Anchorage man drowns in whirlpool

EUREKA — Alaska State Troopers say an Anchorage man hiking along the Little Oshetna River lost his footing, fell in and drowned over the weekend.

According to a trooper press statement, the call to respond to the river near Mile 127 of the Glenn Highway came at 10:41 p.m. Saturday.

Keith T. Reed, 18, of Anchorage, and two other men — Jeremiah Crawford, 22, and Tyler Duncan, 20, both of Wasilla — were hiking when Reed fell. Troopers report Reed was pulled into a whirlpool and couldn’t get out. Trooper spokeswoman Beth Ipsen described the area where Reed fell in as a pool at the bottom of one of a series of small waterfalls on the river.

The trooper report said Crawford and Duncan risked their own safety trying to save Reed.

Ipsen said jumping into moving water to attempt a rescue isn’t the type of thing troopers want to encourage, but it’s also not something they want to scold someone for after the fact. The three men were far away from any kind of help. Before he jumped in, Crawford shed clothes that could have weighed him down.

“You don’t want to get on their case too much because they just went through something terrible,” she said. “I think most people, unfortunately, would do the same.”

But, she reiterated there was a very serious risk there.

“They are darn lucky that they didn’t drown as well,” Ipsen said. “It kept spitting (Crawford) out and he kept trying to go back in and it kept spitting him out. It pinned him against the cliff wall and his buddy had to pull him out as well.”

Asked if both of Reed’s companions are OK, Ipsen said they are “just really distraught.”

Rescuers didn’t manage to retrieve Reed’s body until 6:10 p.m. Sunday. He was flown to Anchorage and handed over to the State Medical Examiner.

Reed was one of four people to drown this weekend, troopers report. The other three fell out of capsized boats, prompting troopers to repeat their summertime warning to wear life jackets.

In this case, though, it’s hard to say what Reed and his friends could have done better. Nobody goes hiking in a life jacket. Maybe in hindsight, Ipsen said, it would have been helpful if they had a rope. But it’s hard to fault them for not bringing one.

“They really tried really hard,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.