Father let go
With son in seizures, sheep hunter left to seek help
By CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News
Published: October 1, 2006
Last Modified: October 1, 2006 at 06:03 PM
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Dawn was breaking over the Wrangell Mountains when Rick Collins faced the decision no parent should ever have to make.
He could stay where he was with his arms wrapped around son Jake until the 22-year-old died, or he could make a days-long journey for help knowing the odds were low that rescuers would make it back before Jake slipped from unconsciousness into death.
Already the 53-year-old father and his son had endured a frightful night on a sheep hunt turned wilderness nightmare. Knocked unconscious in a fall from a cliff the day before, found by his father in a creek, Jake had passed the night shivering, racked with seizures. His father wrapped himself around his son for warmth and tried to hold in place the thin, one-pound tarp that was their only shelter from the mountain cold.
The seizures, Rick later remembered, were so bad he feared Jake might break his feet kicking against the rocks in which Rick had been forced to build their makeshift camp. Jake was bootless. Rick had removed the younger man's soaked boots, socks and clothes, then swapped them for his own dry garments.
More than an hour from a camp when Jake fell, Rick was afraid to leave his son alone for the more than three hours necessary to go get a sleeping bag and return. He feared Jake might stop breathing and need to be resuscitated, so he stayed close.
High above Sheep Lake, they spent a long and brutal night on the side of a mountain near 4,500 feet. Sleep never came. When Jake's seizures were at their worst, Rick wedged his legs under his son's body to minimize the blows against the rocks.
Now, with the day starting to bring a hint of warmth but no sign that Jake would emerge from unconsciousness, Rick knew -- as much as he hated knowing -- that the only real choice was to go for help.
"My greatest fear was that I'd come back and he'd have stopped breathing," Rick said. But that was not his only fear.
"I thought about leaving Jake there to die all by himself," Rick said. "I thought about what the birds do to injured animals."
Using large rocks, Rick built a fort around Jake to hold him in place. Then, using more rocks, he secured the tarp as best he could to cover Jake's body. He didn't want his son kicking it loose in the midst of another seizure, exposing himself to the flesh-tearing bills of the ravens that prowl these mountains always on the lookout for vulnerable prey.
"I got up about 6:30 or so and started doing a better job of fencing him in," Rick said. "It was 8 o'clock when I left him."
Jake was under shelter and lashed to a backpack designed for Alaska hunters. The extra heavy padding attached to the frame of that pack would help to insulate Jake against the cold ground, and the harness fastened to aluminum tubing would work almost like a back brace to stabilize any broken bones if he moved.
It was all Rick could do to help his son.
"I told him I was leaving," Rick said. "I told him to hang on. It was easy to understand I had to go, but I had to try three or four times before I could leave."
FATHER-SON BOND
Fall comes early in the mountains of high Alaska, and it has almost always been a special time for Rick Collins and his son Jake.
All of the Collinses hunted -- Rick, his wife, Antoinette, Jake's three brothers and sister -- but Rick and Jake were the two who shared the passion. It wasn't so much about bagging game, Rick said, as it was just being in the mountains. The two Wasilla residents liked the hiking, the scenery, the air, the chance to see animals.
"He never played football," Rick said. "So it was convenient to hunt."
Goat Creek drainage in the preserve portion of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve was familiar territory for the Collinses, too. They'd been here before. Antoinette one year shot a Dall ram near Sheep Lake.
She and Rick had arrived by airplane that time. This time, Jake and Rick took a four-wheeler more than 15 miles in on the Tanada Lake Trail from the Nabesna Road to the edge of the Wrangell-St. Elias Wilderness boundary. From there, near the confluence of Goat and Pass creeks, they'd hike another five to 10 miles back into the preserve.
The four-wheeler ride turned out to be far more challenging than either could have imagined. Heavy rains had left the trail a mud bog. The hunters got stuck repeatedly and had to wrestle or winch their machine free. It took them a day to reach the wilderness boundary.
