Searchers Find Missing Plane, Bodies Of 2 Men -- Craft Crashed Into Granite Mountain, Killing Prominent Pair From Alaska

A small plane that disappeared in the Cascade Mountains last weekend was found yesterday evening near Snoqualmie Pass, the pilot and passenger dead.

The Cessna 337 Skymaster was spotted by a helicopter about 5:15 p.m. on Granite Mountain, north of Interstate 90, King County sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said.

Pilot Dennis Waldock, 57, and passenger Leo Walsh, 74, both of Alaska, disappeared Saturday as they flew toward the cloudy mountain pass.

Waldock had just bought the Cessna 337 in Minnesota.

The plane crashed into the side of the mountain on a steep, heavily wooded slope.

The plane was last heard from at midday last Saturday near Ellensburg on a flight from Lewistown, Mont., to Western Washington.

Around noon, as the plane approached the Cascade Range, Waldock canceled his instrument-flight plan. He said he was having trouble with his autopilot and likely would head to Boeing Field in Seattle to have it fixed, Mac MacSpadden, the incident commander overseeing the search, said earlier.

Radar lost track of the plane at 5,800 feet about four miles east of Ellensburg, MacSpadden said.

Searchers using radar-track data from the Federal Aviation Administration searched the area from Ellensburg west to Snoqualmie Pass but found nothing Sunday or Monday.

On Tuesday, the search was switched to the Cascades' western slopes.

Each day, about 20 airplanes piloted by volunteers took to the air, covering more than 4,340 square miles by Thursday night. Any more search planes would just have gotten in the way, MacSpadden said.

The search made front-page news in Anchorage, where both men were prominent in the business community. Waldock was a stockbroker.

Here in Western Washington, however, newspapers paid far more attention to the East Coast search for John F. Kennedy Jr., relegating the search in their own back yard to brief stories on inside pages.

In a decision that still puzzles search officials, Waldock chose to cancel his instrument flight plan and fly by visual cues, plunging into dense clouds filling Snoqualmie Pass.

Witnesses reported seeing the plane roaring through the foggy pass, hugging I-90.

By last Saturday evening, Waldock's mother, waiting for him in the southwestern Washington town of Chehalis, near Centralia, reported him overdue. Search planes took to the air the next morning.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Tracy Jan's phone message number is 206-748-5812. Her e-mail address is: tjan@seattletimes.com