Tough day in Yakatat, Alaska.

[Cyclic Hotline]

It has been a very tough day for the guys at Gulf Air Taxi in Yakatat.

Yesterday, they lost a 185 on take-off at the airport, and at the same time, they had lost another 185 up in the mountains. (I'm not sure if the aircraft lost at the airport wasn't going to search for the missing aircraft.)

The have located the missing aircraft, and the rescue is still continuing at this time. Let's hope they all get out OK. They are a great bunch of people there, in fact I was just there hanging around on a foggy day a few weeks ago, drinking coffee with them.

Three people found alive in plane wreckage near Yakutat KINY website.

Rescue workers have reached the crash site of an air taxi that crashed north of Yakutat. The three people on board are alive, according to Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Sue Workman. She says rescue workers are talking to them, although its not know how many are injured and what the extent of injuries are. The plane is located 80 feet down a crevasse on a glacier which Workman says will make the rescue touchy. Air Force para jumpers from the Air National Guard in Anchorage were brought to the scene by the Coast Guard to make the rescue.

When the Cessna 185, part of Gulf Air Taxi of Yakutat, did not return a search was launched. The pick up from Mt. Kennedy was scheduled to occur at 5 last night. A National Park Service helicopter located the crash site at ten this morning. The helicopter was unable to land at the site just inside the Canadian border between Mount Kennedy and Mount Hubbard at the ten-thousand-four-hundred-foot level. The names of the people on board have not been released.

[zerozero]

Reminds me of those Temesco (was it?) crashes last year in JNU.

One crashed and the next one sent to look for it crashed shortly thereafter.

Bummer.

Fly safe.

[Cyclic Hotline]

Bad news on this story I'm afraid.

Condolences to the family and friends of the climber who lost his life in this accident.

Some confusion now (at my end), whether there was two aircraft involved, or just the machine that crashed on the Glacier.

Rescuers save two; another dies

11,500 FEET: Cessna 185 crashes ferrying climbers off mountain.

By Allen Baker
The Associated Press

(Published: July 28, 2001)
Two of three people whose plane crashed into a crevasse high in the St. Elias Mountains north of Yakutat were rescued Friday and flown to Anchorage. The third person aboard was killed, Canadian authorities said.

Neither the survivors nor the victim were identified, and other details remained scarce Friday night.

The first survivor out was brought to Kulis Air National Guard Base in Anchorage on Friday evening by a Canadian Forces rescue plane. His head and chest were bandaged, but he was alert enough to talk to his Canadian rescuers on the flight to Anchorage from Yakutat.

He and a companion had been stuck in harsh weather at 11,500 feet when the pilot from Gulf Air Taxi of Yakutat finally got his Cessna 185 to the campsite on Thursday. The area was described as being between 13,905-foot Mount Kennedy and 15,015-foot Mount Hubbard, near the Alaska-Yukon border.

"The patient said the pair had been up there 17 days total. The last eight days they were on minimal food and water," Master Cpl. David Cooper of the Canadian Forces said. "He said it was like just a slice of cheese a day.

"They had to wait out a storm, which was six days," Cooper said.

At about 5:45 p.m. Thursday, the Gulf Air plane tried taking off.

"The patient said that during takeoff the plane clipped a snow ridge with a ski and it nosed the plane into a crevasse," Cooper said.

The crevasse is on Cathedral Glacier, about a mile inside Canada from the Alaska border and about 50 miles from Yakutat, said Capt. Steve Eyre of the Canadian Rescue Coordination Center in Victoria, British Columbia.

The plane came to rest about 80 feet down in the crevasse, Alaska and Canadian authorities said.

When the air taxi didn't return Thursday evening, rescue workers on both sides of the border began searching.

The plane was located about 9:30 a.m. Friday by observers in a Canadian National Park Service helicopter. Rescue workers said they saw two people waving at them from the site.

Pararescuers from the Canadian Forces and the Alaska Air National Guard, as well as Canadian Park Service wardens, began efforts to retrieve the trio.

The rescuers staged at 6,000 feet, and then a high-altitude Canadian Park Service helicopter ferried them to the area of the crash site.

Rescuers described ice near the crash site as very brittle and snow and ice conditions as very unstable.

But the victims were brought out by the pararescuers and ferried to Yakutat by the Canadian helicopter. A Canadian Forces airplane brought in the first survivor, and a C-130 from the Alaska Air National Guard ferried the second victim to Anchorage. The second survivor apparently had back injuries, said Maj. Mike Haller of the Alaska Air Guard. Both were taken to Providence Alaska Medical Center.

[Cyclic Hotline]

Tragic conclusion to this story. Condolences to the family and all at Gulf Air.

Two Rescued From Canada Plane Wreckage, Pilot Dead

MOUNT VANCOUVER, Yukon (Reuters) - Two Americans who spent a freezing night in the downed wreckage of a small plane were rescued late on Friday, though the pilot of the plane did not survive, Canadian rescue officials said on Saturday.

The wreckage was located on Mount Vancouver, about 60 miles west of Whitehorse, Yukon, just three miles from the Alaska border. The plane crashed on Thursday in a crevasse on a slope of the mountain, according to the Pacific Rescue Coordination Center in Victoria, British Columbia.

