A mini-adventure to find a wrecked plane goes awry.

A recent attempt to find an airplane wreck in a remote part of Toro County Park cost me two afternoons of hiking, a lot of sweat, a trip to the hospital (due to an allergic reaction to a tick bite) and a chunk of my sanity.

It all started a couple of years ago, when I was supplying tourists with hiking information from behind a long wooden desk in Big Sur Station. Several times during that year, hikers would wander into the information center and ask about the wreckage of a downed plane in a nearby park.

Eventually, some of the hikers started to ask about Toro Park stating that they had heard the plane was somewhere in that county park, located on the Highway 68 corridor between Salinas and the Monterey Peninsula. For over a year, I buried this information deep in my subconscious until my recent discovery of a beached barge near the mouth of the Salinas River (more about this later) somehow brought images of the wrecked plane to the surface.

A call to the Monterey County Parks Department verified that there was a plane wreck in Toro Park. Both Supervising Ranger Bob Milotz and Parks Department Area Manager Richard Higgins had hiked back to the wreck, but, unfortunately, the two had hazy memories about where the plane was located.

Higgins, who remembered a bit more, said the wreck was probably located in the second or third canyon to the west, past Harper Spring. He said it would be hard to find unless a person was looking for it.

Last week, right in the middle of an extremely warm afternoon, I started what I thought would be a short pleasant hike to the downed plane. With a full water bottle, an apple, a book and my GPS unit, I headed out on the Ollason Trail. Within about ten minutes, I passed an old water well a few feet to the left of the trail, and after crossing a creek, I passed through a cattle gate and entered a field where cattle munched on grass as green as the felt on a billiards table.

At 2.7 miles into the Ollason Trail, I took a right onto the Ranch Trail, which climbed for a third of a mile up to a dirt road. Taking a right on the dirt road, I descended into Harper Canyon.

Once in the canyon, I took a left on a dirt road and passed under beautiful oak trees until I found a circular, concrete water trough fed by Harper Spring. Here is where my adventure started to unravel.

A few feet past the spring, one trail splits off to the right up Titus Canyon and another continues to the left into Harper Canyon. As I walked up the trail to the left, I noticed that the nice, broad, sunny Harper Canyon I had been walking through was becoming darker and more claustrophobic. I also noticed that the sun was starting to set.

Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time exploring every steep, muddy cow path to the right. A mile past the spring on the Harper Canyon Trail, I discovered a well-worn path up a canyon. But, after a short hike up the canyon, I decided it was time to call it quits for the day.

In the dark, I hiked past strange, moaning animals on the way back to my car. At one point, I thought about running through the woods, until I remembered mountain lions love a good chase. After thinking about mountain lions, my mind kept replaying a slow-motion clip of a mountain lion tackling me from behind like an aggressive linebacker. By the time I got back to the entrance of the park, the front gate was locked. Luckily, I had parked on the other side to avoid the $4 entrance fee.

On my second trip up Harper Canyon, I was better prepared. Fortified by a burger from the Toro Place Café, I headed up Harper Canyon with plenty of sunlight. This time, I hiked all the way up to the intersection of the Ollason Trail and Toyon Ridge Trail. Though there was an incredible view of the Salinas Valley, I knew I was not going to find the plane there.

Returning to Harper Canyon, I decided to hike into the side canyon I had started to explore at dusk during my last hike. Under oak trees cloaked in pale green lichen, I walked exactly .32 miles down the trail (a GPS is awfully handy) and finally found the plane wreck. It was only a few hundred feet past where I had turned around the week before.

There were three pieces of the plane in a small canyon to the left. One looked like nothing more than a large, crumpled aluminum can. Behind the twisted metal, a 10-foot section of the fuselage was wedged into the base of a tree. A few feet away was the best part: a horizontal rudder.

Though I was excited to have finally found it, I was a little surprised at how small the plane must have been. In my tired, dehydrated state, I was able to lift the rudder right off the ground.

Looking at the wreckage, I tried to imagine what would have happened to the pilot. Did the pilot eject from the plane and parachute to safety? Did the pilot’s body get crushed like the little plane? And if the body was crushed, where were the bones?

Unfortunately, the Monterey County Parks Department had no answers for me. “All I know is that it is there,” Higgins says. “We could never get any history about it from anybody.”

Directions: Toro Park is located 11.6 miles east of Monterey on Highway 68. To find the plane wreck, hike 2.7 miles on the Ollason Trail, take a right on the Ranch Trail and follow it .3 miles to its end at a dirt road. Take a right on the dirt road and follow it into the bottom of Harper Canyon. Take a left on the dirt road in the bottom of the canyon and follow the road a half-mile to the spring. Past the spring, the road becomes a trail. Follow the Harper Canyon Trail one mile and then take a right on a spur trail through a canyon .32 miles to the wreck.

Do not take home any parts of the wreckage as a souvenir!

Beach Discovery

I found the shipwreck that inspired my search for the airplane while walking the beach from Moss Landing to Seaside for another article that was published a couple of months ago in these pages. Instead of stumbling along the beach for 13.5 miles like I did for that article, my girlfriend and I discovered an easier way to get to the wreck a couple of weekends ago.

Leaving from a parking lot for the Salinas River National Wildlife Refuge, we walked along the Salinas River for less than a mile until we reached the beach. Looking north towards Moss Landing, we could see the furry outline of the beached barge another three-quarters of a mile away.

While walking past a group of fisherman, I noticed lots of flotsam and jetsam on the beach, including a multitude of broken sand dollars, a bald tennis ball and a few pieces of green sea glass.

Without breaking a sweat, my girlfriend and I arrived at the 75-foot-long beached barge. A hop up on the wreck’s deck revealed that the top is encrusted with barnacles and mussels.

Unlike the downed plane in Toro Park, I was able to find out a little information about this shipwreck from State Park Ranger Dave Dixon. The wreck has been there since 1984, when a tugboat lost control of the vessel during stormy seas.

Directions to the Salinas River National Wildlife Refuge parking area:

Drive 13 miles north of Monterey on Highway 1 and turn off on the Del Monte Boulevard exit. Take a left on Neponset Road until it dead ends into a dirt road. Take the rutted dirt road between artichoke fields a half-mile to the parking area.

—Stuart Thornton