WPR14FA252 · Cessna 175

The airline transport pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in the accident airplane behind another airplane. Radar data showed that the accident airplane was trailing about 2 to 3 miles behind the lead airplane and that both airplanes were proceeding northwest at 9,400 ft mean sea level (msl). The lead pilot reported that the flight route included flying through a mountain pass at an of elevation 10,150 ft msl. The lead airplane exited the pass to the west, and the lead airplane pilot then lost communications with the accident airplane pilot.

The next day, a search and rescue helicopter pilot located the airplane wreckage on the eastern slope of the pass about 1/2 mile below the mountain pass ridge, in a steep wooded valley, at an elevation of 9,804 ft msl. An on-scene examination was conducted; broken tree tops, vertical witness marks on three trunks, and the compact nature of the wreckage footprint were consistent with the airplane impacting terrain in a near-vertical descent after a low-altitude stall/spin. A postaccident fire destroyed a majority of the airplane. No preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions were found that would have precluded normal operation.

The terrain rises 1,100 ft vertically over a distance of 2 miles as the mountain pass is approached in the direction that the accident airplane was traveling. The airplane's maximum climb rate at 10,000 ft was calculated to be about 650 ft per minute at 83 mph, which was not sufficient to climb the airplane over the rising terrain at the point that the pilot started the ascent and this led to his exceedance of the airplane's critical angle-of-attack and the airplane entering a stall/spin.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset