The death of a pilot whose firefighting helicopter crashed into Silver Jack Reservoir last month has been ruled an accident by a Grand Junction medical examiner, according to an autopsy report obtained by the Plaindealer.
The Gunnison County Coroner’s Office determined that Nicholas Dale drowned. The 56-year-old Canadian man, who died on July 12 while supporting firefighting operations on the Gold Mountain Fire, also had blunt force injuries from the crash, which were listed as contributing factors in his death.
A dive team that ultimately recovered Dale’s body from the submerged Kaman K-MAX helicopter was forced to wait to enter the lake until the craft’s lights were extinguished. When the team first arrived, according to the report prepared by Dr. Sophia Rodriguez of The Pathology Group P.C., they detected an electrical current in the water from the sinking chopper.
Toxicology results for Dale found no evidence of drug or alcohol use, according to the report, which was completed on Aug. 5 and released to the Plaindealer under a public records request.
“Given the circumstances surrounding this death as currently known, the manner of death is [an] accident,” Rodriguez wrote.
The cause of the crash that killed Dale, an experienced firefighting pilot from Sooke, British Columbia, remains under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
A preliminary report from the NTSB released earlier this month detailed the final hours before the K-MAX’s crash. At around 4 p.m. on July 12, the NTSB said, Dale’s helicopter departed from near Ouray and conducted five water drops in the Uncompahgre Wilderness, refilling a 660-gallon bucket at Silver Jack with each trip.
During the sixth and final trip, according to the report, the helicopter rapidly turned upward and to the right, with witnesses reporting that they saw the aircraft fall into the lake upside down. Its load sensors had registered about 3,000 pounds for each prior water run, but in the moments before the crash the load shot up to 7,700 pounds, nearly 1,000 pounds more than the K-MAX’s rated maximum load.
The aircraft was removed from the lake on July 22 by a Boeing CH-47 Chinook.
Video recovered from a camera aboard the chopper “did not reveal any abnormal sounds or vibrations indicative of a rotorcraft system or engine malfunction during the flight,” according to the report. And investigators found that the chopper’s water bucket was still attached and undamaged after the crash.
The K-MAX chopper was manufactured in 2019 and registered to Helicopter Express LLC, a Georgia-based company, according to FAA records. The aircraft had been in the Ouray area since July 6 and had been working the fire for several days, according to reporting from The Colorado Sun confirmed with FlightAware.com, a flight-tracking website.
Dale is one of five firefighters who have died in Colorado in 2026. On June 27, helitack crew members Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson were killed in a burnover while fighting the Knowles Fire west of Grand Junction. Nathan Matthews, who was injured in the same incident, died nearly a month later.
Chart Riggall is a journalist with Report for America, a nonprofit program that helps boost reporting resources in underserved areas. He’s also part of the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, a partnership between Report for America, High Country News and local news organizations across the West.