Officials said the plane crashed at 11,000 feet after picking up two hikers who reportedly had been camping in a nearby provincial park for about two weeks.

"The pilot found the hikers, landed, picked them up, and then crashed on departure,'' said Gabriel Ringuette of the center, which was directing the joint U.S.-Canadian operation.

"The two passengers, they're in hospital in Anchorage. The pilot did not survive the crash.''

In order to reach the wreckage, located in an avalanche-prone area, rescuers were flown in by helicopter from a staging area, then repelled down into the crevasse.

"We went in and recovered the two survivors, and right now they're talking about the plan now to get the pilot's body out today sometime,'' said Ringuette.

Ringuette was unsure of the condition of the survivors.

[Cyclic Hotline]

Sincere condolences to Kurts family and also his colleagues at Gulf Air. Kurt was a very pleasant Gentleman with a sincere love and knowledge of both Alaska, and the challenging flying he performed.

Most people couldn't even imagine flying a Cessna 185 at 11,500 feet, let alone landing and taking off on an unprepared glacial surface. I have great admiration for the individuals who perform these specialised missions worldwide, and who you rarely hear of unless things go wrong. :(

Crash survivor, rescuer tell harrowing tale

ST. ELIAS: California climbers survived, pilot died in crash at 11,500 feet.

By Rosemary Hoban
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: July 29, 2001)

The rescue Friday of the two men whose plane had crashed into a crevasse on a glacier 60 miles north of Yakutat pushed the men and aircraft involved to the edge, a rescuer said Saturday.

The crash killed the pilot, Kurt Gloyer, 45, of Yakutat, who had worked for Gulf Air for more than 20 years and was the company's premier mountain pilot.

Passengers William Pilling, 43, of Bishop, Calif., and Andy Selters, 43, of Tom's Place, Calif., a neighboring town, were injured but survived. They had been climbing on Mount Kennedy, a mile inside the Canadian border on Cathedral Glacier in the Kluane National Park Reserve.

The international rescue team faced altitude sickness, thin air at 11,500 feet that made flying almost impossible, changeable weather and technical climbing on an unstable snow and ice pack, said Garth Lenz, superintendent of the Alaska Air National Guard Pararescue team.

The plane, a Cessna 185, crashed on takeoff Thursday night just after the pilot had picked up the two hikers. It lay perched on an ice shelf 80 feet into the crevasse, upended, its nose pointing down.

Lenz said the wrecked plane was first seen as a black spot in the crevasse Friday morning. "Then we saw some movement from the wreckage, and we thought, We've got some live people down there,' " he said.

Inside were Pilling and Selters. Pilling's collarbone was broken from the force of the shoulder belt. Selters suffered several crushed vertebrae. And both were hungry. For a week, they had been stranded on the glacier by bad weather that kept them from returning to their base camp at 6,000 feet.

"I got out of the plane almost the instant we stopped moving," Pilling said Saturday from his room at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. "I realized that I was only going to have a few minutes of strength, and I started thrashing. Somehow I focused on the door handle. Then the next thing I knew, I was standing out there with blood running over my glasses, in a daze."

Pilling and Selters attempted to free Gloyer from under the equipment scattered inside the plane but stopped trying once they realized he was dead. Then the two hunkered down for the night inside the fuselage.

"We've both been climbing for 30 years each, and a high-mountain environment was fairly familiar to us," Pilling said. "We know what it's like to shiver all night and do whatever you could to keep yourself as warm as possible." Pilling said he knew that if the weather held, someone would come looking by the next morning.

"But if it had snowed a foot, I don't think anyone would have ever seen us again," Pilling said.

Early the next morning, they heard a plane overhead. Several hours later, the rescue helicopters arrived. Pilling stuck his arm out of the crashed plane and waved.

Above them, Lenz and his team of Air National Guard parachutists considered jumping from their C130 circling around the big white hole in the glacier, but they concluded the attempt was "risky, risky, risky," with a high possibility of landing in a crevasse.

Instead, they rendezvoused with Canadian Park Service and Air Force personnel and Coast Guard airmen at a 6,000-foot base camp. From there, they used light helicopters to shuttle men and equipment to the edge of the crevasse, 5,500 feet higher. In the thin air, the aircraft operated just within the boundaries of safety, Lenz said.

Carrying extra equipment that made flying more dangerous, the international team first set up a camp near the crevasse by 11 a.m. After the team set up a rope, a Canadian and an American eased their way down to the plane. Then the team created a spider web of ropes below the plane to catch it if it started slipping.

First Pilling was tied into a litter and hauled to the top using a block-and-tackle system. Then came Selters. The paramedics on the team immobilized them both to prevent further injury, especially of Selters, who was complaining of back pain.

"It was really a challenge. It took a lot of brute strength with no oxygen. The ropes were cutting into the ice. And then you have to hold the litter away from the surface a little bit," Lenz said. "It gave another challenge for the guys, but they were great."

"Those guys are heroes," Pilling said. "I wanted to talk to them, but they were working so hard and were so concentrated I didn't get the chance."

Six hours after arriving at the crevasse edge, the survivors were free. But the team was unable to bring the pilot out.

Pilling was released from Providence on Saturday. Selters is in good condition and will be hospitalized for several more days.