Search & Rescue

A search is underway for two climbers in Denali National Park and Preserve whose tracks, rangers say, led into the path of an avalanche.

According to a park service news release, Eli Michel, 34, of Columbia City, Indiana, and Nafiun Awal, 32, of Seattle, were last heard from early Friday. They told a friend through a satellite communication device that they planned to climb the west ridge of Moose’s Tooth. The 10,335-foot peak is about 50 miles north of Talkeetna.

The two men never checked in again.

National park rangers based in Talkeetna searched the area on Sunday. They found the pair’s unattended tent, ski tracks that led to the base of the route where they switched to boots and crampons, and finally boot tracks leading into a recent avalanche. No other tracks were observed Sunday.

The park service says further ground search is limited due to crevasses and risk of rockfalls and avalanches. A search by helicopter was ongoing Monday.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

Three soldiers died and another was injured in a mid-air crash of two Army helicopters in Interior Alaska yesterday.

According to an 11^th Airborne Division release, the helicopters  — based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks — were returning from a training mission when they collided near Healy.

The release says two soldiers were declared dead at the scene and a third died on the way to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The soldier injured in the crash is being treated at the hospital in Fairbanks.

The accident will be investigated by a team from the Army Combat Readiness Center, in Alabama. The Army says it will withhold the names of the victims until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.

In February, two soldiers were hurt after their For Wainwright-based Apache helicopter crashed in Talkeetna.

The search for three Americans, including two Alaskans, who’ve been missing along with their sailboat off Mexico’s northern Pacific coast since April 4 has been suspended, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

In a news release Wednesday, the agency said the search was suspended pending “further developments” after SEMAR — the Mexican navy — and the Coast Guard spent roughly 280 hours searching Mexico’s northern Pacific coast.

After searching nearly 200,000 square miles with no sign of the missing passengers and the missing sailing vessel, officials suspended the search.

“SEMAR and U.S. Coast Guard assets worked hand-in-hand for all aspects of the case. Unfortunately, we found no evidence of the three Americans’ whereabouts or what might have happened,” Coast Guard Cmdr. Gregory Higgins said.

The three sailors — identified as Kerry and Frank O’Brien of Girdwood and their friend William Gross — reportedly left Mazatlán, a city on Mexico’s west coast, aboard a 44-foot boat named Ocean Bound on April 4 and were headed to San Diego.

They planned to stop in Cabo San Lucas — roughly 224 miles from Mazatlán — on April 6 to report in before they continued their trip, the Coast Guard said. However, there was no record of the three mariners arriving in Cabo San Lucas nor a check-in of their location.

In an interview with San Diego TV station NBC 7, the family of William Gross told the station they have not lost hope and that he and his sailing companions will be found.

“Our hope is for our Dad, and Kerry and Frank to be sailing into port soon, tired and sore, but safe,” the Gross family said in a statement to the station. “And our hearts certainly go out to the other two families who are being equally impacted during this extremely difficult time.”

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It took dozens of rescuers several hours to retrieve a skier who broke his leg after venturing beyond the Eaglecrest Ski Area with two friends on Saturday.

Jackie Ebert, Operations Chief for Juneau Mountain Rescue, says they were able to mobilize quickly thanks to the timing of the accident.

“A lot of our team, you know, we all ski for fun. So we were kind of in the area,” she said.

Still, Ebert says it was a complicated rescue. Douglas skier Patrick Millard, 37, had broken his leg in the backcountry area near the north face of Fish Creek Knob. Rescuers had to negotiate heavy snow, avalanche zones, thick brush and steep terrain before securing Millard in a rescue sled.

“Navigation teams to establish the best route to get the person out of the field, trail clearing crews, a technical team in case we needed to get any sort of rope systems involved,” Ebert said. “All said and done, I think it took about eight hours. And we had folks in the field for about six.”

The rescue team made it to the Eaglecrest Lodge just after 10 pm, where Capital City Fire and Rescue transported Millard to Bartlett Regional Hospital.

