Photographing the Mount Success Plane Crash Site | New Hampshire
Photographing the Mount Success Plane Crash Site
Writer Michael Wejchert and I made the trek to document the Mount Success plane crash site, where a Douglas DC3 from Northeast Airlines Flight 792 went down on November 30, 1954. As a freelance photographer who previously worked with the Mount Washington Valley Avalanche Center at Hermit Lake, I've covered plenty of mountain stories, but this assignment had been on my list for a while. We drove my Toyota RAV4 up past Berlin's paper mill to the quiet Success Pond Road trailhead on a humid summer day. The hike took us along the Appalachian Trail through alpine terrain to the crash site just beyond the summit. The wreckage sits remarkably preserved after seventy years—aluminum fuselage sections slowly being taken over by the forest, with wildflowers growing through the metal and graffiti covering the frames. I worked to capture the details: the crumpled aluminum skin contrasting with fresh mountain flowers, the empty windows now framed by rotting pines, the interior open to the elements just as it was that winter night when six people survived and two crew members died. Michael and I both agreed there was something uniquely affecting about being inside the wreckage, even decades later. The photo essay documents both the 1954 survival story and what remains at this rarely-visited White Mountains historical site today.
See the full story and photography at The Dark Side of Mount Success - New Hampshire Magazine.