However, this westward stretch has its rough moments. I remember my scary initial flight from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City.

The Allegheny Mountains, outside of Bellefonte, were deceiving with their soft rolling hills. Actually, they were a nightmare to land in. Now out west, as I looked down from the cockpit, the Laramie and Medicine Bow Mountains just west of Cheyenne looked ten times worse than the Alleghenies. They weren't high, but they were rocky and sharp like the fangs of a wolf. Fortunately, my plane was on good behavior and I didn't have to make an emergency landing. It wasn't long before pilots nicknamed this stretch, "The Hump".

Air Mail Crashes

After The Hump comes the Continental Divide and the Wasatch Range just west of Salt Lake. The Wasatch did not have a vicious look to it but it did have height. I had to climb to just over 11,000 feet to make it over the top. This is a first since most of our flying is done at around 2,000 to 5,000 feet, where we can still see landmarks and railroad tracks clearly. Finally, I landed in Salt Lake City. It seemed like the most challenging flight on the route, but the stretch further westward would soon prove to have its own "bumps in the road".