Today’s Anchorage Daily News is typical for the summer tourism season. The top story on the front page is headlined “As things went wrong, hike became a deadly adventure” and recounts the death of 20-year-old Hezekiah Kelley, who lived in the Anchorage exurb of Wasilla. Mr. Kelley and his cousin Richard went off on a quick hike on Saturday afternoon and got lost. It was cloudy and rainy enough to induce hypothermia. Hezekiah died on Monday morning. Shortly afterwards a ranger in a helicopter spotted Richard.
The front page of the Alaska section starts off with “3 bodies are found in Cessna”, a story about three very experienced pilots from South Carolina who rented a 1973 Cessna 207 in Anchorage and disappeared after departing the Homer airport on Friday afternoon. The weather was reasonably good so it is unclear how they ended up crashing into “a steep mountainside of a tiny island near the mouth of the Cook Inlet.” The Alaska section also has continued coverage of “Bear that killed 2 was healthy male”, noting that “The Huffmans’ campsite was clean, with food in bear-proof containers and an unused firearm in the tent. The [Anchorage] couple had been on a rafting trip and was in the tent when the attack occurred.” The Huffmans were in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that has been the subject of controversy over whether to permit oil extraction.
an Alaskan summer wouldn’t be complete w/o a bear mauling :-).
Too bad for the Huffmans. They had the right idea, but probably never had the time to draw their weapon. It would have been a different situation if either or both of them had kept one of these puppies in a holster.
http://www.capitolarms.com/JsPoster034LG.jpg
Bears are not just in Alaska. We had to deal with some rather aggressive bears in nearby northern NJ while searching for a downed plane. Fortunately, all ground search teams had at least one armed member.
Bears are not the number one hazard in Alaska.
I passed by a cemetery while I was visiting in Anchorage. I asked my friend who lives there what are the half buried metal projections by some of the grave stones. He said those are buried airplane props from bush pilot crashes. He said that is how they honor bush pilots that died in service.
You realize it’s still the frontier region and not the lower 48 when you see something like that.
http://www.well.com/~wolfy/Cemetery/page21.html
The weather was pretty grim up in Hatcher’s Pass over the 4th of July, when Hezekiah died. I was camping the next valley over from him, and have some pictures online at http://benheavner.com/reed_lakes/reed_lakes.html
Also, hello to Phillip – I knew you only slightly, as I started at aD as a sysadmin in it’s dying days. Welcome to Alaska!