Almost lost my Dad this weekend in cantwell
Link to the story :
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9524921p-9435670c.html
I appreciate everybody who's sent along well wishes for my Dad ......A lot of you have ridden with him on here , he was riding with a guy he met in Petersville on thursday , they rode friday at cantwell , and he was supposed to ride with me in cantwell on sturday too . When we got to the parking lot saturday morning , I saw his truck there and was surprised he beat me there ,and didn't ever call me.
Little did I know he had been stuck down a 500ft ravine all night and was barely clinging on to life.They tried to start fires with no luck , and ended up running the snowmachines 15 minutes at a time and laying over the engine /heat exchanger.The next day Mike had enough energy to hike out at daybreak , but Dad didn't. Mike got a ride with someone on the trail(after hiking in knee deep snow for a couple hours ). I noticed when we got back that Dad's truck was gone , Mike had gotten in it to warm up and to notify the troopers (he had walked out with a gps that had a waypoint marked ).
When I got in my truck , my wife checked the messages on my phone and found out Dad was missing . The people I was riding with were willing to unload and go searching , but I figured we should see if a helicopter had been dispatched ( which I knew was going to be his only hope ).The word we got was that they were leaving from fairbanks with the copter. An hour went by ....the trooper called back and found out the weather was causing a delay , so he got a helicopter dispatched from Anchorage instead. At this time I was getting a bad feeling that he was gonna be froze stiff by the time they got to him , so Mike and I unloaded both my sleds and headed out with the Gps to see if we could do anything , it was pitch black by this time . We got pretty close to the ravine , couldn't hear or see anything , and then we saw helicopter hovering around and searching . Knowing that they would have had three people to recover if we dropped in we decided to let them handle it .
We jetted back to the trail and came across 4 people on the trail by a tent . We stopped and asked what was going on ? Come to find out 3 guys went down in to the ravine and got stuck also on there sleds . One of them got separated from the other 2 and they were looking for each other .When the two guys started calling out for their buddy , my dad heard them and answered back . They got to him and realized how bad off he was .They got him to one of their sleds and amazingly got 3/4 of the way back up towards the trail dodging trees and alders . Dad walked a little and then couldn't go anymore , they heard a snowmachine go by and realized they were close to the trail . They climbed up and urged Dad to try to make it . He couldn't. Somehow the park ranger came by or heard them .He had a rope and they hoisted dad the rest of the way up , took him to the tent .The helicopter lowered down a medic to assess the situation . Me , Mike and the medic were able to help Dad walk from the tent to the area where the helicopter was , they hoisted him and the medic up. We stood there in the helicopter windage for what seemed like forever trying to keep from getting blown away . His body temp was 90 degrees when he arrived at the hospital . a couple of toes were purple but he won't lose them .He's out of Intensive care now and in a regular room , he's seems just fine and talkative . One of those small aluminum emergency sleeping bags sure would've been good to have ( along with flares , and a whole lot of other things ) I think I'll get him a ton of survival gear for Christmas. I was going to go and try to get his sled out tommorrow , but my office help is going on vacation tomorrow , and I'm stuck running the business by myself . Mike says he will go tommorrow to get his sled out and will try to get Dads sled out too .I wish I could be there to help . Anyone who's planning on riding there tomorrow and wants to help , I'm sure he would appreciate it ,pm me if you want his cell number (it sounds like he may have some help already ) .Be careful out there guys ! CHECK YOUR BACKPACK FOR THE PROPER SURVIVAL GEAR !!!!
I'm sure he wouldn't mind some help if anyone is headed out that way.