By Khalida Sarwari
On Sept. 26 Tim Cassell turns 66, and even with three broken ribs, two sprained ankles, a bruised chest, a broken nose and multiple facial fractures, this birthday will be a special one for the Saratoga pilot.
Just a few weeks ago, Cassell lay bloody and wounded under a pitch-dark sky in a remote part of Sierra Nevada, waiting for a miracle. He had crash landed his 1966 Piper Cherokee in a rocky region earlier that day after a propeller broke off his plane. He estimates he had 45 seconds from the moment he made that realization to the time he made contact with the ground.
“All in all, I think I was pretty lucky,” the pilot said.
This was a routine trip for Cassell, who made the trek to Death Valley National Park every other week to look after his family’s resort. He departed from Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose around 10 a.m. on Sept. 15 to repair a broken generator. About two hours later, at 13,000 feet over a mountain range, a flash on the right side of the plane caught his eye and before he could figure out where it came from, the plane started shaking violently, and that’s when Cassell saw a propeller fly past him.
Acting quickly, Cassell scanned the ground for a clearing and found one, albeit with a lot of big rocks in the area, and maneuvered the plane so that it would land as safely as possible. He later found the area was in Forgotten Canyon at Funston Lake.
“It was really quiet,” Cassell remembered. “I could feel a tinkling sound, like porcelain breaking.” That was the sound of the bones in his nose breaking. With his face bloodied and bruised, Cassell managed to crawl out of the plane, fearing that it would ignite. As he stepped away from the aircraft, he noticed his things were strewn all around the plane.
Cassell reached for his cell phone, but there was no cell signal in Forgotten Canyon. His radios had popped out and were damaged beyond repair. “So I knew I was pretty much alone,” he said.
The rest of the day was spent trying to find a way to send communication and keep himself warm until help arrived. Strapping on a pistol he kept in the plane and packing a survival kit, Cassell started to head toward a cell tower atop a hill. Realizing that he’d only advanced 100 yards within two hours and was still nowhere near the tower, and with night approaching soon, he gave up and headed back down to the crash site. Back at the plane, he activated his emergency beacon and began the task of preparing himself for a night alone in Forgotten Canyon.
Because he was in so much pain, it took Cassell an hour and a half to unroll a mylar blanket.
“But it was worth doing because I believe that’s what saved my life,” he said. Temperatures dropped so low through the night that the urine he had collected in a container had frozen by the next morning.
Throughout the night, Cassell said prayers “that somebody would be led to find me.”
Meanwhile back in Saratoga, his wife Marsha received a text from their son, Benjamin, who was awaiting his dad at Death Valley with his brother, Aaron.
“Mom, what’s going on? Where’s Dad?” asked Benjamin.
When Marsha told him his dad should have been there that afternoon, Aaron called the Federal Aviation Administration. “They immediately got on the task of trying to locate him,” Marsha said.
Around 2 a.m., Cassell said he heard a plane circling in the sky. He later found that it was Civil Air Patrol looking for him. They had located his emergency beacon, but because it was so dark, they couldn’t see his plane. The plane left, but returned in the morning.
“I knew I needed to let them know I was down there and alive,” said Cassell. “So I unwrapped myself. I tried to wave that blanket a little bit.”
But it was too painful. Cassell sat back down and waited. The plane left. “I thought any minute a helicopter will be here.”
He lay down and dozed off again. Not long after, Cassell opened his eyes and for the first time in almost 24 hours saw he had company. Two park rangers were walking in his direction. “At that point I knew I was going to be OK,” he said.
Describing the rescue still makes Cassell and his wife emotional.
When they got the call around 9:30 a.m. after “all the tears and anguish from the night before, it was a pretty happy moment” for the family, Marsha recalled, with tears in her eyes.
The rangers treated Cassell before a helicopter with more help arrived. They gave him a morphine drip, strapped him to a board and then six people carried him over rough rocks and airlifted him to the rangers headquarters at Sequoia National Park.
“They were pretty impressed with my ability to go down and that I made it through the night,” Cassell said.
Cassell was eventually flown to the Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, with his family and friends racing to meet him there. He spent three days in recovery there before they discharged him at the end of the week.
He credits his faith, skills as an Eagle Scout and training as a pilot for seven years for helping him get through this ordeal. He said he’s just glad nobody else was with him.
“I never felt hopeless,” he said. “I knew that I’d survive and I knew it was just a matter of time.”
As for the plane, it’s still there and likely totaled. “It’s a shame … it was my first airplane,” Cassell said. “It served me well.”
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the accident.