The upper-mountain at Eaglecrest ski area in Juneau was closed on Friday following a large avalanche Thursday morning. No one was hurt, but the area above the Hooter lift will remain closed as the ski patrol works to address potential hazards.

The slide dropped about 6 to 7 feet of snow over a 100 yard swath in the East Bowl Chutes.

“It’s very rare, actually, that we have this size of an avalanche occur within our boundaries,” said Eaglecrest General Manager Dave Scanlan.

At the time of the slide, the area was closed, along with many of the mountain’s steeper, avalanche-prone slopes. The slide wasn’t human-caused, but Scanlan says there are some die-hard backcountry skiers who still venture out into closed areas.

Alaska SEADOGS, Juneau Mountain Rescue and the Alaska State Troopers were called to assess the scene, and confirmed that there wasn’t anyone in the debris. Poor conditions have kept many skiers off the mountain this week.

“We didn’t see any evidence of skiers coming in and out,” said Scanlan. “But it’s a great training opportunity and kind of a standard protocol within the ski industry.”

He added that ski patrol would be out on the mountain again Friday to mitigate ongoing slide hazards. They’ll examine the snow layers and deploy avalanche explosives to create smaller slides that will stabilize the snowpack.

Avalanche conditions change rapidly depending on changing temperature, moisture or winds. A week of active weather set the stage for the slide.

Heavy snow last week was followed by a tropical front that brought several days of warmer weather and heavy rains. That added significant weight to the existing snowpack, and weakened the bond between snow layers. Eaglecrest closed altogether this past Wednesday due to rainy conditions, and the upper mountain terrain remained closed to allow that extra moisture to drain.

But Scanlan says it’s not just this week. Frequent fluctuations between warm, rainy weather and colder, snowy weather this winter have created a relatively weak snowpack at Eaglecrest, and across the urban slide zones too.

Each storm creates a different layer in the snowpack, and the frequent freeze-melt cycles this year have created thinner, weaker, less defined layers, especially lower in the snowpack. This makes them more unstable and prone to slides.

Scanlan says it’s raised concerns for slides of all kinds this winter.

“All the avalanche professionals are talking about this,” he said. “It’s a little more uncommon. Typically our region has a much more cohesive total snowpack with less layering in it.”

He says that colder temperatures heading into the weekend will help to stabilize the snowpack and lower avalanche risk. Groomers will be out to prepare trails today, and they’re expecting to re-open some of the upper mountain trails on Saturday.

The Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue Team planned to set out at first light Monday morning to look for Thomas Brown, one of two missing teenagers who left Kotzebue a week ago on a snowmachine trip to Noorvik.

Brown was traveling with his companion, Josiah Ballot of Selawik. Both are 18.

A private plane spotted Ballot’s snowmachine on Friday afternoon about 28 miles south of Kotzebue, near some GCI towers.

Walter Sampson, a longtime member of the search and rescue team, said Ballot was found a short time later taking cover by a pressure ridge that had formed on the sea ice.

“The airplane landed close by and happened to be in the general area and looked under the chunks of ice and there, there he was,” Sampson said.

Sampson said the ridge of ice, which protected Ballot from winds and 50-below wind chills, probably saved his life. He was medevaced to Anchorage for treatment of hypothermia and severe frostbite.

Sampson said the cold weather has also been hard on ground teams.

“People coming in with frostbites on their faces, with cold hands and other problems. When they come back, that doesn’t stop them.” Sampson said. “That’s how the community shows love to the people they’re looking for.”

The Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue team has about 40 volunteers. Community members have brought in a steady supply of cooked dishes for the team, prepared pocket-sized packets of snacks for the trail and made breakfast every day. Some have shared warm clothing with crew members, while others have helped to maintain snowmachines.

“It’s a search that everybody comes together to work together,” Sampson said. “We also have search teams out in Noorvik, Buckland, Selawik that are also working out of those villages.”

Samson said crews will continue looking as long as possible — and will need help in the coming days with donations for fuel and other supplies.