Search & Rescue

A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew rescued three Haines paddlers on Sunday along the Tsirku River, east of Klukwan. One says that dry suits and a satellite phone may have made the difference between life and death.

It was supposed to be a beautiful, three-day weekend of pack rafting. The trio had been flown in by helicopter to explore the Tsirku Glacier, near the Canadian border.

“Then we had a long, long float out, (on) most of the Tsirku River,” Erik Stevens said. “And the vast majority of it was really just perfect — spectacular scenery, and the river was great. It was clean. We were having a really great time.”

But on day three of the trip, just as they were at the end, things began to unravel.

“I mean, we were within one minute of making it to the car. At the speed the river was flowing, we would’ve been to the car in one minute if we hadn’t hit trouble at that spot,” Stevens said.

Stevens was in a one-man raft. His sister Shannon and his girlfriend Kayla Shutes were in inflatable kayaks.  As they approached the end of the Little Salmon River, there was a blind corner but Stevens said he’d run this part of the river before.

“I probably should have gotten out on the other side of the river and really taken care to scout out that blind corner, but I was too complacent, didn’t do that. So we floated around the corner and were really surprised to find a very, very strong, very fast current from the Tsirku was coming at us sideways and pushing directly into some cliffs and forming a big whirlpool and a big rapid there,” Stevens said.

He made it through the rapids. But his sister flipped. Shutes tried to help her, but then she got sucked into a strainer — a fallen tree that can be a deadly river hazard. In moments, the two women scrambled to the cliffs and surfaced about 100 feet apart. Stevens made it to a sand bar across the river.

“At this point, Shannon was screaming. And I thought she was drowning. It sounded like she was drowning, or about to be sucked under a log. So I was just running — not running, because I was dragging a 60 pound boat upstream. I was going as fast as I could to try to get up there and see if I could help,” Stevens said.

The two women couldn’t see each other. Stevens yelled across, and through the roar of the rapids was able to shout and let them know they were both alive.

“They were basically clinging to a steep hillside with cliffs around them, and they couldn’t go uphill because it was too steep. They tried that, and they would just slide back down into the river. And they couldn’t go side to the side because it was just sheer cliff on either side, and deep water, and rapids. So they were just stuck,” he said.

Shutes lost her paddle, so it was nearly impossible to maneuver her kayak. Shannan Stevens’ kayak was jammed upside down in the log jam and getting thrashed by the current ,which carried most of their gear downstream.

Luckily they had a satellite phone. Stevens says they called friends for help but didn’t get an answer, and it was getting late. So he called SOS.

Stevens says he hoped it worked.

“It really seemed to me like a situation where I didn’t see how they could get the helicopter in there and get them,” he said.

A Sitka-based Coast Guard aircrew arrived at about 10:30 p.m. in an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter. A rescue swimmer first lifted Stevens to safety. But getting the two women proved more difficult.

“The helicopter is trying to get in close enough to the bank but there’s steep overhanging trees, and there’s dead fall and the rotor wash is so strong it was knocking chunks of trees down. There were dead branches falling all around the girls. I mean it was very very dangerous, very chaotic,” Stevens said.

Stevens said the rescuer later told the group he had to swim ashore through the river and described climbing up the bank.

“He said he was just praying there was some solid land over there because everything was just crumbling,” he said.

The three were transported to the Haines Airport, where friends were waiting. Though cold and shaken, they weren’t injured.

“It was just a huge relief,” Stevens said.

Stevens says they were lucky and well prepared, all wearing dry suits and helmets. He says the biggest lesson was to have a satellite phone on your person, not in a boat that could be swept away.

Though the Little Salmon River might have been a familiar and easy float in past years, he urges everyone to avoid it right now because of the currents at the confluence with the Tsirku River.

“The rest of the Tsirku is probably fine,” Stevens said. “You know, if you were going to that spot from the main Tsirku, you’d probably go right around it and not even notice it. But it’s coming in from the Little Salmon, that’s the problem.”

The three hope to recover their camping gear and three boats. They’re asking anyone who might see anything wash ashore to get in touch. But Stevens says it’ll be a while till he gets back on the water.

