Air Mail From Mccall Service Survives, Puts Caution Ahead Of Speed

Americans are brought up to believe every mail carrier unfailingly lives up to the Postal Service motto, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

But according to Bill Dorris, who’s been delivering the mail north of McCall, Idaho, for 37 years, “That’s how people get killed.”

The forests surrounding McCall are deep snow country. Seasonal roads are sometimes impassable nine months of the year. Yet the few and far between residents are entitled to mail delivery. The only practical way is by air.

“A lot of pilots advertise they fly everywhere,” Dorris said, “But they don’t. They’re afraid. We do. Only we do it at our time, under our conditions. That’s how you survive.”

Dorris has been flying for 57 of his 73 years. He’s not tall, and he doesn’t have much hair. His waistline is bigger than his chest, giving him the look of a grandfather, which he is, not an adventurer or risk-taker. Smiling, he repeated an old pilot’s adage, “There are bold pilots and old pilots, but there are no bold, old pilots.”

Along with mail runs to remote towns and ranches along the south fork of the Salmon River, his McCall Air Taxi service flies charters for hikers and fishermen, hunters, river rafters or skiers. For 300 miles north and 200 miles east or west from McCall there are relatively few roads.

“But you can go anywhere in a plane, so long as there’s an airport,” said Dorris, referring to the hundreds of dirt strips carved into one of the largest wilderness areas outside of Alaska, the only state with more back-country airfields than Idaho. “In winter, with skis you can land anywhere. We fly from airport to airport. It’s a rather safe procedure.”

Employing a ski-equipped single-engine Cessna that can seat five people, Dorris or one of his partners (sons Mike and Pat) fly a weekly back-country mail route. Some landing fields are on hillsides, making them less than conventionally flat. Others have doglegs requiring sharp, precise turns during landings and take-offs, or are a scant 600 feet long.

Flying one February morning with 37-year-old Mike Dorris on a mail run, there were four inches of fresh snow under a low, dark sky in McCall. Messages from a two-way radio reported up to six inches on the ground and threatening skies where we were headed. Father and son conferred. Mike was cautious. “We’ll go up” he said. “If it’s no good, we’ll come back.”

Ignoring wisecracks from my companions about contacting my next of kin, I climbed into a cramped front seat next to Mike, both of us squeezed by cargo and mail. If there’s space in the plane after mail and supplies are loaded, the Dorrises will carry a passenger on the two- to three-hour scenic and thrill flight for $35.

Taking off in a gray swirl of wet snow, we circled under clouds, searching for a break in the overcast. Slowly, burdened by a full load, climbing alongside the mountainous ridge separating McCall from our south fork destinations, the pilot hunted daylight with seasoned optimism. “Once we get down over the (Salmon) river we can usually fly the length of Idaho,” he said.

The plane was packed to the ceiling with 50-pound bags of dog food, newspapers, cases of soda, snowshoes, and mail. With my seat locked forward as far as it would go, the Cessna felt like a winged Volkswagen Beetle, cramped and with a noisy engine.

Tracing the periphery of Payette Lake while aiming toward the wilderness beyond, Mike, a former U.S. Ski Team member, tipped the wings from side to side, nearly perpendicular to the ground, looking for a hole in the clouds. The plane was too small to carry navigational instruments that would legally allow flying without visual contact. Locating a speck of blue sky felt like the proverbial needle-hunt in a haystack.

Turning in widening spirals, circling slowly up, then down, the pilot always had an eye on a safe spot to set down. With 17 years of flying experience, including 10 years on the mail run, Dorris’s familiar routine was awesome to a first-time passenger, something like being on the ultimate amusement park ride.

“This whole area up to the Canadian border is filed with airports. I always know where I can land,” he said calmly. “Getting out is another story.”

“Airport?” I gulped, squinting down through misting snow at a tiny white strip framed by miniature firs and spruce trees.

“We’re using a lot of gas circling,” Dorris said. “May have to set down to wait out this weather.” He banked toward the narrow slash of untracked whiteness. “Don’t be nervous if I pull up real fast.”

