The Dark Side of Mount Success

SEVENTY YEARS AFTER A DOUGLAS D c 3 SLAMMED INT o A MOUNTAIN ON A FLIGHT TO BERLIN, ITS WRECKAGE REMAINS A SOMBER SCENE FOR HIKERS

BY MICHAEL WEJCHERT / PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE KLEMENTOVICH

TAKE A DRIVE on the Kancamagus Highway or past Pinkham Notch Visitor Center on any summer day and cars are bound to overflow the parking lots of popular trailheads, spilling out onto narrow roads as hikers jockey for space on sought-after trails. But on the humid day Joe Klementovich and I drive his Toyota Rav 4 up past Berlin's paper mill and onto Success Pond Road, a solitary car is tucked in the teeny pullout for the Mount Success Trail. Cicadas trill in the heat, and it’s the kind of long, sticky summer day that’s perfect for a hike in northern New England.

Most hikers in New Hampshire hope to tag summits like the legendary Mount Washington, or add a peak to their tally of 4,000-footers — the list of 48 mountains over that elevation in the state. While Mount Success falls below that benchmark, clocking in at just 3,565 feet above sea level, it boasts a unique viewpoint and history: one borne from a much colder day than what Joe and I are experiencing.

AT 10:37 A.M. ON NOV. 30, 1954, Northeast Airlines pilot Peter Carey and co-pilot George McCormick throttled their Douglas DC3 down the small runway in Laconia, planning on yet another routine 100-mile flight to the Berlin airport. Wedged between the pair in the aircraft’s jumper seat was flight superintendent John McNulty.

Before the plane taxied down Laconia’s runway, Mary McEttrick, a 23-year-old stewardess, ensured the three passengers, James Harvey, William Miller and Daniel Hall — all businessmen who often hopped on short flights throughout New England — were comfortable for the short trip. Snow flurries peppered the air.

As the plane crossed North Conway, where Cranmore Ski Resort had just reported an early snowfall of 17 inches on its summit, it made its final routine radio check before continuing north through the mounting bad weather.

Approaching the Berlin runway, Carey and Miller banked the plane east to circle around for a landing. All of a sudden, the DC3 was hit by a violent downdraft that threw it 500 feet down toward the Mahoosuc Range, the low-slung string of peaks lining the border of Maine and New Hampshire.

Reacting fast, Carey yanked the nose of the aircraft up as the gray summit cone of Success rushed into view through the dense cloud. The plane, its wheels already down for landing, slammed into the side of Mount Success, severing the small alpine trees as it jolted to a violent halt. Then, the left wing and propellor engine burst into flame.

AFTER THE FLIGHT failed to land or radio in, New Hampshire Fish and Game wardens and search and rescue volunteers gathered in downtown North Conway while Northeast Airlines president George Gardner flew in from New York. There were few leads. A pair of duck hunters reported hearing a large bang that seemed to come from Mount Kearsarge, just outside North Conway, and the game wardens centered their efforts there — a full 25 miles south of Success. The weather, as it often does in New England, eliminated the possibility of a search by air until the following day.

For 45 hours, the survivors huddled together for warmth, tending to the small fire as McEttrick served them tea and a few cookies each and sang and joked to lift everyone’s spirits. Carey tried in vain to raise authorities on the wireless. After a second night out on Success, a helicopter flew over the area, finally cleared of snow and cloud, and spotted the silhouette of the crashed plane. Soon, an Air Force helicopter thundered toward the crash site, and the survivors, rescued after two days, stumbled through the flash bulbs and questions of local reporters.

The survivors are long gone — McEttrick died in 2015 after a long career with Northeast Airlines — but the DC3 remains where it plunged that icy night, 70 years ago.

A FEW CLOUDS slide across the sky as Joe and I break free of the trees on the Outlook Trail, the small viewpoint that gives glimpses of North Bald Cap Mountain (formerly known as Mount Success) and its dramatic cliff. The humidity cedes to a light breeze as we pass above treeline, and soon we’re zigzagging the alpine landscape on bog bridges past blueberry fields, with views of the Northern Presidentials, south of Success, as our constant companions. A clandestine junction, marked on my phone GPS, takes us to a well-worn goat path. After five minutes, we emerge through the woods to what is left of the plane, settled skeletal and ghostly in the woods, 50 years of tree growth concealing the aircraft’s final resting place.

Joe and I peek into the fuselage, now covered with graffiti, the leather seats and upholstery long since taken from the wreck: a husk of aluminum being slowly reclaimed by the forest it had razed 70 years ago during Carey’s ill-fated emergency landing.

Now, Joe works as a freelance photographer, and I work as a writer. But when we met, I was a newly minted guide, and Joe was a member of the Mount Washington Valley Avalanche Center stationed at Hermit Lake on Mount Washington. Neither of us are strangers to mountain accidents. We’d assumed that investigating one that was decades-old wouldn’t phase us too much. But we both admit, as we crawl through twisted metal, there’s something altogether haunting about the DC3.

Emerging from the undergrowth and back out in the open, Joe and I breathe a little easier, retreating back on bog bridges toward the car and a well-earned burrito in Berlin, having checked a box we’ve both wanted to investigate for a long time.

Flight 792 isn’t the only airplane to have crashed in the dense tumble of the White Mountains, but it’s the one most visited, thanks to Success’ position on the Appalachian Trail, and the plane’s accessible resting point just beyond that. No official marker designates the departure from the summit toward the DC3, and there’s something exciting about sleuthing out the wreck for yourself.

Although not hard to find, it requires a little bit of research and a willingness to take a turn off the beaten path. The plane, in many ways unchanged over seven decades, is an attraction unique among the many peaks of New Hampshire.

The quiet and beautiful Mount Success is a worthy adventure in its own right: devoid of the crowds now clambering over nearly all the 4,000-footers. But it’s this little piece of human history, just a turn away in the trail, that makes it truly special.