Near-drowning provides change of perspective

POINT MACKENZIE — A Wasilla man who said he barely survived a fishing trip Friday has two pieces of advice for boaters in Alaska.

First, always wear a life jacket.

Second, make sure that life jacket fits.

Ron Hulse said his ordeal began as a fairly typical day of fishing. He got out on the water at about 4 a.m.

He wasn’t sure at first if the lake had a name. He knows where it is and that it boasts great rainbow trout fishing. After spending some time with online and paper maps, he’s pretty confident it was Lake Lorraine, just off Point MacKenzie Road, right after the pavement stops.

“It’s an, ‘I hope nobody finds out about it’ kind of a place,” he said.

Hulse started fishing one of his hot spots a considerable distance off shore. The fishing was good and he pulled in the biggest trout he’d ever caught.

“It was the kind of thing you see on magazine covers,” he said.

A trophy catch. He immediately started thinking about having it mounted.

Hulse is a former commercial fisherman. Retelling the accident Monday, he detailed the surgeries he’s gone through to correct problems with his arms. One of his legs is particularly troublesome; he’s had four surgeries on his knee.

That leg was cramping up on him after he pulled in his catch. He pulled up anchor and was about to row someplace else.

There was gear in the boat so he couldn’t stretch out his leg. Hulse said he knows better, but he decided to stand up to stretch it out.

It was a mistake that nearly cost him his life.

Hulse wasn’t steady on his feet and pushed the corner of the boat down. It started taking on water, which put him further off balance and in turn let in more water.

“I went overboard and my whole skiff flipped over,” Hulse said.

He tried to save the boat, maybe hold onto it and swim it to shore.

“After about a half hour of kicking for all I was worth I realized the anchor line had fallen in,” he said. The boat wasn’t going anywhere.

He was on his own.

Hulse said he had on a XXL life preserver. But between his water-filled steel-toed rubber boots and his sopping wet clothes — he’d dressed relatively warmly in a sweatshirt that morning — it wasn’t enough.

Three times, he said, he slipped underwater.

“If I stopped moving I started sinking,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it because it was a long way to shore. … I’m a single father. I’ve got two kids. I was thinking of my kids.”

Something, either that motivation or some sort of divine intervention, prompted Hulse to fight to the surface all three times. Only his head was above water, but still, somehow, he made it to shore. He pulled himself out and started walking, which is where the story takes on a Job-like quality.

“I got lost in the woods for about two hours,” he said. “Almost got trampled by a moose.”

Finally, Hulse said, he heard some large trucks zooming by. He’d made it to Point MacKenzie Road. He said he started walking back up the road to where he’d parked his van. None of the trucks stopped, a fact he finds odd, considering he was walking along the road in rubber boots and a sopping-wet life jacket.

But then he didn’t do anything to try to get them to stop, either.

“I didn’t try to flag any of them down. I was just so out of it,” he said.

Hulse said he made it back to his van — luckily, he’d left the keys inside — at around 12:30 p.m. Factoring in a couple of hours fishing and a couple of hours lost in the woods that’s at least three or four hours in the water.

After all that he said he drove himself back to his home off Bogard Road, without having interacted with anyone else during the adventure.

“I hugged my kids and I cried my eyes out,” Hulse said.

Hulse said he’s still coughing up water and doctors tell him he’s developed pneumonia and that he had a heart attack swimming to shore.

Hulse also hopes that if somebody’s out fishing that lake and sees his skiff — a blue-and-white Livingston he’d personally outfitted with bicycle tires so he can pull it from his car to the water — he or she would be nice enough to let him know.

As far as fishing’s concerned, Hulse isn’t sure he wants to use it out on the lake anymore. But, at the very least, it’s an investment he’d like to recoup.

The former commercial fisherman said he learned something that morning about what cold water can do, and he’s been swimming in iceberg water before.

“But not for that long a period of time and not fighting for my life,” he said. He’s grateful for his life jacket, even if it wasn’t completely adequate. “If I wouldn’t have had a lifejacket, I definitely would’ve died.”

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