Photo: Mountain Green Fire Protection District
A pilot is lucky to be alive and unharmed after crashing his small plane in a canyon near Durst Mountain in Utah. The pilot was heading toward Iowa when his twin-tailed pusher-propeller aircraft crash-landed in a clearing about 60 miles northeast of Salt Lake City.
Miraculously, the pilot did not suffer any injuries in the crash. He got out of the plane and began searching for help. After hiking about six miles through the wilderness, he managed to get a signal on his phone and called his son, who contacted local authorities.
The Mountain Green Fire Protection District said they were able to triangulate his location using his cell phone and dispatched rescue crews to the remote crash site.
"He very surprisingly did a great job bringing the aircraft down pretty much in one piece," Mountain Green Fire Chief Brian Brendel told KSL. "If you saw our Facebook post, you can see the aircraft is pretty much whole, so he did a really great job."
"Normally, with these situations, we have a great deal of difficulty finding the aircraft or the people," Brendel told the news station. "In this case, he just kind of got out of his plane, dusted himself off, and walked himself down this ATV road until he got into cell phone range."
Investigators are working to determine the cause of the crash.