Thursday evening an acquaintance George called and said that Jason hadn't shown up the night before (Wednesday night.) Jason rents a room in George's house. Jason is an early 20's year old guy that plays in a bluegrass band as a mandolin player. He is also great on fiddle and guitar. Carol and I had that band come up in June for our folkfest, and Jason liked it so much that he came to work here since July. So the first couple weeks when Jason came back to Nome, he lived here with Carol and I. And we've played music together at parties.. he is a good friend. In fact, Tuesday night we played at a town Christmas gala event and did a couple Christmas songs for the community.
So since it was unusual that he hadn't shown up at George's I began making some calls to a couple people that I knew he knew. Found out he had rented a pickup and went for a drive Wednesday morning out toward Teller - about 80 miles away to the northwest. He was only going to go about half way. He had a 16 year old kid with him named John too. So I ended up organizing a small search and rescue operation, including myself and George in my jeep, and Roger and Kevin, another couple friends in Roger's truck. I also called the police and they called the local Search and Rescue people and State Troopers and let them know what was going on.
We finally set out at about 9pm and drove up to the Sinuk river where we were stopped by a snow drift. There were drifts behind us we could bust through, but knew they would be closing in behind us quickly due to the storm. A local Search and Rescue pickup had beat us out there. There were two guys - one set out on foot to walk to the top of the rise and shine a search light into the river valley, were a couple cabins were - to see if he got any response. We parked my jeep and started digging the drift with shovels to get Roger's truck through. The guy with the light came back and said we would never make it very far because of lots of drifts. Probably said we would be crazy for trying.
Well, we figured we wanted to save our friends and didn't have anything else to do so continued shoveling. The two S and R guys headed back to town. Turned out that that was their whole effort that night. I would have thought they would have sent out a loader and tried to bust through with a serious S and R effort. The drift was nearly 50 yards or more long but we made it through it. Then the road was pretty great from there, short of a few more easy drifts to just drive through. So we were able to go another 10 miles or more past where Jason said he was going.
But the further we got, the harder the wind blew and the worse it got with visibility. We finally had to stop, because we could no longer see the road. Kevin tried to get out of the truck to walk in front of it to try and find the road, but the wind was so strong against the door he couldn't open it. The truck windows also immediately frosted up, impairing visibility more. The snow packing into the engine compartment froze up the engine belts so they were slipping and we no longer had the battery charging - so the defrost stopped working all together. We were in a white-out (dark at night though, with some moonlight above) and problems were starting to compound. That's what gets you in trouble - usually one thing is easy to handle but things start failing all around you and that's when your life starts becoming at risk.
So we started backing up until we could see enough road gravel to turn around. We were all scraping the ice off the window (on the inside of the truck cab) so we could see something. I was using a credit card. George and I were in the back cab seat and kept our eyes on each side of the road to let Roger know if we was going to drive off the edge or not. If you rolled down a window, all hell would break loose inside the truck with the wind and sandblasting effect of the wind driven snow. It was too painful so was not an option. You couldn't survive long outside there. We managed to get turned around after a long several minutes and got headed down wind. Not long the engine belt quit slipping so we got some defrost back, since we were no longer heading into the wind. But visibility was very bad still as the wind was increasing so we had to creep back (to avoid driving off the road or into a drift we couldn't see) til we got off the hill and down into the river valley, where it seemed almost calm. We were pretty worried about our friends at that point. Roger had heard that someone had gotten stuck in a drift Sunday at mile 42, and we had made it to mile 35 before having to turn back. We figured they were stuck in that drift, but hoped that they had made it to some cabins nearby there.
When we got back to the drift that we had dug through, it was worse then the first time due to snow blowing since we had been there, so we had to shovel some more. I tried taking a picture to give you some idea:
You can barely make out George and Kevin shoveling on each side of the headlights.
Anyway, we made it back to town and our friends had to spend a second night out without any proper gear or food or water. I think they had warm clothes, but no survival gear. We made it back about 2:30 am, and I couldn't sleep much thinking about them.
Next day, yesterday, I went to work. Search and Rescue said a plane would fly at first light 11:30am. But when it came time, the weather was too bad for planes to fly. They finally decided to send a loader out with a Suburban following, loaded down with gear. It was a long wait for us - they finally found the truck at 3pm or so but no Jason or John. They began searching the nearby cabins and didn't find them. So I was pretty worried. But at about 4:30pm, they found them in a cabin 7 miles away from the truck that they had walked to- probably before the weather got too bad. The funny part was there was a third kid with them that nobody knew was missing. They were all right, except for being hungry. Big relief for Carol and I, and Jason's and John's parents.
Jason is scheduled to fly back to Anchorage, his home, Monday to start working with his band on their third CD and doing some schooling, then tour all summer with the band. So he will be off on a new adventure.
