Alta Journal is pleased to present the second installment of a six-part series by writer Benjamin Cassidy. Each week, we’ll publish online the next portion of “The Ripples of Mutiny Bay.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading, and sign up here to be notified by email when each new installment is available.
The seaplane is an icon of the Pacific Northwest. Small aircraft launch and land regularly on the placid waters that lap against its major cities and destination isles, serving as quaint reminders of both the region’s rich aviation history and its majestic, fragmented geography. But on Labor Day weekend in 2022, in the most tranquil of settings, one such aircraft ferried its passengers to the most tragic of ends. Shortly after takeoff from idyllic San Juan Island, a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter bound for the Seattle area nose-dived into Puget Sound, killing all 10 people and an unborn baby on board.
The flight carried a remarkably eclectic group of passengers, among them a seasoned civil rights activist, a popular winemaker, and a young lawyer. Their deaths sent shock waves up and down the entire West Coast, from Southern California to the northwest corner of Washington State, and as far as Minnesota. Who were these people, and what can we learn from their lives—and their deaths? In Part One, Cassidy told the story of Sandy Williams and Pat Hicks.
The San Juan Islands have long bewitched visitors to their shores. The reclusive vacation destination about 70 miles as the gull flies from metropolitan Seattle conjures a different place and time. With abundant sunshine and only occasional rain, this archipelago in the northwest corner of the contiguous United States seems at a greater remove from the notoriously gray city to the south than its geography might suggest. The coniferous coastlines of the San Juan Islands, though characteristic of a state renowned for its evergreens, remain largely devoid of the development that has transformed the mainland. Only 4 of its more than 170 named isles and reefs—hundreds more surface and disappear with the tides of the Salish Sea—can be reached by Washington State Ferries, helping preserve the serene, prehistoric crests of land where Pacific madrones and Douglas firs overlook cerulean coves. City dwellers have found refuge in their tranquil beaches and forests for more than a century.
The name of the area adds to its mystique. Unlike in other regions of Washington, few allusions to the Coast Salish tribes who first resided on the isles exist. And distinct from several other prominent places in the Pacific Northwest, including Puget Sound and Mount Rainier, the archipelago doesn’t owe its nomenclature to the whims of Captain George Vancouver. The British Royal Navy officer did stop in the San Juans during his 1792 voyage up and down the coast of Cascadia. But a year before that journey, the Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza arrived in the isles and scribbled “Isla y Archipielago de San Juan” on a chart in honor of the viceroy who’d backed his expedition. Though others tried to rename the San Juan Islands over the years, the name stuck.
In the late 19th century, resorts popped up across the archipelago. They offered a respite from the fervor of the industrial mainland along with unobstructed bay views, horseback riding, hiking, and beachcombing.
Initially, steamships carried tourists across the Salish Sea, but pleasure boats soon filled the harbors. In the 1920s, car-carrying ferries made their first voyages. The San Juans acquired a mystical reputation even within the enthralling landscape of the Pacific Northwest. “There is a mystery and romance woven into the lore of this famous archipelago that challenges imagination,” a 1932 advertisement in the Seattle Daily Times observed.
Tourism dovetailed with the rise of seaplanes, another method for conveying visitors across the water. In 1914, aviator Silas Christofferson took Seattle mayor Hiram Gill on his first ride in what the Times called his “aero-yacht,” launching and landing on Lake Union in the heart of the city. The next year, on the same lake, aviation luminary William Boeing ordered the creation of a hangar to build his future company’s first product. The Boeing Model 1, also known as the B & W Seaplane, debuted in 1916 with a pair of ski-like floats in place of wheels, helping propel an era of speedier travel for military forces and private citizens alike.
Even when jets outpaced them in the middle of the century, floatplanes and other small aircraft endured as a vital mode of transit to and from remote locales like the San Juans. Instead of waiting hours for dawdling, frequently delayed ferries, locals and visitors could ride in tiny planes and arrive at their destinations in a matter of minutes. More seaplane operators surfaced as the archipelago’s population rose during the latter half of the 20th century, and island-hopping grew increasingly common among locals after the construction of the islands’ airport. The seaplane acquired a certain elevated allure and air of adventure, appearing in films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and carrying celebrities like Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne, and Neil Armstrong.
