GLACIER RESCUE

PALMER — Don Erbey expects to have a scar on his nose. He’s OK with that.

After crash landing his father’s Piper Cherokee six on Knik Glacier midday Sunday, the 49-year-old Wasilla man, along with his Texas passengers and their Air National Guard rescuers, were all flown to safety by Wednesday afternoon.

Erbey and one of his passengers were flown directly to Mat-Su Regional Hospital. When doctors there wanted to stitch the small gash between Erby’s eyes, he refused.

“No, I want the reminder,” Erbey told them.

It’s a souvenir of a brief sightseeing jaunt that went all wrong but turned out alright, except for the PA32-260 rapidly covering with snow on the top of the glacier, and the inverted Black Hawk helicopter next to it.

The adventure began Sunday morning when Erbey stopped at his parents’ house in Palmer to pick up the key to the Cherokee. He’d agreed to give the family of friends of he and his wife, Cynthia, a quick air tour over the glacier, College Fjord and Upper Lake George for the family’s first full day in Alaska. His Cessna 170 didn’t have enough seats for the family of four, so he met the Lantz family at the Palmer Airport to fly out with the larger craft. Erbey had checked the weather; it looked OK. They left the airport about noon; Erbey was due back for a 2:30 p.m. tee-time with his father, Roland, and others at Fishhook Golf Course.

Erbey, a diesel mechanic at Elmendorf Air Force Base, missed his tee time.

Erbey said the sightseeing adventure was going well until the weather off the fjords quickly changed. He said he knew he was in trouble “as soon as the cloud started climbing faster than I could.”

“All of a sudden, the ground disappeared,” he said. “The clouds started to overtake me. I couldn’t see the ground anymore.”

He said he did as he was trained and made a quick assessment of the situation, reading the indicators and checking visuals from left to right. The picture they painted wasn’t encouraging. With clouds blotting out the ground, his only reference was his altimeter. It showed him losing altitude, yet the nose of the plane was pointed up. His vertical speed indicated 200 feet per minute upward, with an airspeed of 65 to 70 mph — above the airplane’s stall speed.

He knew he’d stayed in the center of the valley, so he tried a slight left angle to work the plane back around. He needed to keep the plane fairly level so it would not cartwheel in an impact with the ground. The down draft continued to push against the plane. First the left wheel strut hit the soft, fresh snow, then the right. The plane slid about 60 to 70 yards before coming to rest, facing north-northwesternly at 8,400 feet.

“It was a perfect landing,” said David Lantz, 22, on Tuesday night. Perfect, except they were atop a glacier, and the landing gear on the right side of the plane was on top the wing, and the left landing gear was bent over.

Lantz recalled Erby’s first words after the crash: “My dad’s going to be pissed,” he quoted.

Once they hit, Erbey said he and the Lantz family — Fred, his wife, Mary Jan, and sons Patrick, 27, and David — assessed their situation. It didn’t take Erbey long to realize the emergency kit his mother keeps with the plane was inadvertently left behind. They had no food or water and very few supplies other than some plastic bags and paper towels. The Lantzes had light jackets; Erbey only had a fleece vest over his short-sleeve shirt. And it was cold. But the plane was intact.

The emergency locator transmitter (ELT), which Erbey’s parents recently had updated in the plane, had not gone off because of the gentle impact. Erbey hit the button.

That set in motion what Erbey’s mother, Beverly, credits with part of the rescue.

“It’s a blessing we had it,” Beverly said of the new ELT, which they’d been told they’d be required to have in Canadian air space when they moved that plane from California to Alaska. “We credit that for saving their lives.”

Within minutes, Flight Services in Palmer called the Erbeys asking about their plane. Roland and Beverly knew there was a crash. What they didn’t know was how bad and if their son and his passengers were alive. They called the family together and waited for news.

“That was the hardest part when we didn’t know,” recalled Don’s older brother Ken, a Palmer city councilman.

Then, thanks to the Good Samaritan efforts of a pilot from Eagle River, Chuck Podolak, and other pilots in the area, the Erbeys got the news that Don and his passengers were safe. Podolak had flown near the glacier in an effort to find the downed plane and heard Erbey’s hail on the radio.

“Normally a mayday is a bad thing,” Ken Erbey said. This time, it was welcome news for both the Erbey family and the family of the Texans — Mary Jan Lantz’ father, Don Hart, lives in Wasilla.

While finding the stranded fivesome was part of the battle, it was nothing compared to reaching them. Alaska Air National Guard pararescue jumpers were dropped 3.8 miles from the crash sight Sunday afternoon, but by nightfall had progressed only a mile in the treacherous terrain, pulling heavy sleds to the high altitude.

Two attempts to drop supplies failed when they slid too far for the group to reach them, clad only in sneakers and light shoes.

When rescuers finally reached the downed plane late on Monday, Erbey said the group was relieved. But the rescuers brought little food and were soaked from their efforts.

They strung a clothes line using dental floss from Mary Jan’s purse to dry their clothes. They were able to boil water from the snow, ate protein powder meals and waited out another cold night.

When the whir of the rescue helicopter sounded outside the plane on Tuesday, hopes soared again. Then, the sound changed. They looked out of the plane to see the helicopter inverted nearby.

“My heart just sunk until I saw them get out,” Don Erbey recalled. “I said, ‘Please, God, no.’” No one in the helicopter was injured.

Back in Palmer, the families were experiencing similar consternation.

“Our spirits were so good when the rescuers were there,” Suzanne (Erbey) Hermon, Don’s sister, said Tuesday night. “Then we we heard the helicopter went down, they just plunged.”

Wednesday, waiting for her husband and Don Erbey to arrive by helicopter, Mary Jan Lantz said emotions in the plane were nearly identical. When the helicopter toppled over on the glacier, their hopes plummeted.

“It was up and down and up and down,” said Patrick Lantz.

Mary Jan said there was also a deep sense of loss when the aircraft monitoring them from above on Monday night pulled out. The Dillingham crash that claimed the lives of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and four others had happened that evening, and the rescuers were spread thin.

“Their (rescuers’) perserverence is what really kept us sane,” said David Lantz.

Erbey said he can’t express enough gratitude for the pararescuers, who risked their lives to save them.

“I want to thank them for our lives,” he said. “Anyone of those guys could have fallen in a crevasse coming up. These guys volunteered their lives to save us.”

A second helicopter arrived Tuesday night to take out Mary Jan, Patrick and David. It wasn’t until they were in the air that Mary Jan realized her husband was not with them. There wasn’t room for another passenger. The Lantzes were dropped at Palmer Airport, but weather closed in before another rescue trip could be accomplished. It would be Wednesday afternoon before Fred Lantz, Don Erbey and the rescuers would be taken off the glacier.

Mary Jan Lantz isn’t eager to get back in a plane after her adventure.

“It would be nice if we took a cruise home to Texas so we didn’t have to fly,” Mary Jan said. “I’d rather walk at this point.”

But for Erbey, who grew up wanting to fly, he’s ready to go back in a plane.

“I have a passion for it,” he said. “I’m not going to stop flying. It was just one of those circumstances.”

He said he will do what he has always done. He’ll kiss his wife, Cynthia, goodbye and tell her, “If anything happens, I am doing what I love.”