 

Last month, a woman from Bethel started a late afternoon hike in Southcentral Alaska that turned into a survival mission that spanned three days.

After getting lost on the trail, she said that she was charged by bears and survived by eating last year’s cranberries.

Fina Kiefer lived in Bethel for the first 38 years of her life. She’s now 55 and lives in Palmer, where she loves to take long hikes. When she started one on the afternoon of June 14, she didn’t know helicopters would end up looking for her. Kiefer said that it began with a few bad decisions.

“I started too late, which was like 3:40 [p.m.] and underestimated how long it would take to actually do it,” Kiefer said.

Kiefer was on the Pioneer Ridge Trail near Palmer, an almost 14-mile hike. After starting late in the afternoon, she said that she summited around 10 p.m. She was thinking about how to get down before it got dark.

“Where I made the next mistake was I went off the peak and did my own trail down, thinking ‘I can go on a shorter route,’” Kiefer said.

When she got to the bottom of the route she chose that night, she saw rocks and deep snow blocking her path. So she rerouted again, ending up in a valley between two mountains. That’s when she spotted two brown animals in the tundra 50 yards ahead of her. She thought they were moose at first.

“The head turned and it was the bear,” Kiefer said. “And my eyes and his eyes locked. And he turned around and started charging. At that moment, I thought, ‘God, Is this the way I’m going to die?”’

Kiefer said that a brown bear charged within 25 feet of her, with the second bear following it. She unclasped her pepper spray and unloaded it into the bear’s face.

“I said, ‘Hey!,’” Kiefer said. “He was shaking his head, and then before he could adjust I sprayed again. And then the next word I said was ‘Go!’”

She said that the bear appeared startled, turned, and started running down the mountain. The second bear followed the first. Adrenaline was still coursing through her body as she texted her husband that she was just charged by two bears.

“He said, ‘Do you need help?’ And then I said, ‘Yes.’ And then my phone died,” Kiefer said.

She was both emotionally and physically exhausted, and it was getting dark. She prepared for her first night outside by spraying herself with bug dope. And she just sat down on the tundra.

“The birds kept me company,” Kiefer said. “And I stayed up that whole night.”

The next morning, she was sleep-deprived and said that she made another poor decision. Instead of retracing her steps to get back on the original trail, she kept trying to force an alternate way down. She could hear helicopters on the other side of the mountain, but she figured that they wouldn’t be able to find her.

“I started eating snow. I ran out of water, and I started eating cranberries,” Kiefer said. “They had just resurfaced from the snow. Like being in the freezer, and then you take them out of the freezer and they’re still juicy.”

She was making her way through some trees, and a branch that she had grabbed to support her weight broke.

“The gravity took me, and I fell back and hit my head really hard,” Kiefer said. “And I was laying, like, upside down, and I was looking up at the sky, and the trees, and the leaves, and the still, small voice said, ‘Do not fall asleep. Get up.’ And I said, ‘OK.’”

But it was getting dark again, and she had to settle in for a second night on the mountain. This time, Kiefer started a fire, using a waterproof fire-starting kit that her husband had bought and convinced her to always carry.

“Each time I’d stoke the fire, I would fall asleep. Stoke the fire again, fall asleep. Stoke the fire again, fall asleep. And I did that all night,” Kiefer said.

When she awoke on the third day, she added birch and moss to the fire to produce more smoke, hoping that she’d be seen. Kiefer began to pray and sing, but her situation only got worse. It started to rain, and then to pour. She heard a voice telling her that she couldn’t wait for help. She had to get down the mountain herself.

“How?” Kiefer said.

The voice told her to follow the creek. Through tears, torrential rainfall, and thickets of devil’s club, Kiefer followed the creek down the mountain.

“When I went down, I ran into someone’s lawn. Oh my gosh, I could have kissed that lawn,” Kiefer said.

She rang the doorbell, but no one was home so she walked onto the highway. A truck pulled over and she told the driver her story. With incredulous eyes, the driver said that he was one of the many search and rescue members looking for her.

