![]() ![]() “Arnold Aviation delivers mail twice a week-once a week in the winter-to ranches scattered across more than two million acres of wilderness. “These deliveries are part of the postal service’s universal service obligation to cover the nation, ensuring that all users of the mail receive a minimal level of postal services at affordable prices,” says John Friess, a USPS spokesperson. They do not deliver to individual homes or boxes. Alaskan bush pilots also fly the mail to remote villages, but they give it to postal representatives or lock it in sheds for pickup. A mail pilot survives not on what the postal service pays him but by using the mail run to also carry passengers, cargo, and weekly deliveries.Īrnold’s route is unique in the United States. The USPS has negotiated with contractors since before the stagecoach days, and it operates like a restaurant owner who knows that waiters can live off their tips. Forest Service outposts and some two dozen ranches in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness Area of south-central Idaho. Postal Service contracts with Arnold Aviation to deliver to U.S. Arnold pointed out backcountry landing spots as we passed some snowy white stripes in a sea of evergreens, others no more than dirt scratches on the face of bare hills.Įach time he indicated a landing site, he recounted a close call some pilot had experienced there: a ski plane upended in deep snow, a nosewheel grabbed by a gopher hole. To reach Taylor Ranch from Cascade, we flew 70 miles above central Idaho’s nine- and ten-thousand-foot peaks, snow-covered national forests, and fire-ravaged slopes. Gag strapped his daughter’s car seat into the Cessna as she rooted through the mailbag for birthday cards and presents from grandma. Another turn revealed a smaller creek and the twisted grass strip of the University of Idaho’s Taylor Wilderness Research Station.Īrnold touched down and rolled toward the bend in the runway where caretakers Meg and Peter Gag waited for us by their mailbox with their six-year-old daughter Tehya, their dog Bitsy, and a pile of cargo: the recyclables they were sending back a cooler, for transporting perishables from the grocery store and a few pieces of luggage for their day trip to Boise, where Tehya had a doctor’s appointment.Īrnold and the Gags off-loaded the bright orange mailbag, a stack of eight-foot lumber, a furnace, a week’s groceries, and other supplies. But Arnold’s hand was steady and he rolled out just above the rushing water. The airspeed was slow, the bank was steep, and my senses were on high alert: One bad turn and we could hit the mountain, or fall into the creek. Bare ground the color of a cougar’s hide filled the front window. When we approached the first mail stop, Ray Arnold rolled his Cessna 206 up on its left wing and spiraled down inside the narrow canyon that funnels Big Creek past Taylor Ranch. ![]()
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