When you go for a hike you go for the beauty of nature. Perhaps you will get a nice surprise and see an epic sunset. If you are really lucky you may get to see a rare flower. If you are even luckier you may get to see some animals like rabbits or squirrels (if you are unlucky you may encounter a bear or mountain lion). One man recently went for a hike and was lucky enough to spot something that he had never seen before. He found a plane!
One Youtuber with the handle ‘Sheriff Woody’ loves hiking in strange places. He is an avid botanist and likes to hike in places that many people do not go, in search of rare plants. During a recent hike, he went to Death Valley in California in search of a rare limestone plant. Sadly he didn’t find it.
Instead while walking the trail, he came across a plane wreck instead. The wreck was from a plane nearly 70 years old, after some digging (at home on his computer, not at the site of the wreckage) Woody found out where the plane had come from. The plane crashed in January of 1952, and it was a secret spy plane. If there is anything more exciting than finding a plane wreck while hiking, it is finding a spy plane wreck while hiking.
The plane was part of a CIA operation when it had a malfunction and started to crash. There were six people on board the plane and all successfully disembarked and parachuted to a nearby field. They were on a classified mission and were quickly picked up after their crash. The plane, however, crashed in such an awkward spot that it could not be retrieved but according to Woody a clean up crew was sent to make any sensitive material disappear.
Sheriff Woody has uploaded an entire video on his YouTube channel that shows him exploring the wreckage. While watching the video it becomes immediately clear that one, the site of Woody’s hike is incredibly beautiful and two, the fact that the CIA was unable to retrieve the plane makes a lot of sense. It clearly struck the side of a hill and is at such a steep and isolated position that no large transportation could approach anywhere near it.
If you watch a little further into the video you also see that our YouTuber did actually manage to find some rare plants that day too. What an incredible hike it turned out to be. The YouTube channel only has ten videos uploaded so far. Many focusing on rare plants. It is interesting to see that the most popular video is that of the plane wreck with an incredible 341,000 views to date. The other videos on the channel do not go above 2,000 views (and that is a particularly amazing video of a rattlesnake). However, the first video of the channel was uploaded six years ago and has nearly 250,000 views! This particular video went viral as it features Woody opening a beer bottle with a fridge magnet.
It is clear that random things can go viral and there is no way to predict what they might be. While a rattlesnake did little for Woody’s YouTube hits, opening a beer bottle and a plane wreck spread like wildfire. We look forward to Sheriff Woody’s next viral video and encourage you to give him a follow. The plane wreck video is a beautiful reminder that you never know what is in store for you. If you spend all day inside you can be sure there will be no surprises but the moment you set a foot outside, is the moment the uncertainty begins.