Magical Moab

Where the water flows, where it doesn’t, and how it shaped the canyons, mesas, and arches we see now. As it is in many regions of forbidden country like this where traversing a straight-line mile can take a day by foot, the best way to see the most is by air.

Redtail Air at the Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY) is a one-stop shop for nearly all aviation services—and for access to nearly everything this unique region sandwiched by two national parks has to offer. A combination FBO, flight school, air tour, and charter operation, Redtail primarily operates a two-by-two fleet of Daher Kodiak 100s, Cessna 207s, and GippsAero GA8 Airvans, “almost like we have the Ark here” says pilot and Director of Operations Dan Wheeler. Redtail also has a Cessna 172 and a Robinson R44, and the company plans to bring more aircraft on board as its operations diversify to include occasional elopements and other custom adventures.

We’ll get a taste of nearly all Redtail’s menu, starting with a charter flight into the backcountry. Moab, while a perennial favorite of hikers, climbers, stargazers, and photographers, is a particularly popular hub for seasonal river rafting. It’s late spring, and although the rivers are low, the season has begun, and Redtail has its first rafting drop-off of the year today.

Sand Wash

The dozen or so passengers on the rafting trip demand the performance and payload of both Kodiaks, which will take the rafters to Sand Wash, an uncharted backcountry strip atop a butte near the Green River north of Moab. It looks like they’ve packed light—one small drybag per person, which the Kodiak handles with no problem. After seeing the size of their luggage, I’m surprised to learn that these folks are on their way to a multi-day rafting trip. In about a week, they’ll be in a town that is more easily accessible by car and drive back to Moab.

Lucky to get the second-best seat in the house, I hop in the front right while Wheeler is at the yoke. Taking the I-follow-rivers approach, we head north from Canyonlands and fly up the Green River.

Moab is out in all its beautiful-for-spacious-skies glory. Patchy rain clouds and curtains of virga make the vermillion cliffs, time-carved canyons, and snow-dusted peaks shine. We overfly Desolation Canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the country, and pass a maze of canyons that legend says were favorite hideouts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Wheeler notes that the muddy river below means there’s likely some flash flooding. Sunbeams break through the clouds and delight us with a rainbow, and all too soon, Sand Wash is in sight.

The approach is out of this world, as the few-thousand-feet-long strip that’s only as wide as the Kodiak’s gear is perched atop a butte. The dramatic shadows and scale of the place distort my perception of how far away we are, and how long the strip is—the Utah Back Country Pilots Association lists it as 18 feet by 3,200 feet, and it warns of extensive traffic in the summer but today we’re the only ones around. The strip’s location so near to a canyon wall means the wind can get wicked and weird, making what looks like a benign field unlandable with only a few knots at the surface. Despite the surrounding seeds of convection, the approach is smooth and stable, showcasing the Kodiak’s impressive performance with an airplane full of people. Short brush grows everywhere outside of the width of the wheels, and the surface is more unyielding rock than gravel, and we ride out the bumps and slow easily before parking.

Arches National Park

On the ground, it’s quiet enough that disturbing the silence with a normal volume of conversation seems forbidden. This is whispering weather, and a chill breeze reminds us that winter’s less than a quarter turn behind us. The rafters and their guides hike away down to the river. The pilots note that they typically delay takeoff until the rafters are well on their way—the trail to the river and the narrow runway are sometimes confused, even by the guides.

As fun as the flight in was, the flight home is even better. The Kodiak makes light work of the rough surface and we rocket off the butte and contour the terrain on the way out. The Kodiak gets a shower, and already those little rain clouds are turning into anvils. Distant lightning makes the way home roundabout and even more scenic—a few more minutes in the air here is a gift, and Wheeler later says no matter the weather, he encourages his pilots to get to know the airplanes on these empty legs and doesn’t insist on every flight home being direct. We reconfigure and slow down to fly below the rim of the canyon where the buffalo roam and see a few not far from a favored watering hole, drops of brown against a green hill entirely unmoved by our presence. If flying hot and heavy into challenging strips is the fun but challenging work, the empty leg home is all play.

Go by air

Redtail is in a unique position as the only operator licensed to give air tours over Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The company must follow a specific, preapproved route, and can only do so many tours a year, but Redtail’s proud to have this access that other commercial operators do not. Pilot Devin McCollum takes us first over Canyonlands and then over Arches. In the distance, the La Sal mountains, so named by Spanish colonists who thought the snowy peaks were salt, are a wild juxtaposition to the characteristic desert heat that’s creeped up on us. We overfly the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, the labyrinthine Canyonlands National Park, and the extensive Wingate sandstone ringed with “desert varnish”—black manganese in the stone. The arches are needles in a haystack at first, but a delight to see once your eyes know how to find them. Delicate Arch, the most famous of them all, is also the most fun to see from the air, as it stands alone on an otherwise flat-ish area. Easy to distinguish, it’s the last highlight before we head back to the field.