Skimming above treetops, Mike patiently pumped a long handle next to my left leg, the only way to hydraulically lower or raise the skis needed to land or take-off on snow. The device clearly had more in common with a barber chair than a 747.

“No brakes on skis,” he said, levering the pump, his eyes fast on the ground coming up quickly. The skis locked, we touched down, gliding smoothly on the snowy field, then, without warning, Mike gunned the motor, we gained speed and were airborne. “Touch ‘n go,” he said briefly, unsmiling, cranking the skis back up off the wheels. “In fresh snow like that, getting going again can be a problem. We might have been stuck a few days down there. You don’t have long to make up your mind on a 900-foot landing strip.”

By the time my stomach slid down from my mouth to my gut, the cloud cover broke sufficiently to continue with the mail. Flying at altitudes under 1,000 feet between steep canyon walls, we saw hillsides dotted with elk slanted out of the fabled River of No Return.

First stop was Warren, Idaho, an old mining town with 11 year-round residents and a spacious 3,600-foot dirt runway flanked by several decrepit-looking cabins and a long, steel quonset hut. Flight time was ordinarily 30 minutes to this spot at 5,992 feet. It had taken three times the norm. Mike pumped the skis again, aimed for the runway and slid to a smooth stop within yards of the local postmaster, waiting for us on his snowmobile.

In better weather we might have stayed for coffee and talk, but after quickly unloading mail bags, newspapers, cat food and ice cream, the three of us easily lifted and spun the tail of the small plane to ski back down the runway after a five-minute stop. As we flew over the town site, the sun broke through, highlighting Warren’s 30 lonely wooden structures, including an old mill, practically hidden under low clouds hovering amid the Payette National Forest.

Next stop was Hettinger’s Ranch. Deeper snow drifted against trees, defining a 1,200-foot runway carved into a hill that helped slow landings and speed take-offs. The private ranch was enclosed by elk herds and mountain goats. We delivered magazines and mail in utter silence to four residents, three adults and a baby.

The last stop was McClain Ranch. A couple met the plane and a woman climbed aboard the now-empty back seat for a ride to McCall, preferring a 30-minute flight to a two-hour, 60-mile journey via snowmobile. We flew back over several mountainous ridges, which was much easier without the weight of the cargo, though bumpy. Elk herds and miles between smoky homestead chimneys traced the serpentine river back to McCall.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO McCall Air Taxi charges $35 for a seat on a mail run, space permitting. “Be there on Wednesday morning, early,” says Bill Dorris. A flat rate of $180 per hour is charged year-round for charter flights that seat five passengers. Hunters, rafters or experienced back-country skiers who want to be flown into a site and picked up again four or five days later are charged $160 for the round trip. For more information contact McCall Air Taxi, Box 771, McCall, ID 83638, or phone (208) 634-7137. Another pilot, Ray Arnold, flies a lengthier mail route year-round from Cascade, Idaho, south of McCall. With as many as 17 stops scheduled, he also carries passengers if space is available, although his primary business is flying charters for hunters, anglers and sightseers on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Contact Arnold Aviation (208) 382-4844. McCall is a town of 2,200 year-round residents on the shore of Payette Lake. There is skiing at Brundage Mountain, (208) 634-4151, a popular place in a town that has produced more U.S. Olympic Ski Team members than any other, and snowmobiling on forested trails. McCall also hosts the biggest winter carnival in the Northwest, famous for an ice-sculpting contest. In late January, the enormous and elaborate sculptures of cowboys on horseback, dragons and Indian chiefs begin to appear all over town, culminating in a three-day contest with teams competing to create masterpieces of the evanescent artwork. Teams work with hoses, shovels and chisels, as well as alcohol in some cases, during 12-hour shifts in sub-zero weather. “It takes three idiots and one artist,” according to John Edwards, an annually mystified resident. For further information, contact McCall Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau, Box C, McCall, ID 83638; (208) 634-7631. The Boise Convention and Vistors Bureau, P.O. Box 2106, Boise, ID 83701; (208) 344-7777 or (800) 635-5240 is another source for area information. Or for statewide information call (800) 635-7820.