it was too dangerous. You had to fly into country so rugged that you might never be found if you crashed. You had to fly low and slow, and your best emergency landing spot might be the tops of heedless pines. In the summers he flies helicopters in Alaska, taking fishermen into canyons most pilots won't go near.

I peered into the back of the plane. "Those backseats can be removed,” Hoerner said. "I can fit seven adult wolves in there, stacked like cordwood.” "Wolves?” "Once I had a boar grizzly we were moving from Schafer. He was so big, his head rested against my leg. HeÕd been darted — conscious, but it makes them so they can't move a muscle. I was taxiing for takeoff, and I looked down, and he wrinkled his nose. Just like that. Not good. Then he made kind of a grunt. I slammed on the brakes, ran around, opened the side door, and hauled him out onto the ground. He got up, looked back at me, and walked off. He didn't look too happy.” Hoerner was about to take a biologist on a three-hour flight tracking wolves and asked if I wanted to come. Mountain flying is serious business. Hoerner threw his camo pack in the back; it holds an extra locating beacon, a .454 pistol, a two-way radio, a blanket, and strobe lights. "What's the pistol for?” "Mostly for me, you know,” he smiled. "Case I break a leg.”

That's along with a duffel holding enough camping gear and food for weeks. He has all his young pilots do the same. Nobody's being overcautious. Four years ago a pilot flew out of Kalispell to Schafer Meadows carrying four Forest Service rangers. Hoerner had just done the same route and radioed back for them not to go. "It wasn't very good. Turbulent, cloud cover. But he went.” The pilot hit a downdraft, and his wing clipped a cliff. He and two rangers died; the others spent two days walking out, badly injured. Five years before that two businessmen from nearby Polson went wide into the mountains on their approach to Glacier International Airport. "The government spent 700 flight hours looking for them,” Hoerner says. He then located them in seven days. "See, I knew where the bears were. That's how I found the carcasses.”

On September 4, 2004, the dangers of bush flying hit much closer to home. Hoerner and his son Ryan, 31, also a pilot, were up in Alaska, about to buy a fly-in fishing lodge that they would run together. "He went flying, and I went fishing,” Hoerner says. RyanÕs PA-12 dropped out of the sky and augered into the ground. He and their business partner were killed instantly. No one ever figured out conclusively what happened, but Hoerner believes it was a broken elevator cable. lanky, all leg. They flopped down in the shade of a big spruce and ignored the drone of the plane circling a hundred feet overhead. They looked over at the big bull elk and thought about it.

A quiet, very accomplished 21-year-old named Eric Komberec took me out for the initial two hours. The first weird thing is that when you taxi down the tarmac, you steer with the rudder pedals. I wove back and forth like a drunk. "Slow down,” Eric said, and I pushed on the throttle knob instead of pulling it, almost accelerating us into the parking lot of an adjacent grocery store. Dang. Somehow Komberec got me lined up on the runway, and we took off. I pulled hard back on the yoke, and the nose went to the sky. Eric yelled into the mike, ÒNot so hard; push it over! YouÕll climb so fast youÕll stall her.” He slid his eyes over to me. ÒRight?” he smiled. ÒRight.”

Once up, it was fun. Gentle banked turns. Keeping altitude with a combination of the yoke, the power, and the little trim wheel that helps hold the pitch. ÒPower for altitude, pitch for airspeed,” Komberec kept saying, whatever that meant. My left hand crushed the horn of the yoke. I was afraid, not of crashing and dying but of doing everything wrong. Landing was another story altogether. "I'll take the first one, walk you through it,” Eric said. ÒWe always land upwind, right?”

Holy shit. How many things can a single person on a Danish and two cups of coffee keep track of at once?

On my first landing we came in yawing like a deranged mallard. We hit so hard the plane bounced; rose into the air about 15 feet, which is called ballooning; stalled; and clunked down with another teeth-jarring jolt.

ÒI hope I get better at those,” I said af

ter weÕd rolled to a stop. ÒMe, too,” he said. That night, eating grilled chicken

at ScottyÕs across the road, I thought about how surprised, almost shocked I was when I saw the life — kayaking, surfing — involved at the beginning a kinesthetic testing of the limits, a wipeout, another try. Flying is not like that. There is zero margin for error. If you donÕt straighten out that nose, if you donÕt flare early enough, you wreck. It was like trying to learn to kayak with Class V consequences. The sense of responsibility, of exacting discipline, was almost overwhelming.

Hoerner took me out the next day. Learning to fly from Dave Hoerner is like learning to hit a tennis ball from Roger Federer. It really shouldn't happen. He took me south along Flathead Lake, letting me feel out the controls and take in the country. He also started making me aware of what happens in the mountains. He told me to think of wind as a river. The ridgetop there, that's like rocks in the river. The wind tumbles along it, creates turbulence.” He showed me the lens-shaped clouds just off the Swans and told me how you didn't want to go near them, that they meant very high winds. He showed how you could look at the surface of a mountain lake, how if one edge was slick and the other textured the wind was moving away from the calm.

There was a country airstrip in the town of Polson we could see ahead, down at the edge of the lake. He talked me through the landing. The whole sequence. I banked over the lake and came in on final.

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