‘Happy to Be Alive’ After Alaska Ordeal

With each sweeping pass of a rescue helicopter, the hopes of three Orange County tourists stranded atop an Alaskan glacier Friday soared.

But hours passed--one, two, half a dozen--as they huddled in wet sneakers in the carcass of their downed helicopter. Temperatures dropped below freezing.

Then, in the distance, William McIntyre, 40, of Placentia heard what sounded like another helicopter crashing: the wrenching sound of grinding metal and debris.

Deepening their despair, the group discovered--as time passed with no sign of rescue--that their emergency beacon was broken. They were alone, five sightseers and a pilot, on a dark, frozen mountain.

So when help finally arrived about midnight, McIntyre, his 72-year-old father, also William McIntyre, and Deborah Morgan, his fiancee, didn’t even recognize it; they mistook four men trudging up the glacier for victims of the other crash.

But fate had, at last, taken a kinder turn. Their rescuers had flown up as high as they could on the mountain then hiked up five more hours carrying tents, cold-weather gear and food, the younger McIntyre said. About 8 a.m., yet another helicopter airlifted them to safety after 20 hours on the glacier.

“The fear was that Dad and Deb were getting hypothermic,” McIntyre said Sunday. “We were cold and wet. It was a long night. . . . I am happy to be alive right now.”

McIntyre was reached aboard the cruise ship Crown Princess, where he, his father and Morgan, badly bruised but in good spirits, were completing the final leg of an Alaskan cruise.

He and Morgan, 42, also of Placentia, recounted a seven-day tour turned horribly awry.

At a stop in Juneau, the group--lured by the mystique of the Herbert Glacier--signed on for a $275-per-person sightseeing excursion that began over the city’s spectacular glaciers and ice fields on a beautiful Friday morning.

But as the helicopter, carrying the group plus another couple, ascended above the hilly terrain, the blinding white of the snow began to blend with the sky.

“It was so bright up there, I couldn’t even get a picture with my high-powered camera,” McIntyre said.

The next thing he knew, the helicopter seemed to slam into something and shook violently. Rocked in their seats, the passengers watched helplessly as the aircraft ripped apart.

“The helicopter was going about 125 mph, and it slid about 400 feet in snow,” said Morgan, who suffered chipped teeth, punctured shins and a broken ankle in the crash. “It flipped over and completely disintegrated. If you saw the wreckage, it looks like there is no way anyone could survive. We are very lucky.”

McIntyre, an engineer, said the group then focused on “getting everybody out of the craft before the thing lit on fire.”

He said he quickly unbuckled his seat belt and helped the others out of theirs.

“I had them out of there fast,” McIntyre said. “Then once we were all out, we had to step back and assess if we were all alive.”

Despite the traumatic experience, McIntyre said, he and the others, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, shifted into survival mode, packing snow into plastic tubs and stacking snow blocks around the exposed parts of the helicopter’s underbelly for shelter.

Then they sat shivering through the night, until, at last, in the darkness just past midnight, a voice called “Hello?” With that, the helicopter pilot signaled to the voice with the tiny flashlight that became their beacon.

They were saved.

But the attempts to rescue them had led two other helicopters from Temsco Helicopters Inc., the tour company, to crash into the glacier Friday. Thirteen people, including the sightseers, were stranded that night, McIntyre said. A multi-agency team led by the U.S. Coast Guard finally hoisted the crash victims from the 4,500-foot glacier.

A Coast Guard official in Juneau, about 20 miles from the glacier, said Sunday that it is not unusual for helicopters to crash in snowy, “white-out” weather.

“It’s really white up there; then you have the ice, and it’s snowing,” Coast Guard Lt. Michael Patterson said. “It’s very difficult to tell the difference between the sky and the ground. You lose all perception of depth.”

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration sifted through the wreckage at three locations Sunday to try to determine how the crashes occurred.

No one else was seriously injured in the crashes, but the elder McIntyre, a retired engineer from Scotland who now lives in Irvine, injured his knee. He had suffered a mild heart attack on his only previous trip to Alaska and had to be persuaded by his son to take the helicopter ride.

Rhonell Zell, 51, and Richard Zell of Novato, Calif., were stranded with the McIntyres and Morgan on the glacier. The couple returned home after the rescue.

McIntyre said he didn’t feel safe until the rescue helicopter landed. “I was worried we were going to crash,” he said. “We had a beautiful tour, up until it was abruptly cut short.”