R44 down in Alaska

[GeorgeMandes]

Coast Guard rescues men, dogs after helicopter crash near Godwin Glacier
KODIAK, Alaska - A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew rescued two men and seven sled dogs after their aircraft crashed in the mountains 10 miles southeast of Seward Saturday.

Jimmy Lebling, a Seward resident, and Eric Ridington, the pilot and a Wasilla resident, reportedly departed from Seward in a Robinson R-44 helicopter in transit to Godwin Glacier. Due to the turbulent winds and whiteout conditions in the mountains however, it was reported they were forced down, made contact with the ground, rolling the helicopter over and destroying the aircraft.

A satellite GPS device on board the helicopter notified the Alaska State Troopers in Soldotna of the crash. The troopers alerted a Coast Guard helicopter crew forward deployed in Cordova via VHF radio about 12 p.m.

The Coast Guard rescue helicopter crew was on a training flight near Seward and arrived at the crash site 15 minutes after initial notification from the state troopers.

“It was a challenging rescue due to the altitude and white-out conditions,” said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Neubecker, pilot, aircraft commander and MH-60 Jayhawk deputy executive officer. “We were in the convergence of winds coming from two different directions off the mountains, and had to hoist using the helicopter wreckage as a point of reference to prevent us from whiting out ourselves. The crash was on a mountain side and it was very steep, so we lowered the rescue swimmer to the cliff ledge to perform the rescue. It was a little bit of divine intervention that had us in the right place to respond so quickly, and we thank God that we were able to rescue the men and the sled dogs."

Lebling, Ridington and the seven sled dogs were successfully hoisted and transported to awaiting emergency medical personnel in Seward. The men and dogs were reported in good condition.

[Gordy]

How do you fit 7 sled dogs in an R-44???

[Ned-Air2Air]

Wasnt Craig over with the Coast Guard gunships they used to run out of Jax.

[Torquetalk]

How do you fit 7 sled dogs in an R-44???


Two in the front; two in the back. Ah, wait a minute I'm getting confused with the elephants in a mini joke. Barking though.

[G-HALE]

Perhaps the 7 dogs where pulling the R44 and just ran out of lift carrying such a heavy machine :)

[blakmax]

OK G-HALE

Are you suggesting names for the dogs, given the latitiude. Like Donner, Dancer, Blitzen, etc.?

[S92 driver]

Well, you know the saying, "there are 3 kinds of people, those that can count and those that can't!" :p

[GeorgeMandes]

photos here (with lots of dog talking afterwards):

Mountain rescue: Outdoors | adn.com (http://www.adn.com/2010/05/15/1280115/mountain-rescue.html)

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2010/05/15/23/Seward%20Helicopter%20Rescue%2015%20May%202010%20316.65875.o riginal.standalone.prod_affiliate.7.jpg

http://media.adn.com/smedia/2010/05/15/23/Seward%20Helicopter%20Rescue%2015%20May%202010%20412.65889.o riginal.standalone.prod_affiliate.7.jpg

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http://media.adn.com/smedia/2010/05/15/23/Seward%20Helicopter%20Rescue%2015%20May%202010%20358.65881.o riginal.standalone.prod_affiliate.7.jpg

[GeorgeMandes]

Whiteout, wind complicated helicopter glacier rescue (http://www.adn.com/2010/05/16/1281002/whiteout-wind-complicated-helicopter.html)

A helicopter that crashed carrying two men and seven sled dogs Saturday in mountains east of Seward was trying to wait out bad weather by moving to lower ground when it flipped upside down in a whiteout, a passenger says.

Musher Jimmy Lebling, who said he handled for Iditarod champion Lance Mackey this year, said the helicopter was headed for a campsite on Godwin Glacier to prepare for a summer of selling dog sled tours. But the higher the red Robinson R44 climbed, the less they could see.

The crash left the musher buckled in upside down, snow a foot from his face, he said. The helicopter's rotor had shattered. "We crawled out from underneath that and just got all the dogs out."

The National Transportation Safety Board has interviewed the pilot about the crash, which the Coast Guard placed about 10 miles east of Seward. The helicopter crew was looking to drop off dogs at a camp at 3,800 feet, but low visibility prompted the pilot to try to land on a small, snow-covered outcropping at a lower elevation, said Clint Johnson, senior air safety investigator for the safety board.

The copter made it to the ledge and came to a hover. But even as it recovered from a low RPM warning -- essentially a low power warning -- it crashed during landing, Johnson said.

In flat light, or whiteout conditions that rob pilots of the ability to see changes in the terrain, one of the skids of the helicopter unexpectedly touched the ground and the aircraft rolled, he said. "We're pretty much able to determine that there were not mechanical issues with the machine."

Meantime, the players in an only-in-Alaska Coast Guard rescue told their tale Sunday: Sled dogs hiding under helicopter seats, a glacier-side search and an alarming moment for the rescue helicopter.

The Coast Guard pilot who flew the rescue mission said it was one of those days when the sky, the snow and the mountain are all the same shade of white, and that the Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk nearly found itself in a whiteout as well.

"I was definitely saying a prayer that we were going to rescue everyone safely," said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Neubecker.

