To return to Pilot Vance, who in December, 1923, was caught in a snowstorm between Reno and San Francisco: The flakes, large and fluffy like the breast feathers of a Canada goose, floated lazily to earth, entirely cutting off his view of the country below. Flying by compass and resorting to the tactics taught him by experience, Vance endeavored to climb above the storm. At 13,000 feet—two and a half miles—the tempest still was raging. Snow was falling thicker than ever. Vance realized that it would be pitch dark before he could reach Reno. With the chances ten to one that he would become lost in the snowstorm, and realizing that his gasoline supply was running low, Vance decided to come down. Gliding earthward at a sharp angle until he was within a few hundred feet of the ground, the pilot discovered that he was in the vicinity of the Last Chance mine. Picking out as a landing place what he thought was a patch of low brush, the pilot steered his ship in that direction. As he flew low over this area, Vance congratulated himself on having such a level spot on which to land. [Illustration: Pilot Claire K. Vance] Skimming along the tops of the brush at sixty miles an hour, the ordinary landing speed of a De Haviland, Vance’s wheels finally touched the tips of the brush, cutting down the momentum of the big machine. Then, as Vance settled lower and lower, the plane was tripped like a roped steer. Brought up short in this way, the ship, with the heavy engine in the forward part of the fuselage, now turned on its back, and unceremoniously dumped Vance out on his head. The pilot, entirely unhurt, found that he had landed in a big patch of manzanita brush, six feet high and heavy in proportion. Here he was, almost sixty miles from the nearest town—and the nights are cold along the Nevada-California line. After learning that his landing gear, upper wings, and propeller had been damaged and that he could not hope to cut a path to freedom in the darkness, Vance decided to build a fire and camp near the machine. When he finally got the fire started, the pilot had only two matches left. This one fact indicates the close escape he had from freezing to death in the blizzard, or worst still, of becoming lost while fighting his way out of the manzanita brush in the darkness. A less resourceful aviator might have wandered about until he died of exhaustion.