Saturday night helicopter

by Jerry Elmer

I was up at Coe on Saturday night, and was the only one there. I don't have a green laser, and had even forgotten to bring my white flashlight. I decided to leave about 9:45, mainly because it was really cold, and there was quite a wind that was rocking my car back and forth. Just as I was closing the back of my car, almost 10pm, a helicopter came around and buzzed the parking lot twice, going back around over the road, over to the visitor center, out over the little canyon to the south of the parking lot, and then back over again. On the third pass, they turned on the spot light and searched over the valley and then the path that runs from the visitor center down to the overflow parking lot. By that time I was out and closing the gate. As I went down the road, they expanded the search down farther into the canyon, and then over onto the grassy hillside to the south. As I went down the road, they came over and searched around to the left of the road, then across the ro ad behind me and over to the hillside to the northwest of the parking lot. I thought they were ininially looking at me, but decided that they were looking for someone lost or injured.

As I got about a third of the way down the road, I saw blinking lights coming my way, and was met by a fire truck barreling up the road. Shortly thereafter I was met by an ambulance with its lights blazing. I thought I might get stopped when I got down to the reservoir, but no one in sight. I cruised, unimpeded, all the way to the freeway.

My guess is that it was the same chopper who got the wrong park looking for someone lost out at Coe, and the green lasers might have given them the false impression that they had found the injured party. If that was the case, whomever is resopnsible for shining a laser at the helicopter could have caused some serious problems with finding a lost and/or injured individual by delaying the search. You just never know why those people are out there flying around. I haven't heard anything about the incident on the radio or in the news, but I wasn't really looking.

By the way, the comet was really spectacular in my 70mm Pronto. With my 35mm Panoptic, a very obscure long, thin tail reached the whole field across, about 5.3 degrees. I hope the views from Coyote were good, too.

Posted on sf-bay-tac May 11, 2004 17:41:49 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 16:29:22 PT