A NEW CAREER

Let's start the day with Lebling, a 43-year-old commercial fisherman looking to switch careers to tourism. This is his first season providing dog sled tours on the Godwin Glacier, he said.

The operation is run by Wasilla-based Pollux Aviation, which advertises $519 per person tours that begin with a helicopter ride to the glacier.

"We wanted to be up and running today (Sunday) for the cruise ship," Lebling said.

The company had been waiting for the weather to break for a week, he said, and on Saturday morning saw an opportunity to supply the camp with dogs.

During an attempt to land and wait out the weather, the snow blew up and the helicopter came down, he said. After the crash, Lebling and pilot Eric Ridington, 42, could see the aircraft wasn't going to catch fire, and tied off the dogs.

Reached by phone Sunday, Ridington referred questions about the crash and rescue to Larry Larrivee, owner of Pollux Aviation. Larrivee couldn't be reached.

Lebling said he's not sure when exactly the helicopter left Seward, but by 11:40 a.m., Alaska State Troopers learned the helicopter's emergency beacon had been activated.

Back in Seward, pilot Denny Hamilton leases office and hangar space to Pullox Aviation. He got a call about the crash from Larrivee, the company owner, and jumped in his Super Cub to search the area.

Just as Hamilton was leaving, he said, the Coast Guard Jayhawk was preparing to land after a two-hour training flight out of Cordova. It too, was enlisted in the hunt.

The Jayhawk followed Hamilton's Bush plane to the campsite on Godwin Glacier, flying across Resurrection Bay and into the pass where visibility disappeared and the sky and the mountains began to bleed together, Neubecker said.

Johnson, the NTSB investigator, happened to be in Seward too, working on a family house. He looked up to see the Coast Guard helicopter following the Bush plane.

"I thought, 'What in heavens name is going on there?' " Johnson said. Fifteen minutes later, he said, he got a call about the crash.

VISIBILITY DECLINES

Visibility had been 10 miles at the Seward airport, Neubecker said, but in the mountains the two aircraft had trouble keeping an eye on each other. Searchers saw no sign of wreckage at the sled dog camp -- a collection of tents and what appeared to be igloo-like dog houses at an elevation of about 4,000 feet, Neubecker said.

But the helicopter had to be nearby. The Coast Guard ship followed the beacon signal for three to four miles before spotting Ridinger, the pilot, on a ridge waving his arms, Neubecker said.

As the Jayhawk approached, the crew soon saw the Pollux Aviation helicopter upside down in the snow below. The rotor must have been spinning when it hit the ground, because a blade had splintered free and now stood in the snow 100 feet away like a single tree, Neubecker said.

The site appeared to be on the south face of Mount Alice, north of the glacier, he said.

The winds and blowing snow combined for a dangerous mix at the crash site, where gusts sweeping down the mountain pass from the east and southeast converged with winds from the north.

"That requires a lot more power for a helicopter to fly through those conditions, and then you've got the whiteout ... which makes it just about impossible to pick out the sky from the land," Neubecker said.

The flat light conditions described by the pilot mirrored those cited in a rapid series of accidents in 1999, when three Temsco helicopters crashed one after another on Herbert Glacier in Southeast, Johnson said.

DOG SNACKS

Lebling had been feeding the dogs Yummy Chummies at the crash site, where the team was wagging its tails and licking his face, he said.

Three of the seven dogs were his own: Beauty, Bandit and Cowgirl. As the Jayhawk hovered, Neubecker said he could see one of the animals running around the helicopter below.

The Coast Guard lowered rescue swimmer Erich Klingner about 80 feet to the ground to check on the passengers.

"Our initial attempt at hovering, I almost whited-out myself and ended up in the same type of situation as the crashed helicopter was," Neubecker said. "The wind was actually blowing us sideways at about 15 to 20 knots."

Lebling said he told the rescue swimmer he wasn't leaving without the dogs. He had warm gear and food, he figured, and could stay at the crash site or hike to the glacier camp.

Neubecker wasn't crazy about returning to the site in dangerous winds, and even more snow was blowing in from the east, he said. Everyone was coming on board now.

The Jayhawk pulled the survivors and the dogs to its belly like hoisting water from a well.

Lebling made multiple trips between the Coast Guard helicopter and the ground, holding sled dogs tight inside the rescue basket. "For a helicopter crash," he said, "it couldn't have gone better."

Once the dogs were inside, Petty Officer 3rd Class Alex Delgado, the flight mechanic, tipped the basket over to create a kind of make-shift "baby gate" to keep the dogs from trying to jump out and injuring themselves on their chains.

Secured in the helicopter, some of the dogs hid under the seats on the flight back, the pilot said. They didn't start barking until it was time to land.

[ReverseFlight]

How do you fit 7 sled dogs in an R-44???

The flight broke the rules. With 2 POB, they were 5 seatbelts short.

[blakmax]

You don't suppose that they had the dogs harnessed to the structure and someone foolishly said "MUSH"?

[slowrotor]

Must be the latest thing in tourism: helicopter sled dog rides.
Dog Sledding Tour (http://www.juneaubesttours.com/dogsledingtour.php?gclid=CN6v4JyH36ECFQ1biAodjTbWLQ)