After a formal Freedom of Information Act request (and then the expected follow-up note weeks later to ask if/when the the Forest Service was actually going to send it) I’ve finally received the January and February 2008 daily Wasatch Powderbird Guides report.
I’ve always thought it seemed like there were a lot of helicopters flying around at the head of Little Cottonwood Canyon, but never imagined the WPG were making as many flights as they do. With only twelve days of operation in January, they managed to pump out a staggering 511 flights, for an average of 42.6 flights per day. Bear in mind a “flight” is there and back, which means when they were flying, it was a virtual war-zone of flying choppers.
Shocking, eh? But then there was February.
In an ear-shattering, peace disrupting effort, the Wasatch Powderbirds cranked out 720 flights in just 14 days during February! That’s an average of over 51 flights per day. No wonder it seems like the helicopters are in your face all the time – they are.
During Jan/Feb spree, they managed to drop 41 bombs of which there is no record of the damage they caused to flora and fauna.
In the combined 26 days of operation, they saw 328 “ski or snowshoe users” which comes out to 12.6 per day, or only one backcountry user for every 3-4 flights they took. They must not be looking very hard.
The hard-to-read pdf document can be found here.