Once they dumped the machine, though, the trip improved. As they hiked up toward Sheep Lake, and then beyond, they started seeing sheep everywhere -- ewes and lambs at first and then, finally, some rams.
Nearly three-quarters of a mile high in the mountains, they made camp and started looking for trophy animals -- big rams with horns forming more than a full curl. Rick didn't see any he thought big enough to warrant a strenuous climb higher. But late in the day on Aug. 18, Rick said, Jake "decided he wanted to go after one of these (full-curl) rams for meat."
Rick said he didn't think he could climb up to the sheep and get back to camp by dark. Jake was sure he could. They decided the son would go alone.
The father watched his son through binoculars and a spotting scope, using hand signals to help direct him toward the animals. The younger man fought his way up through a half-mile-long band of brushy alders into some rocky cliffs.
"There was some really gnarly stuff that had me nervous," Rick said, "but he got through the gnarly stuff and up into (this) vegetated trough."
From there, Jake spotted two more sheep that looked bigger than those he'd started stalking. He signaled to his dad that he was going after them. Rick watched through the scope.
"I saw him lay down and sight his rifle," Rick said. "I saw the shot and saw the sheep go down."
Jubilant in success and knowing Dad was watching, Jake stood, turned and pumped the rifle over his head. There was a big smile on his face, Rick remembers. Then Jake started off toward where the sheep had fallen.
At least twice, Rick watched Jake try to descend rocky chutes to the sheep below him. Each time he got turned back by impassable cliffs.
"He couldn't find a place to get back down," Rick said. "So he climbed back up. I think that third time was when he had the fall. I was looking through the spotting scope when he fell. I freaked out a bit."
Jake slipped, started falling and disappeared out of sight. The last time Rick saw him, he was airborne, plummeting toward the ground with his arms and legs above his body.
Rick knew immediately he had to get to Jake. He grabbed a game bag, some nylon cord, a rain poncho and the first-aid kit from Jake's pack and started climbing. Every time he stopped to grab an extra breath of air, he yelled up the mountain:
"Jake, I'm coming! Jake, hang on!
"It took me a while to get there," he said, maybe more than an hour. "At my age and condition, I can't sprint up a mountain. When I got to him, he was oozing blood in a lot of places, but nothing was gushing. I wouldn't say it was the worst I feared, but it was bad. I bet he had 50 cuts on his head."
Trained in first aid since the age of 14, schooled in confined-space rescue as part of his job with an oil field service company on Alaska's North Slope, Rick immediately began an examination of the son he found unconscious, face down in a tiny creek. Jake's legs were in the water, but his mouth was free, so Rick did not move him at first.
"I talked to him," he said, "and said, 'Jake,' you know, 'Dad's here.' He didn't respond."
Rick kept up the conversation as he examined Jake for broken bones. When he found no indication of anything broken, he rolled Jake out of the creek and onto his back.
"When I did that," Rick said, "his eyes came open and he had a very scared look. His eyes were open ... but I didn't see any recognition in them."
It would be more than two long weeks before anyone did.
A CALL FOR HELP
The night of Aug. 18 was a cold one in the Wrangell Mountains. Chief Wrangell park ranger Marshall Neeck remembers the thermometer pushing down toward freezing at the Slana Ranger Station about 40 miles northwest of the Collinses and a couple thousand feet lower in elevation.
Rick remembers that it was chilly but not bitterly so. He'd dragged Jake away from the creek and gotten him out of his wet clothes. He'd wrapped Jake in some of his own dry garments and others from their packs. He'd weighed making the long run to camp for the sleeping bag and ruled that out.
"I decided the thing I needed to do was make sure Jake was breathing," Rick said. "I wanted to make sure he could breathe on his own."
Jake was in bad shape. One eye was swollen shut. Blood was oozing out of his nose. He had several large impact bruises on his head and unknown internal injuries.
On top of that, rain looked to be moving in, and the wind was building.
"The wind kicked up and started gusting 20 or 30 mph," Rick said. "The wind frequently would blow the tarp out. I'd have to get up and keep rearranging it."
