Associated Press (AP) – A helicopter pilot faces up to $10,000 in fines and a year in prison for making an illegal lakeside landing in Grand Teton National Park. But whether he was justified by a weather emergency or just settling in to have a picnic is in dispute.
Peter Smith, owner of the air travel company West Elk Air, landed June 24 on the western shore of Lake Jackson, the National Park Service said in a statement Monday.
Landing a helicopter anywhere, without a good reason, is against Grand Teton rules to protect wildlife and the serenity of the park.
Smith landed in an area inaccessible except by boat or hike of at least 10 miles (16 kilometers) round trip. Park rangers who heard of the landing reached the site at the foot of the steep Teton Range by boat.
They arrived to find Smith and a companion having a picnic, according to the Park Service. Park officials declined to comment on any other reason Smith might have given for the landing.
Reached by phone, Smith said bad weather forced him to land and he was within his rights to do so under Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
“We were trying to cross the Tetons and we couldn’t, so we landed. We weren’t picnicking. We were landing,” he told The Associated Press.
The Teton chain is “notorious for bad weather”, and its passenger was sick, he added. He declined to say where they were from and whether it was a hired or personal flight.
Smith declined to discuss his Gunnison, Colorado-based business and West Elk Air’s website was down on Monday. FAA records online show the company owns two single-engine Cessna planes and a Eurocopter AS 350 B3, which can carry up to six passengers.
In February, Smith flew below safe altitude near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in western Colorado and was fined $530, according to the National Park Service release.
He is now charged with potentially more serious offences: theft outside designated by the regulations and violation of FAA regulations, each of which is a misdemeanor punishable by a $5,000 fine and six months in prison. His initial appearance before a federal judge in Jackson is scheduled for August 15.
Grand Teton is home to Wyoming’s busiest commercial airport – Jackson Hole Airport, which brought nearly 500,000 passengers to the ski and national park tourist destination in 2021 – but helicopter tours aren’t quite as common in northwest Wyoming than in other scenic destinations. The Teton Range is a hotspot for heliskiing or piloting a helicopter to reach remote ski terrain, but only outside of Grand Teton and designated wilderness areas in winter.
Rescuers often transport injured climbers and hikers by helicopter from remote areas of the park.
Surprise weather can indeed sometimes make flying difficult in Jackson Hole, where in 2020 more than a dozen people were injured when three tourist balloons crashed into a downdraft. Smith did not describe the conditions when he landed, but suggested that was the fate he hoped to avoid.
“If that’s the safe course, that’s what has to happen,” he said.