Dance or die

As Wade Strahan powered down the isolated, snow-covered airstrip, he sensed that his Cessna 172 had enough juice to clear the looming obstacles.

Ahead were Alaska’s Eklutna Lake and two huge pieces of driftwood that had washed ashore, root balls from trees long dead. He pulled back on the yoke and felt the plane leave the earth, only to kiss the ground again -- just enough contact to slow his speed.

Strahan could feel the takeoff going wrong as he struggled to pull the plane back into the air. It was too late. The prop slammed into the driftwood and disintegrated as the plane crashed. In seconds, water engulfed it. He pushed open the door, plunged into the near-freezing lake and swam the 20 yards to shore.

But there he faced new troubles. His clothes -- winter boots, jeans, wool shirt and hat, and a medium-weight jacket -- were soaked. The Chugach State Park’s ranger station was more than 10 miles away. The air temperature on the first Friday in December, already below freezing, was descending rapidly in the gloomy late-afternoon light. His emergency equipment was stowed in the submerged plane. He had no matches or lighter. And because this had been a spur-of-the-moment trip -- the Alaska equivalent of a drive in the country -- from Merrill Field in Anchorage, along the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet, he hadn’t filed a flight plan or told his wife where he was going.

As he shivered on the lakeshore, he did remember one thing: an abandoned cabin nearby, one he had come upon as a rookie park ranger 25 years earlier. And he wasn’t likely to panic. The 56-year-old battalion chief for the Anchorage Fire Department was no stranger to winter rescues. He knew he had to raise his body heat or risk hypothermia. He started walking as fast as he could toward the abandoned cabin.

The tiny structure was not as Strahan had last seen it. Except for a roof and walls, everything was gone, even the stove. With numb hands, he yanked spruce boughs from the surrounding trees, hoping they would act as a blanket. But within minutes he realized his only hope of survival was simply to keep moving about the cabin until morning, when search planes might spot him.

Sheri Strahan was eating dinner with her 9-year-old grandson when she began to worry about her husband. She drove to Merrill Field. Finding the Cessna’s spot empty, she called the place where she knew help would immediately mobilize: the Fire Department. Minutes later, the state Rescue Coordinating Center and National Guard were collaborating on a rescue effort. And a dozen firefighters arrived at dawn, ready to join the search with their own planes.

But with no flight plan to narrow its scope, the rescue team began covering a 2,400-square-mile swath north of Anchorage -- an area where Strahan often flew.

After a sleepless night of constant motion, about 9 a.m. Strahan decided against staying put. A rescue helicopter had flown over in the middle of the night, but didn’t spot him. Obviously, Strahan told himself, they were looking for a plane -- or what was left of one.

He left the relative warmth of the cabin and began slogging in still-wet clothes through the snow toward the ranger station. The temperature hovered around 10 degrees. Within less than a mile he stumbled onto a cross-country ski trail that a snowmobile had carved out. With solid snow underfoot, he picked up the pace.

About the same time, 31-year-old Christopher Wood was hooking up his dogs, Duncan and Jake, for a morning of skijoring. As he raced down the trail, he saw something curious in the distance -- a man walking the trail, but hardly dressed for the weather. Wood skied past him, but then stopped his dogs. Something didn’t seem right. The man’s face had been too purple, his gait too halting.

When Wood circled back, Strahan explained that his plane was at the bottom of the lake and that he had been without heat for 18 hours. Wood gave him his balaclava, a wool cap that covers the face, and left him as he rushed to the ranger station for help.

When he got to the Anchorage hospital, Strahan was tired and dehydrated, but otherwise in good shape. He told his wife and friends how he had landed on a whim only to find the snow-crusted airstrip sheathed in ice, which seemed like more of a nuisance than a problem. He had merely taxied the plane back and forth to tamp the surface. As he took off, a wheel had kissed the snow, perhaps because of a slight crosswind. And then came the long night.

“I was jumping, stomping and dancing, anything to keep moving,” he said.