Family "Weselcly May 19, 1963
'
I FOUND
4:
Pilot Chuck Hamilton spotted the downed Americana first.
THE GIRL
"Faith kept me alive," Helen Klaben cried when she was rescued.
Their plane crashed in sub-Arctic wilderness, food gone,
and rescue abandoned, a lay preacher and a young
woman found strength in the Bible; here is the
incredible story as told by the man who heard it first
the bush pilot who rescued them By CHUCK HAMILTON
AEROPLANE LAKE was a smooth stretch
.of blinding white in an otherwise
pine- and scrub-covered expanse of
mountains. As the lake loomed larger on
my horizon, I dipped my Super Cub to
about 300 feet, remembering the last
instructions of my partner, Hal Komish.
Together we operate B. C. Yukon Air Service,
Ltd., a charter flying company with a small fleet
ofaraft baaed at Watson Lake, Yukon Territory.
"Take a look at the lake, Chuck," Hal had told
me. "Those Indians may need more help."
A couple of months before, Hal had been flying
over the same area and had spotted a "Help" sign
trampled in the snow. He had landed on the lake
and found an Indian family whose new baby des
perately needed milk.
In the Yukon, where Hal and I fly, families
may live 60 or 100 miles apart, and when winter
closes in they become locked in a sub-Arctic
prison of waist-deep snow, 40-below-zero tem
peratures, and winds of 40 miles an hour. All of
us have learned that to survive we must help each
other. That's why Hal wanted me to see if we
could help that Indian family any more. It was
nothing extraordinary; bush pilots do it regularly
and, when in trouble themselves, know that help
is never far off.
Now it was my turn to see what we could do.
It was about 11 :30 Sunday, March 24, and I was
flying an Indian trapper named Jack George to
Terminus Mountain, the last of the Rockies ; I was
also bringing supplies to one of the region's most
famous big-game outfitters, Skook Davidson.
I passed over the frozen lake slowly. The bril
liant sun, low as it always is up here in winter,
glared harshly on the stark snow, but George's
eyes and mine were accustomed to it. The snow
lay undisturbed beneath us, no sign of trouble. I
figured. I had better start for Terminus before
that low sun spent itself. First,though, one more
sweep.
It seems strange now, but in talking about
people in danger Hal and I hadn't mentioned one
case that had been big news around our home
base at Watson Lake seven weeks before. A pilot
and a young woman, both from the United States,
had taken 'off from White Horse, capital of the
Yukon Territory, for a 600-mile trip to Fort St.
John, British Columbia. They had not been heard
of since. The Royal Canadian Air Force and bush
pilots had scoured the flight path. No trace of the
plane had been spotted. Since then, the worst of
Arctic winters had fallen on the area. There
wasn't much reason to talk about the lost flyers
now : like others before them, the frozen wilder
ness had swallowed them up.
I made my second sweep, but again nothing. I
started to pull up at the southeast end of the lake.
As I did, a meadow rushed beneath us. It was
crisscrossed with the dark outlines of windfalls
timber toppled by fierce winds but there was
something else that caught my eye I An orderly
scar on the surface of snow. I looked down. It
was a huge SOS.
"What does that mean?" George asked.
"It's a distress signal! Keep looking !"
We could see nobody. I tried to follow tracks
leading from the SOS but lost them in a thicket
I circled, found another foot track, and lost it,
too. I came back again, determined to locate the
distressed party if it took the waning daylight
hours. Then a flash of light caught my eye. I
looked down.
"Somebody's flashing a mirror at us I see
him! Must be an Indian."
Wa 8m Sign of Life
I flew back to the SOS looking for his family.
Instead a wisp of smoke caught our attention a
couple of miles beyond. As we approached, George
and I strained to see against the piercing white
and deep shadows of snow and timberland, and I
checked off my observations against George's so
my report would be accurate.
"I see a figure near the smoke a squaw?"
"Looks like one," George confirmed.
"There's a crude tent."
"Yeh." .
"And a fire."
"Not a cooking fire signal fire."
I couldn't risk landing with a passenger and
fully loaded plane, so I waggled my wings, hoping
the woman would realize she wasn't being aban
doned. Then I flew George to Terminus Mountain
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family WMkly. May It, IfU