system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are there so many planes crashed in the Rocky Mountains, East of the Continental Divide?

I'm curious about the science of why the altitude or this specific area was so difficult as well as the social/political/whatever climate that made this happen.
gpt
Pilot here with mountain-flying experience, I'll try to answer the question as completely as possible without getting to science-y.

There are a two main reasons why this happens:

* **Altitude**: In the same way that your car produces significantly less power at higher elevations, small aircraft produce less power at higher altitudes (this is because the engines of both require oxygen to create power, and there is less oxygen at higher altitudes).  If pilots aren't trained or prepared to handle the (significant) lack of power in the mountains, they can easily get themselves into trouble by selecting a too-short runway, flying into a valley they can't climb out of, etc.  This also explains why airplanes don't just fly higher: small aircraft generally don't have enough power to fly much higher than 10,000 feet.

* **Winds**: Mountain winds are typically strong, and strong winds are always a challenge for small planes close to the ground.  But the real problem with mountain winds is that they often contain *downdrafts*, which are wind drafts that do exactly what they sound like: travel downwards, not just side-to-side.  These downdrafts can easily overpower a small airplane (which is already underpowered enough), and it is nothing new to hear about a small airplane that wars literally sucked down into the side of a mountain by a downdraft.  Because the east side of the Rockies is the lee side (which means that the wind generally travels from west to east), downdrafts are particularly abundant there.

I'll be happy to go into more detail if you'd like.