Pic is of a mountaintop worksite here in southern Californy called Little San Gorgonio Mountain, 9,000 ft high, and very interesting chopper landings in the winter.
One interesting landing with pilot Pete had the landing pad covered with an 8 foot high snowdrift. Pete says "Hold on", as we approached the landing pad and I'm like "Hold on hell". "We can shiskabob the skids into the snowbank", says Pete. We crash land into the snowdrift, the helo skids sticking out of the snowbank like a fork in a pickle. Silly me, I thought that fun ride was over until we had to leave.
The skids had frozen into the snowbank and Pete says "Hold on"again. Well, I've been on some purty hairy rides in choppers before, but when Pete went full juice, and starting rocking the chopper and then the chopper popped loose from the moutainside, the pucker factor rose quite rapidly. Pete still laughs about that one.
That's Pete in the pic. Some of you may remember the helo crash in Oak Glen in the mid 80s and the helo crash at the 7 Oaks dam a few years back. Pete was the pilot who saved the crew in both auto rotations down. One of the best helo pilots I've ever flown with.