Rugged terrain. Searchers looking for a silky blue fabric craft missing with a hobbyist flier. Lake Superior in background.
Last seen turning for home between Superior bays
HOVLAND Minn. – A Hovland man strapped a blue parachute with a light engine to his back and took off from his backyard airstrip and didn’t return. That was Friday. Searchers began a search at dawn for Denny Pechcek in the deep woods near this Lake Superior village on the North Shore, 10 miles from the Canada border. Cook County Sheriff Pat Eliasen called the terrain rugged and brushy. Pechcek was last seen banking his paraplane between Horseshoe Bay and Big Bay upshore from Hovland and turning back to his little airstrip on Flute Reed Road, the sheriff said. If he had engine trouble, he would have tried to use the chute to glide into any opening, Eliasen said. Since he has not walked out, the thinking is that he was hurt or way back in the woods. Pechcek had lived in Hovland 20 years. Around town he was known as “Grandpa.”