ARLINGTON, Wash. -- Three people were killed Sunday evening when a small plane crashed northeast of here.

The single-engine Cessna 172 went down Sunday night in the Bald Mountain area just north of Lake Cavanaugh.

Skagit County Sheriff Chief Deputy Will Reichardt identified the victims as pilot Brenda L. Houston, 47, of Enumclaw, her daughter, 10-year-old Elizabeth M. Crews, and Dr. Virgil Becker, 54, of Auburn.

A United Airlines spokesperson said Houston was a veteran 737 pilot for the airline and was on vacation at the time of the crash.

"I lost my baby," said Tom Crews, Houston's husband and the little girl's father. "But she's with her mother. She loved flying with her mother, and the two of them are flying together. They're happy. We lost half our family."

Crews said he and Houston met when both were pilots for Pan Am. She continued to fly with United Airlines, he said.

Kim Martin, a spokeswoman for the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, said the crew of a Knighthawk search-and-rescue helicopter used night-vision goggles to help locate the crash site.

A medic lowered from the helicopter to the crash site found the three bodies.

The area where the plane went down is in a rugged, wooded area and logging roads only pass within about a mile of the crash site.

Skagit County Sheriff search and rescue teams assembled early Monday morning to hike to the crash site, and investigators with the FAA and NTSB were expected to be on scene later in the day.

But officials say the terrain is so rugged, a helicopter was used to remove the bodies from the crash site and might have to be used to remove the wreckage.

"The terrain surrounding it is quite steep and very hazardous," said Art Dick, the Skagit County deputy coroner. "So they are being careful in their approach."

FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said the plane departed from Roche Harbor on San Juan Island and was heading to Auburn.

"We believe the crash took place between 8 and 8:30 last night," Fergus said.

Friends of Houston say she took off from Auburn to take a vacation with her daughter to see some friends in Roche Harbor. She was on her way back to see her husband and 12-year-old son, who had just returned from a 10-day outing, and to drop off Dr. Virgil Becker, a spinal surgeon who has an office in Auburn -- all friends on a friendly trip to the San Juan Islands.

The NTSB will investigate the crash. One question to be answered - why were they so far east?

"It seems like if you were going to take the direct route from Roche Harbor to Seattle, you would have stayed west of Whidbey Island and been over water," Reichardt said. "What brought them this much inland, we're not sure."

Houston did not file a flight plan because she was flying on visual flight rules, or "VFR," and was not relying on radar. Investigators will also try to determine if weather played any role in the crash.

Houston was the treasurer of her children's PTA -- both at Thunder Middle School and Kibler Elementary School. The superintendent of the Enumclaw School District says the entire district is saddened by the loss of Brenda and her daughter Elizabeth.