“He goes, ‘You’re a self-rescue.’ And I said, ‘No. God helped me. God helped me get out of the mountain,’” Kiefer said.

Later that evening, she was laying on her hospital bed when she saw her family walk in the door. She said that her daughter who flew up from Nebraska was crying, thinking she’d lost her mother.

“I don’t ever want to put them through that again,” Kiefer said. “You know, I want to, I want to live and see my grandkids, amen.”

Kiefer checked herself out of the hospital later that day. She is now fully recovered from her survival ordeal last month.

“I feel so thankful to be alive, to live another day,” Kiefer said. “Because it is beautiful. The sky, the trees, the mountains, the trails, the animals.”

Kiefer said that she’s not going to give up her outdoor adventures, but next time she’s bringing a satellite phone.

A near tragedy was averted in Sitka on Monday morning after a fishing boat skipper who had fallen overboard was rescued by his girlfriend on an inflatable mattress.

According to Sitka Police Department spokesperson Serena Wild, a 911 caller reported two people in the water near Magic Island shortly after 10 a.m. Monday.

A fishing boat reportedly departed Sitka’s Eliason Harbor northbound earlier in the morning, with the skipper at the wheel and the deckhand below asleep. Once clear of the breakwater, the skipper put the vessel on autopilot and stepped on deck to wash the windows.

A few miles north of the harbor at Magic Island, the skipper’s girlfriend came down to the beach to wave.

“His partner was waving him off on the beach there,” said Fire Chief Craig Warren, who responded to the accident. “The story that I got was that he went out to wash his windows and lost his footing and fell in the water. His partner had to go out with, it sounded like almost an inflatable air mattress, and got to him. They both made it to a rock, got out of the water and waited for help.”

Warren said the couple was rescued within an hour by a fire department volunteer on a paddleboard, who paddled them to shore one at a time.

One person was transported to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center for hypothermia treatment.

The fishing boat continued northbound under autopilot for about five miles before it ran aground in Eastern Bay.

“We were about 100 yards away when it hit. Hit at a nice spot actually,” Warren said. “It kind of raised up on its bow and stopped it. But that woke up the crew member, who was able to get the boat powered down.”

The vessel sustained minor damage from striking the rocks. First responders aboard Sitka’s emergency response vessel made contact with the deckhand and found him uninjured.

A commercial fisherman has died after a fishing boat sank in the south end of Nushagak Bay on Thursday morning with three people on board.

Authorities on Friday identified the deceased as Lance Eric Norby, 45, of Arlington, Texas. He captained the F/V Pneuma. Norby’s next of kin has been notified.

An Alaska State Troopers report says they got a call around 5 a.m. Thursday morning that a commercial vessel was taking on water. Two wildlife troopers responded immediately. Before they got there, they heard reports that the three people on board were in the water.

The report says good Samaritans on the scene helped in the rescue. Among those was skipper Caleb Mikkelsen, who said his crew was getting ready for an opener when he got a call on the VHF radio from a friend saying there was a vessel in distress.

“We could hear that there were two boats and a skiff trying to help this vessel that was sinking out on those Snake River flats there,” he said.

The people at the scene said they still needed more help. So Mikkelsen piloted his boat, the F/V Fortress, about seven miles to the area.

“Pounded my boat through all the waves and stuff to get down there, and by the time I got there I realized the two boats were two deep tenders,” he said. “They draft about 10 or 15 feet, so they were practically useless. And then the skiff was a trooper skiff. And there were six- or eight-foot breaking curlers going on that bar.”

Mikkelsen said the troopers had one of the people in their skiff. By that time, the boat had fully submerged in breakers. So he and his crew started looking for the rest of the crew.

“You could barely see the skiff, and I could barely drive my boat in the breakers,” he said. “So we were driving around, I was just zigzagging, had all my crew on the very top flying bridge of my boat, scouting out. And saw a buoy light, went for that, and one of the guys had the buoy light, was holding it. So we pulled him up on the jet guard.”

They found Norby and conducted CPR and attempted other lifesaving efforts.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Nate Littlejohn said a Jayhawk helicopter arrived on scene.

