In July of 2009 I hiked up Taboose Pass and on a mission to climb Mt Ruskin, took an old trail along the South Fork of the Kings River below Bench Lake which I thought would take me to the trail up to Cartridge Pass. The river wsa too high to stick to the trail that criss-crossed it several times so just as I started to hike cross-country, I encountered this pair of Fisher cross country skis (see photos and map). The graphics on the skis were pretty faded and being no CSI guy, could not even begin to guess how long they have been there, whether 1 year or 10 years.

The skis are at UTM 11N 370000 4091600

Please help me to figure out what happened here!

Can't figure out how to upload the map and pictures[/img]

My first post here so am feeling clunky. Hey, how can I get my JPGs to upload?

alpinego wrote:My first post here so am feeling clunky. Hey, how can I get my JPGs to upload?

Use the Create Page link in the upper left corner, next to the "Welcome, alpinego". This will allow you to upload a picture to SP. Then you need to use the Img tags when composing your post to include the photo. If that doesn't work, blame the MLC SC.

just tossed from a plane

This fell from the sky over California and landed in a canyon in Death Valley.

It's what I call the Hades Torpedo, with Rick Kent in the background for scale:

FortMental wrote:Oh Man! Haul it out and strap to the roof of your car! If you can figure out how to light the fuse, you should be on your way.....good luck with that!

People driving down the highway would scream I saw a real Darwin award winner with that thing on the roof...LOL

Squishy has it. I know we are far afield from the OP's question, but... it was fairly common for military jets to drop empty fuel tanks. The tanks often have fins, are streamlined, and have a tell-tale drain plug. Possibly they were dropped by MLC SC pilots.

1000Pks wrote:Good trick with fiberglass, but when you know the moronics and what is taught by the MLC SC, anything might happen.

Your record is perfect so far.

Has anyone noticed the somewhat appearance of the "thing" to GORT? Perhaps a bit roughed up but still capable of destroying the planet. Let's bring this home to the kids!

To clarify, there also water drop tanks for fire fighting. In the Sheep Range, near Nellis AFB, we find the fuel tanks.

I don't get it. These are single-use or limited-use fuel tanks? Instead of refilling empty fuel tanks, like any rational, intelligent, sentient being would, they just dispose of them, littering the landscape -- in our own country, in a non-combat situation even?

And I know it's the desert and all, but when they drop them outside of a military base, like in this case, how do they know they won't damage person or property in doing so? Or don't they care?

A drop tank for fuel would not have fins like this one, nor would a blivet. It's not called "drop" because pilots choose to just flop one out every so often, it's due to configuration changes. Anytime a "drop tank" "fuel tank" whatever you think it's called is laying around outside a military range it's because it was necessary to off-load the thing for safety of flight....maybe an emergency situation. No one's going to go looking for it unless is was a blivet with cargo in it.

Possibly they were dropped by MLC SC pilots.

I rarely make an assertion for this stuff but this had me spraying my LCD with Pepsi.

http://marshall.csu.edu.au/Marshalls/ht ... Tanks.html

They haven't used this kind of tank for some time. Areas like the Sheeps are pretty remote; I find a lot of towed-radar targets, which were probably released more than 20 years ago.

Look at it this way. Nevada has had a lot of plane crashes in the mountains and deserts -- I think at least 250 military crashes (most had successful ejection of the pilot). Each of these could have wiped out a lot more people than a drop tank might. The crashes are relatively indiscriminate; the drop tanks were almost always released over unpopulated areas. Since the drop tanks were released when empty, and were made from light alloy, they didn't present much of an inertial bomb.

Nowadays the temporary tanks are much more aerodynamic (bolted close to the plane body), and can't be dropped-- usually.

EDIT: you can see the fins in the above link; some had boxier fins

Spooky place that is. That's the same area Randy Morgenson, the legendary backcountry ranger mysteriously disappeared in 1996 and whose body wasn't found until 2001. The book The Last Season by Eric Blehm recounts this interesting tale. If they are somehow his that's a huge find and should definitely be reported.

Deb wrote:... No one's going to go looking for it unless is was a blivet with cargo in it.

Well, you helped me solve a 23-year-old mystery... namely, what is a "blivet". I never realized there was actually a legitimate military meaning.

Where I once worked, there was a rotund fellow who was called (not to his face) "The Blivet". When I asked for a definition of blivet, I was told, "10 lbs of sh*t in a 5 lb sack".