Pilots combat remote Alaska elements to rescue fellow Airmen

  • Published
  • By Air Force 2nd Lt. Michael Trent Harrington
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  The forecast called for a long string of beautiful days--light winds and clear skies flecked with the occasional wandering cloud. A high-pressure system was settling in from the northwest, pushing all the usual seasonal nastiness away from the area near the Arctic Circle. Travelers and residents alike expected sunshine and T-shirts.

The great weather was a pleasant surprise for six members of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson's 90th Fighter Squadron. They had planned the hunting trip to Alaska's North Slope area the previous spring. The plan was to fly a Piper Super Cub aircraft to a small airfield near the Kavik River, 50 miles southeast of Prudhoe Bay, and use the airfield as a base and refueling camp. The team would arrive a few days before the season opened, to scout the area, and leave at the end of the week.


After two days of unsuccessful hunting, the group of pilots spotted a caribou herd from their Piper Super Cub aircraft.

"We found a ridgeline surrounded by hundreds of caribou," said Air Force Capt. Matthew Miller, 90¬th FS. "We landed on the ridge--it was all gorgeous scenery, not a human being in sight. We shot four caribou in a single morning."

But about the time the pilots were enjoying the successful hunt, the weather radar began to look very different from the pleasant conditions the Airmen had seen to that point in the hunt. A low-pressure system was moving in from eastern Russia, headed fast for northern Alaska. Suddenly, meteorologists at the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning.

The pilots attempted to beat the incoming weather system by returning to the Kavik River base camp. However, when they flew within 15 miles of the camp, they found the entire area blanketed in thick fog. Running low on fuel, they were forced to return to the ridgeline.

After an hour, the skies opened up long enough for one flight back to the camp before the low ceilings returned. The group could only fly two members in each trip after loading all of the day's caribou harvest, leaving two members of the group stuck on the ridge in damp, windy and miserable conditions with no signs of relief.

The pilots located another airstrip a few miles away from the ridge, but three days of persistent fog prevented them from getting the last two Airmen off of the ridgeline. The dense cloud cover would swallow the Kavik camp, raise 500 feet to obscure the ridge, and then come back down.

"These guys were still 50 or 60 miles away--and in the short trip out there, the weather would change entirely," Miller said.

The weather would be good at both places, and miserable everywhere in between. Or one location would go from clear to zero visibility in the time it took the other to clear itself up, changing so much in 45 minutes that conditions would go from pristine to un-flyable.

"The wildest parts came when we would try to fly and get the guys out," Miller said. "We met up with another pilot trying to drop some folks off and get others out, so these three Super Cubs are flying north together, the weather pushing us towards the arctic."

On the first attempt with the additional pilot, the group made it within 10 miles of the campers before ceilings dropped too low and visibility plummeted to zero. The planes were close enough the campers radioed they could hear the aircraft's propellers.

Fortunately, the Airmen had planned ahead and brought cold weather gear, water filters, tents, satellite phones and other emergency items along on the hunt. During the nice weather and scouting portion of the trip, this equipment was heavy and burdensome to the hunting group, but as the days and nights passed and the miserable weather persisted, all that additional gear proved vitally important.

The skies continued misting, rain falling intermittently until instead of clearing up, a snow storm struck in full force. Days before, only the tallest mountains had white caps. Now there was snow everywhere. The ridgeline they had first landed on was buried in half a foot of fresh snow.

And Murphy's Law was alive and well, as it turned out. The weather was not the only challenge the group of Airmen faced as the week progressed.

The Kavik River Camp ran out of gas. The group needed to find enough fuel to travel to another location where they could fill up and make another attempt. The pilots negotiated and used a hand pump to get 20 gallons per plane from an individual with his own fuel drum on the strip. The pilots headed west to fill their tanks and try again to get their stranded friends off the snowy ridgeline.

Finally, on the day's third attempt, the pilots made it through. They'd traveled as far north as the Arctic Ocean and as far south as Fairbanks in trying to fight their way through to the rescue.

Despite the weather, logistical and survival challenges, Miller said persistence and preparation made a difficult situation fun. This situation would have played out very differently if the group did not have appropriate cold weather gear, communications tools or proper knowledge of the area, Miller said.

"The biggest takeaway for us was that by going to such a remote location, you really are accepting a risk," Miller said. "Since we were pretty well prepared, we were able to deal with the changing weather fairly well. Preparation, gear, and our study of the area was what made the trip fun, instead of being a dire survival situation."