Confetti on Lone Peak

Knee-deep in snow 10,000 ft. up the granite scarp of Lone Peak in the Wasatch Mountains, 25 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, last week a snowy-haired oldster of 90 named Ed Hamilton fingered a small splinter of duralumin while tears filled his eyes. Tugging at his white beard, he mumbled: "I'm glad. That's all I can say."

Reason for old Ed Hamilton's emotion was that the bit of metal marked the end of a grueling six-month search for his son-in-law, Pilot S. J. Samson. Last Dec. 14, Pilot Samson took off from Los Angeles on his regular run to Salt Lake City in a Western Air Express Boeing. After stopping at Las Vegas, Nev., the twin-motored transport droned on north into a wintry night and oblivion (TIME, Dec. 28). Aboard the plane, which last reported hitting 199 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft. under a "high overcast," were four passengers, a co-pilot and pretty Hostess Gladys Witt, whose marital indecisions had been making headlines. When the plane never arrived, WAE launched a search which continued spasmodically until last week with the lure of a $1,000 reward. Fortnight ago a searcher on Lone Peak found some letters. Last week four men reached the scene of the crash almost simultaneously, agreed to share the $1,000.

Lone Peak is an 11,250-ft. sentinel on the edge of the valley up which WAE flies on the Salt Lake radio beam. This beam is notorious for "multiple effects" (splitting around mountains). Pilot Samson crashed 35 miles off course, apparently had lost the beam altogether. If he had been just a little higher, he would have cleared Hardy Ridge, had a safe path on to the airport. As it was, the plane was smashed into confetti and completely buried by snow. At week's end no bodies had yet been recovered and postal inspectors stood guard with guns while they salvaged a rich batch of gems.

Said Postal Inspector M. G. Wenger: "Evidently the plane -- we think it must have been traveling about 207 m.p.h. -- thundered head on into the steep-slanting, knife-edge ridge only 20 ft. from its top. Part of the undercarriage and nose, with much of the mail, ripped off upon the ridge, and the rest of the plane, with the seven bodies, plunged off the cliff, striking once about 400 ft. down and then ricocheting off and tumbling some 600 ft. more into the uptilted snow field."

While the difficult search for bodies began, old Ed Hamilton requested that they be buried forever by dynamiting the towering cliff above the wreck, memorial ized by a skyline marker.

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