By the summer of 2022, San Juan visitors like Mark McNeilly and Ross Mickel could choose from several professional seaplane operators for their annual trips to San Juan Island, the second-largest and most populous of the islands. The two Washington winemakers had an uncommonly close friendship for men in middle age. They hung out three times a week for about a decade at their homes in Seattle’s tony Eastside suburbs, sharing meals, jokes, and mutual support not far from where they’d begun their unlikely, and uneven, climbs in the industry.
Mickel grew up in Bellevue, the edge city across Lake Washington from Seattle. In kindergarten, he met a boy who was, significantly to him, also born on September 24, 1974. Mark Canlis was one of the future heirs to Seattle’s most storied fine-dining restaurant, Canlis. Beyond a birthday, Canlis and Mickel shared a passion for food and wine that bonded them for life.
In 1996, while the two were fly-fishing in the Snoqualmie River, Canlis asked Mickel if he wanted to learn more about wine at his family’s restaurant, a future Wine Spectator Grand Award recipient perched above Lake Union. Mickel said yes, and under wine and spirits director Rob Bigelow, he distinguished himself as an ambitious student. He didn’t want to just serve wine; he wanted to make it his life.
In 1997, after traveling around the globe to different wineries, he interned at DeLille Cellars in Woodinville, Washington, a former logging town and suburb of Seattle that was, gradually and improbably, becoming a destination for oenophiles. Though nearly all Washington wine is produced in the Columbia Valley, east of the Cascade Mountains in the drier half of the state, the arrival of Chateau Ste. Michelle in the 1970s put Woodinville on the map. The community later welcomed Columbia Winery and DeLille to its burgeoning list of tasting rooms, and employees of the prominent brands started their own independent projects. In 1998, Mickel worked his first harvest for one of them.
Bob Betz, a Ste. Michelle veteran, didn’t know he was gaining a close friend when he hired Mickel to help him at Betz Family Winery. Betz’s daughter had vouched for Mickel, a witty young man with bushy, wide-set eyebrows, whom she’d met at the University of Washington. Mickel’s lowbrow humor was a welcome swerve from the high-cultural bent of many winemakers, and he charmed the more staid Betz as they undertook the unglamorous work of crushing grapes and sanitizing equipment.
Mickel was serious about a career in wine. He’d stay on at Betz Family Winery for almost a decade, eventually becoming the assistant winemaker. In 1999, at Betz’s urging, he started his own winery. That same year, McNeilly did the same.
Like Mickel, McNeilly didn’t have any family ties to winemaking or significant financial backing. Instead, the motorcycle-riding former salesman belonged to the same cohort of up-and-coming vintners who owed much of their knowledge to the generosity and camaraderie of more seasoned winemakers, people who believed Woodinville’s rise would lift them all. This group shared warehouses and tips on everything from harvesting to branding. McNeilly and Mickel, for instance, decided that their last names didn’t ring quite right for wine labels and opted to use their more familiar first and middle names, launching Mark Ryan and Ross Andrew, respectively.
The community of winemakers supported and boosted one another. After a national wine writer gave Mickel’s 1999 Ross Andrew cabernet sauvignon a high score, the whole group partied into the night. McNeilly, for one, started to realize the untapped potential of the region’s grapes.
The year 2000 was, in the words of the Washington State Wine Commission, the “Big Bang” for the regional industry. After decades of requiring growers to open tasting rooms only where they produced wine, a new state law allowed winemakers to run them off-site. Now vintners in eastern Washington could set up satellite shops in the lucrative, tourist-friendly shadow of Chateau Ste. Michelle on the other side of the state. Over the next two decades, the number of tasting rooms in Woodinville rose from 12 to well over 100—more than in downtown Napa—as Washington established itself as the second-largest wine producer in the country after California.
Though Ross Andrew’s cab drew early critical acclaim, Mark Ryan would distinguish itself by becoming one of the state’s biggest and most celebrated winemakers. Ross Andrew grew, too, from 3 barrels to 125 per vintage, but its wines were lesser-known, appreciated by Mickel’s many friends in the industry and restaurants searching for affordable, quality options to add to their lists. Mickel was more focused on making wine accessible to the masses than renown. “Too many people try to make wine into much more than it is and it ends up coming across as an intimidating and elitist pursuit,” Ross Andrew’s website noted. “Our goal is to go in the other direction: keep it simple and make it fun.”
