Search and Rescue Alaska

Book excerpt: In a place as vast and extreme as Alaska, no one takes safety for granted. Whether adventurer or homesteader, tourist or native, people look out for themselves and for each other. But sometimes it just goes bad, and no amount of resourcefulness or resiliency can make it right. That’s when search and rescue teams kick into gear, launching operations by air and by land that have generated amazing tales of heroism, tenacity, and human kindness. Some of those stories have been gathered in Search and Rescue Alaska, including: Rescues on Denali, North America’s highest peak, from the mountain’s first search and rescue in 1932 to a rescue in 2017 that highlights the utility of modern equipment and decades of SAR experience A World War II search and rescue that ended with a remarkable recovery more than half a century later Rescues during the Good Friday quake of 1964 The rescue of mountaineering students and their instructors in the Chugach Range The rescue and recovery of Klondike-bound gold-seekers caught in an avalanche on the infamous Chilkoot Trail These stories and others in this compilation of essays will kindle a new appreciation for the skilled and selfless pilots, troopers, military personnel, and rangers on call for search and rescue in Alaska.