Accident claims life of local teen

TURNAGAIN PASS — A 16-year-old Wasilla boy was killed Saturday while snowmachining near Mile 69 of the Seward Highway.

Tyler Beckham was riding with a group of friends in the Turnagain Pass area when he fell off his snowmachine and into a ravine, said Megan Peters, public information officer for Alaska State Troopers. Beckham fell about 50 feet and his snowmachine landed on him.

“He had been high marking when he fell into the ravine,” Peters said. High marking is a maneuver where a snowmachine is driven straight up a steep slope to see how high it can get.

Although in the area with a group of riders, they weren’t within sight of each other at the time of the accident, Peters said.

“What we’ve been told is his friends realized he was missing and they went looking for him,” she said.

The friends found Beckham and troopers responded at about 3:07 p.m. and it was determined the teen had died in the crash.

Beckham was a student at Wasilla High School.

Other incidents

It was a busy weekend for troopers responding to snowmachine accidents. On Sunday, a pair of incidents happened within 30 minutes of each other.

At about 4:53 p.m., troopers responded to an accident where a snowmachine collided with a truck in front of the Townsite Texaco station in Willow. A 15-year-old was riding her snowmachine with a passenger while towing another person on a snowboard behind the vehicle at the time of the accident, troopers report. The teen attempted to cross the highway and was hit by a 2003 Chevy pickup driven by a 51-year-old Wasilla man.

All of the passengers on or being towed by the snowmachine jumped off before the collision, troopers report. The 15-year-old driver was wearing a helmet and sustained minor injures. There were no injuries to those in the truck.

Then at about 5:10 p.m., troopers were called to a cabin at Mile 88 of the Parks Highway near Willow on a report of a collision between a snowmachine and a pedestrian.

Anchorage resident Kyra Peterson, 28, wedged a glove into the throttle lever of her snowmachine to make sure it would be open when she started it, according to an Alaska State Troopers report. She started the engine and the snowmachine accelerated, traveling about 450 feet and hitting 33-year-old Kyle Houghton, while the machine was traveling about 30 miles per hour.

The machine then struck a Ford Ranger and a Chevy Blazer, also owned by Houghton, the report says. Houghton suffered multiple injuries and was transported to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center and damage to his vehicles is estimated at several thousand dollars. It was not reported that Peterson was injured in the incident.