Risking It All

(5 of 10)

Any good pilot will point out quickly that adventures are precisely what you do not want to have in the air, and Don Taylor's flight across the North Pole this summer was gratifyingly dull. Taylor, 64, is a former World War II fighter pilot who built his tiny, all-metal experimental plane several years ago from a plan by retired Aircraft Designer John Thorp. He flew around the world in the little ship, which weighs 1,500 lbs. empty and has a wingspan of 21 ft. 11 in., and set a number of speed and distance records. He decided to donate the plane to the Experimental Aircraft Association at its convention in Oshkosh, Wis., and flew in from Phoenix by way of the Pole. The trip north across Canada required seven hops, and on July 31, after 10 hr. 1 min. of dodging cirrus clouds to avoid icing, Taylor became the first person to reach the Pole in a plane so small. "I overflew it, identified it, took some pictures and got the hell out," he said. "That's a really weird place."

Aviator Larry Walters had a roughly similar experience last year. He built his own aircraft, flew it to 16,000 ft. without problems, and landed well pleased with himself, though entangled with a power line. The difference is that the California truck driver's vehicle was a lawn chair supported by 42 helium weather balloons, which he popped, one by one, with an air gun when he decided to land. He was fined $1,500 by the Federal Aviation Administration, but despite that said he had carried out the dream of a lifetime.

It was only eight years ago that John Moody, lacking the money to buy a conventional light plane, put a go-cart engine on a hang glider and putt-putted 300 yds. through the air. Moody, now a Kansasville, Wis., ultralight-plane dealer, started a fad that last month took Joe Tong of Lecompton, Kans., through the amazed heavens from California to New York. Tong's 250-lb. ultralight plane made the trip in a record 18 days. But Tong was not fast enough to escape arrest for a bad check he had dropped in Grand Rapids, Minn., during the trip. Police let Tong go when he made restitution (a reneging backer had caused the check to bounce, he said), and off he flew, talking enthusiastically of making an ultralight flight to the North Pole.

This is fine, lighthearted stuff, the kind of escapade that tastes good later with a few beers. Sailors talk cheerfully about buoys disastrously missed in fog, and climbers about snow-cave bivouacs that lasted for days. Still, the risk takers know that sailors drown and mountaineers fall. There is a casualty list, and the chances of ending up on it increase with the risks. Balloonist Maxie Anderson flew across the Atlantic five years ago in his great silver Double Eagle II; early this summer he and Partner Don Ida crashed and died in Bavaria during a balloon race. In 1978 a New Zealander named Naomi James, 34, became the first woman to circumnavigate the world alone via Cape Horn, only a brief time after learning sailing so that she could share an interest with her yachtsman husband Rob. She retired from competitive sailing to raise a family, and last March her first child, a daughter, was born. Eleven days earlier, Rob had drowned in a yachting accident.