“The Coast Guard lowered a rescue swimmer and determined that a third person was, in fact, deceased,” he said.

Littlejohn credited the good Samaritan vessels with providing aid and said it was a rough morning for everyone involved.

“It’s always difficult when we arrive on scene and find that it’s too late to save a life,” he said.

Littlejohn also thanked the good Samaritans on the F/V Fortress and the F/V Last Frontier.

Mikkelsen said that after the ordeal, he and his crew were in shock and talked about what had happened before they headed back out to fish for the rest of the day.

This story has been updated with the name of Lance Norby of Texas and with the name of the boat that sank, the F/V Pneuma.

Kaleb Westfall has fished for salmon in Bristol Bay for two decades.

Earlier this month he was fishing for halibut in the waters near Togiak. He and his crewmate were headed home to Dillingham when is voyage home was met with an untimely storm as the winds and waves picked up.

“We got around the corner to Protection (Point) and then it was a straight east wind on the other side there,” Westfall said.

He had expected four-foot waves on his trip back but encountered giant swells after they rounded the tip of the Nushagak Peninsula.

“Those four-foot waves were now 16 plus, and every once in a while, 20,” he said. “Surfing a 32 footer on those — a little difficult, absolutely.”

A heavy east wind meant he had to keep the bow of his boat, the F/V Peter, pointed towards King Salmon to face the swells. As the waves struck his boat, he realized they needed help.

“First we hit the radio and did a distress vessel and explained we’re not sinking but any wave here could take us over and capsize us,” he said.

As they called for help, fatigue started to set in.

“At some point I’m thinking my arm’s failing, my body’s cramping and I’m losing control in my dexterity,” Westfall recalled. “Those thoughts creep into your head that you can’t do this forever — you are going to fail. And it’s hard to multitask and disallow those thoughts, so I had to put it to one wave at a time.”

Westfall said they were about five miles from shore. He didn’t get a response to his call right away, but he kept reaching out.

“Through the AMSEA training they say even if you can’t hear anybody keep yapping because they might be able to hear you and you may not be able to hear them back,” he said.

It turned out that multiple people heard his call. The Coast Guard flew to the location in a helicopter and OBI Seafoods sent a 100-foot tender. The tender broke waves and allowed Westfall to follow its surf while the Coast Guard monitored the situation.

Westfall said he was lucky to get back to shore, and it was thanks to the extra effort he put into safety precautions.

“It turned out to be a hellacious storm, but all my training and all my safety equipment worked,” he said. “I tell people I work super hard, and 95% of the time it doesn’t matter, but 5% of the time there’s an opportunity for things to get better or that extra hard work paid off.”

Westfall thanked his training with the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association to help him maximize his odds for survival.

“I don’t think I would have been nearly as comfortable or maybe not without the AMSEA training. It’s a wonderful program,” he said.

They returned to the Dillingham harbor around 2 a.m. the next morning after fighting the storm for around 8 hours.

“I had to make that decision on ‘how much longer can I do this?’ The whole thing took 25 hours coming from Togiak so I was driving 25 hours straight and about half of those hours were panic hours,” he said.

Westfall urged everyone on the water should make sure their safety equipment is up to date — and to be prepared for emergencies.

More information about the AMSEA and their training can be found on www.amsea.org. In case of an emergency, the Coast Guard can be reached at (907) 463-2000.

A hiker who went missing early Tuesday morning on a trail near Palmer has been found alive, according to a report from Alaska State Troopers.

Troopers say a volunteer from the search and rescue team was leaving the area around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, when 55-year-old Palmer resident Fina Kiefer walked out of the woods about a mile from the Pioneer Ridge trailhead on Knik River Road.

AST had been notified around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday that a hiker, later identified as Kiefer, needed help on the Pioneer Ridge Trail.

Troopers reported Kiefer was in contact with her husband and told him she had been charged by multiple bears. Soon after, Kiefer stopped responding to phone calls and messages.

AST says Kiefer is injured and was transported to a hospital for evaluation. The extent of her injuries is unclear.

Deteriorating weather had ended search efforts for the day about an hour before Kiefer was found.