Not only is it just cool and enjoyable to see from the air, but as pilot and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Alvin Chung points out later, air tours give access to these sites that some folks wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience at all. The hike to Delicate Arch is several miles and some of the more remote locations we overflew can take days to reach via Jeep. For this and many of the other harder-to-reach areas, this is a great way for those less able, less willing, or time-pressed to see these bucket list American icons.

C207

Another pillar of Redtail is backcountry training. The company’s pilots’ yearly training with backcountry legend and CFI Lori MacNichol and her McCall Mountain/Canyon curriculum influences the way they teach customers. We head out on a gusty morning to do a stall series and some canyon turns. Typically, this is done in owner aircraft like CubCrafters Carbon Cubs and Aviat Huskys, but bereft of my own wings, we get to borrow theirs. We head out with Chung, who mostly spends time in the office, but still fills in for the pilots as needed. Chung takes notes as we run the company Cessna 207 through a stall series—clean, then with each notch of flaps. It feels like flying a limo that still has the benign characteristics of a Cessna, and the stalls are nonevents. Finding out when an airplane’s stall warning comes on versus when it actually stalls on any given day is key in backcountry flying, where the difference of a few knots on final can make the difference between a safe landing and overrunning a short field or worse. Today, the numbers aren’t that far from the book’s numbers. After practicing a few canyon turns and a gusty crosswind landing at Green River where I nearly run out of rudder, we head back to Canyonlands, backcountry basics refreshed. Even though it is early morning, the wind is gusting well into the 20s, making the backcountry unwelcoming, and so the basics are all we’ll cover today in the 207.

Hite: Hazardous

The most exotic part of the fleet is Redtail’s pair of Airvans. These boxy beasts were designed with Australian outback in mind. That they’ve found a home here among more red rocks an ocean away seems fitting. Like the Kodiaks, they mostly fit into the charter side, but can land in even more challenging (if less remote) places than Sand Wash.

Today Redtail’s taking the Airvans on a mountain biker pickup from a private strip called Hite which has an ominous and as far as I can find, singular warning attached to the info box on the chart: Hazardous. Elevation 3,840 and 2,200 feet long, this paved and charted strip is a challenge. We’ve experienced seasons of weather, from cold, rain, and wind to today’s dry and oppressive but flyable heat, a nearly 40-degree temperature swing from the days before. On the way to Hite, the terrain is once again the highlight. Instead of the nearly alpine environment on the way to Sand Wash, where we saw a dusting of fresh snow and an abundance of green, the flight south is martian and stark, bright and strange.

Hite’s a one-way-in one-way-out strip because of the terrain and slope. We descend below the canyon wall, and there’s a viewpoint busy with road tripping tourists above us. The Airvan slows down admirably and Wheeler lands on the thin, narrow, upsloping one-way strip with no drama, his calm control of the aircraft making a seriously difficult approach look easy as landing at a flat runway five times Hite’s length on a standard day. The only hair-raising part of the landing is the tight turn on the runway which drops off on either side, but Wheeler manages to maneuver us most of the way around before shutting down and trusting it to the tow bar for the rest.

The turnaround is quick, and the fragrant and fatigued passengers who have spent the past five days mountain biking in the backcountry listen to a briefing and load up. What would be a five-hour drive for them turns into a 30-minute flight. Before takeoff, flaps deployed, McCollum briefs us to not freak out when he uses the whole runway—it’s normal. I’m grateful for the warning and as it turns out, this heavily loaded departure is no problem for the Airvan and we’re off in the first two-thirds, maybe the first half. It’s only spring but already hot (mid-eighties today), and I wonder how they manage in the height of summer. McCollum explains that on hot days when the density altitude climbs, they don’t stop pickups, they just do additional lighter loads. The conditions today allow for the two Airvans to take care of the return.

On the way back, everywhere looks enticingly flat and landable, especially relative to Hite.

“I see runways everywhere,” McCollum says with a smile. And he’s right. The interstate is a nicer surface than Hite and would be a piece of cake to land on in the Airvan. Could we? Yes, once. Which makes the strips that are open and the access they grant even that much more valuable. The Airvan shows off one more time for us when we get back to CNY and McCollum lands long and easy to save on taxi time. The ability to perform like that and willfully leave runway behind you with no problem and every seat taken is impressive.

And after that, it’s time to go, and leave the magical enclave called Moab. We’ve tasted everything but not nearly seen it all, and like many of these great and stunning places, we leave with a promise to return. The Utah backcountry is worth exploring, and whether you have an hour for an air tour or a week for training, Redtail can help you do it.

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