McNeilly didn’t feel his friend was jealous of his quicker ascent; Mickel seemed content with a small company that, at one time, included his then-wife, Alexandra (a “line item veto queen,” per Ross Andrew’s website), and his mother, Sheila Nelson, whose exquisite meals at release parties inspired her own fans. By 2010, Mickel was embracing a new role: father. That year, he and Alexandra welcomed a daughter, Lyla, who added richer notes to her dad’s default levity; in conversations with friends, and in social media posts on Ross Andrew’s accounts, Mickel expressed a deep devotion to his sweet little girl. Though Lyla’s parents divorced when she was a toddler, they continued to amicably coparent, and Mickel reveled in typical fatherly experiences—dropping Lyla off at school, watching her ride a bike—and less common ones, like showing her around his block of a vineyard. Father and daughter planted merlot grapes to one day harvest together.
Mickel remained a visible, beloved presence at wine events, where, at one gathering in the mid-2010s, he met a brunette accountant with her own cutting sense of humor. Like Mickel, Lauren Hilty had grown up in Bellevue. Her mother worked in human resources at Boeing, and her father sold parts to airplane manufacturers, including the local aviation giant.
While her identical twin sister, Kristen, and older sister, Megan, could be a handful during their early years, Lauren was a dependable peacekeeper, a classic middle child. During her youth, she channeled her energy into sports, playing soccer and basketball, and riding horses.
When Hilty met Mickel, she had just left her own serious relationship. At first, the two exchanged cordial emails, but the formality softened in the face of Mickel’s irreverence. One time, Mickel traveled with Hilty to meet Megan. At her apartment in New York, Megan asked him to pick up a couple of basic ingredients from a nearby Whole Foods. But Mickel also returned with a full octopus, hiding it in the toilet and other places to surprise the sisters.
Hilty rolled with Mickel’s humor, responding with salty comebacks, always keeping him in check. Both were fiercely loyal to their families. They were fun travel companions, and Mickel’s friend McNeilly could see how well they complemented each other.
In October 2019, McNeilly and his family journeyed to San Juan Island for Mickel and Hilty’s wedding. The couple exchanged vows before scores of friends and family members at the Roche Harbor Resort, a historic property overlooking a busy marina.
A baby boy, Remy Mickel, arrived in October 2020 with the expressiveness of his parents and a penchant for pointing out rabbits. Remy’s stepsister, Lyla, relished his company, and Hilty could hardly peel herself away from him to work. The 39-year-old was soon pregnant with another boy, Luca, who was due in October 2022.
Before then, Mickel and Hilty didn’t slow down their travel schedule. They ventured to Tuscany with the McNeillys to visit wineries (Betz had coordinated a trip for them to the esteemed Antinori estate) and took a weeklong voyage around Admiralty Island in Alaska. Unlike some past excursions that McNeilly had planned, Mickel arranged the trip. On the boat, he had never seemed happier to his friend.
In late July, McNeilly, Mickel, and Betz shared a conversation at the Barking Frog at Willows Lodge. Chef Bobby Moore was celebrating his last night at the Woodinville institution, and dozens of industry peers had convened to see him off. At one point in the evening, Mickel and Betz retreated to a corner to catch up. Mickel detailed the Tuscany trip and raved about being a dad; he expressed excitement about Luca and his growing family.
Later that summer, the McNeillys and Mickel and his family descended on San Juan Island. They stayed at a friend’s house, visiting an oyster farm and savoring the natural beauty.
When it was time to leave that Sunday, and for Mickel and Hilty to meet up with Lyla back home, the two families walked down to the seaplane dock in Friday Harbor together. Their itineraries differed slightly: Mickel and his family had booked a return flight on Friday Harbor Seaplanes, while the McNeillys had opted for one with Kenmore Air about 15 minutes later.
From the dock, McNeilly waved to Mickel, his longtime friend, Hilty, whom he’d welcomed into his life more recently, and their 22-month-old son. The afternoon was overcast as the family boarded the small floatplane.
McNeilly and his family wouldn’t learn of the aircraft’s fate until their own plane landed in the Seattle area later that afternoon.
Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading “The Ripples of Mutiny Bay” by Benjamin Cassidy, and sign up for email notifications when each new installment is available.
Benjamin Cassidy is a journalist and fiction writer. Formerly the features editor of Seattle Met, he has written for GQ, National Geographic, and Scientific American, among other publications, and has received awards from the National City and Regional Magazine Association and Society of Professional Journalists. After spending several years in the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in New England.
