Doctor, father tell of struggle for life beneath Koyukuk River ice
'I THOUGHT I WAS ONE OR TWO SECONDS FROM DEATH'
By RACHEL D'ORO
The Associated Press
(Published: June 14, 2003)
Rounding a bend on the river, Blake Stanfield saw a solid sheet of ice ahead. There was no way to turn the cataraft around in the rushing current that thrust the Seward doctor and his father toward the 2-foot-high white wall.
The right pontoon slammed against the ice, flipping the raft upside down and under the slab.
It's all a chaotic memory for the men now, flashes of tumbling in bone-chilling water, knocking their heads against the ice bottom, gasping at a thin pocket of air.
Most of all, Stanfield said, was the certainty of approaching death.
"It was sheer panic," he said Friday of the harrowing experience on the north fork of the Koyukuk River north of the Arctic Circle. "All you see is that you're going under this sheet of ice, and you have no idea where it ends. We were sucked under immediately."
Stanfield, 38, wept several times as he recalled the ordeal that began June 6 during a rafting expedition with his 65-year-old father, Neil Stanfield of Oklahoma City. The pair survived the icy river plunge, only to be stranded for five days in the wilderness without food or supplies.
Father and son were rescued early Wednesday by an Army helicopter, hours after the younger Stanfield was spotted by a bush pilot making a sightseeing flight. They were bruised and scratched, exhausted and famished, but otherwise in good condition.
The trip was to have been Stanfield's birthday gift to his father, a real estate consultant. It would be just the two of them as Stanfield's pregnant wife, Shelly, stayed home with their 14-month-old son, Heath.
The plan was to be dropped off at the north fork of the Koyukuk, about 200 miles northwest of Fairbanks in Alaska's Interior. They would spend a week floating 90 miles of winding river, eventually taking the middle fork to the town of Bettles.
The Stanfields set off that Friday under clear skies and temperatures in the 70s. It was so warm that Blake Stanfield wore only shorts and a T-shirt, no shoes. His father wore a T-shirt, long johns, waist-high waders and boots. Both wore life jackets.
A few hours after launching, they encountered the ice, which stretched about 30 yards. After being plunged below, they resurfaced through a break in the ice, gulping air, before the swift current swept them under again at least 100 yards, by Stanfield's estimation.
This time there was no air space between ice and water.
"I thought I was one or two seconds from death," Stanfield said. "I was thinking, 'Boy, this is it. What an awful way to go.' I thought of my family and how sad it would be for them. Then I popped out into open air and open water."
Stanfield, a family practitioner at Providence Seward Medical Center, is known as an avid mountain climber and outdoor enthusiast. He quickly made his way to the bank of the 50-foot-wide river. But his father, clutching an oar, was carried downstream.
Stanfield sprinted barefoot along the bank until he got ahead of his father, who had stopped on an icy ridge in the river. Stanfield grabbed a dead spruce branch and held it out until the older man caught it.
By the time he reached shore, Neil Stanfield was shivering uncontrollably from the cold. His son urged him to keep moving and led him to drier ground.
Blake Stanfield built a fire with a water-resistant lighter, which also held a small folding knife, lip balm and two family photos. As his father warmed himself, Stanfield hiked up a hill to scan the river for the raft. There it was, upside down at the far side of the river, surrounded by icy patches and a raging current.
There was no way they could reach it, Stanfield told his father. They would have to spend the night and figure out a survival plan. They found a large gravel drainage after leaving the oar along their path, pointing downriver as a sign for searchers.
Using rocks, spruce branches and moss, Stanfield built a wall against a V-shaped gully to create a small shelter that looked out on a campfire. He cut tall, dry grasses to line the floor. There was no shortage of dry wood or water.
But all their food was lost, with no other options in sight.
The next morning, Stanfield told his father he had to go for help before he got too weak. He wore his father's long johns and boots, leaving his father with the waders and neoprene socks.
Ideally, he would have hiked to Bettles. He got a good start, passing a grizzly bear and "the biggest black bear I've ever seen." But by Sunday morning, he had hiked at least 20 miles before he ran up against the confluence of the Koyukuk and Tinayguk rivers.
"That was as far as I could go," Stanfield said. "It was just uncrossable."
Thus began several days of waiting and worrying about his father. He didn't even bother to erect a shelter, focusing his diminishing energy on building fires for warmth and in the hopes the smoke would attract attention from planes flying high overhead. Occasionally he ate a spider or ant that wandered by.
"There was nothing else to eat," Stanfield said. "There were tons of cranberry bushes that maybe in August would be loaded. I didn't feel hunger, though, and that surprised me."
Meanwhile, his father had developed his own daily routine: keeping the embers going and catching brief naps before collecting more firewood.
"There was no food, but I had a lot of water and, of course, I ate a lot of smoke," Neil Stanfield said. "Then you spend a lot of time trying to figure different ways to study your navel."
Tuesday evening, bush pilot Dirk Nikisch spotted the younger Stanfield while flying sightseers over the area. He returned with a neighbor, Bernie Hicker, to help drop a radio and food to Stanfield, who radioed back.
"He sounded very happy he had someone to talk to," Hicker said. "Then he told us about his father. We looked for him for quite a long time before we found him."
The men dropped food, a tent and a sleeping bag to the elder Stanfield. Nikisch also supplied the coordinates that enabled the Army helicopter to retrieve the Stanfields early the next morning.
Relaxing Friday at his Seward home with his wife, son and father, Blake Stanfield said he would now plan differently for such a trip. For example, he would enlist a pilot to make a flyover safety check midway through a trip.
"I wouldn't hesitate to do it again," he said. "Only probably not this summer."