Between that and Jake's seizures, there was no chance to sleep. By morning, Rick had gone 24 hours without sleep while riding an emotional roller coaster.
He was five or six miles from the four-wheeler. Another 18 miles of bad four-wheeler trail stood between there and the Nabesna Road. It was 25 miles or so down the road to the ranger station in Slana.
By the American standards of today, Rick is a very fit man. He hikes regularly. He carries a little extra weight on his medium-size frame.
But he is no endurance athlete. He wishes that he had been, wishes that he'd maintained a more rigorous fitness program. Some in the handful of extreme athletes who consider the Alaska wilderness their playground probably could have made it to the four-wheeler in a couple of hours, he said. Battling rough terrain, it took him almost six -- the whole time dreading what was to come.
"I anticipated the four-wheeler trip would be the hardest part," he said. "We were stuck dozens of times on the way in."
Rick hoped other hunters who had been camped at the end of the four-wheeler trail would still be there to help him on the trip out. They weren't. He fired up the four-wheeler and started off.
"The first couple hours weren't bad," he said.
He made Tanada Lake. He hoped there might be someone at an old lodge on the west shore. It was deserted. He pushed on.
"It's such a wet year that (the trail) was not just somewhat wet, it was soup," he said. The four-wheeler would sink in repeatedly until the undercarriage hung up.
"I knew I was stuck for two hours in two places," Rick said. Once he thought he might not get out. He had to tie a 100-foot tow rope to the tattered stump of a broken spruce tree, put just slight tension on the rope with the cable from the winch on the four-wheeler, then go to the machine and gas it to move it inches. He kept repeating that process until he eased the machine onto firmer ground.
"I didn't get to the truck until 9:30 that night," he said. "I had a sense of relief, but the problem was changed."
In the truck was a cell phone, but Rick knew it wouldn't work. He and Jake had tried it on the 25-mile drive in from Slana. So he got in his truck and started in the direction opposite that community, heading southeast toward Nabesna, where he knew there were phones.
He was hoping he wouldn't have to go all 20 miles to the end of the road there.
He thought there might be a phone at Sportsman's Paradise Lodge only a few miles away.
He was near mile 25, not far from the trail head, when he noticed a house with a light. He stopped, went to the door of Tom Bertrand's residence and knocked. Bertrand answered. Rick asked him where to find the nearest telephone. Bertrand asked what was wrong. Rick told him. Bertrand grabbed his cell phone and said to get in his truck.
"He said his phone would work at Long Lake Hill," about three miles away, Rick said. "We called the (Alaska) State Trooper dispatch in Glennallen from there."
A trooper dispatcher told them to hold on. The two men explained they couldn't do that because of limited battery power. She told them she'd call back, but if they didn't hear from her in a short while to call again. The two men waited. Bertrand had to go back to his house to get a fresh phone battery, Rick said.
Fifteen minutes later, having not heard from troopers, they tried again. This time, the call was patched through to ranger Neeck. He'd been called away from a party with friends and was already rolling into action.
"All I knew from troopers was that a hunter had fallen," Neeck said. "We started to scramble resources."
"He said he had two rangers on the way on four-wheelers," Rick said. "I told him the situation, that we needed a helicopter. He said OK," go meet the rangers and come into Slana.
"By the time I got to Slana, Kulis (Air National Guard Base in Anchorage) had been called," Rick said. "I didn't even realize anyone did night rescues."
He is thankful now that they do.
NIGHT HELICOPTER RESCUE
At the 212th Pararescue section across the street from the spiffy Millenium Hotel at Lake Hood, pararescue jumpers Robert Rosentreter and Paul "Red'' Reddington were watching "Saturday Night Live" when the call came in that the resources of the National Guard's 210th and 211th Rescue Squadrons were needed.
Pilot Maj. Rick Watson called for weather reports as he headed for the airport.
He'd just gone to bed when he got the call. Anchorage was getting hit by the tail end of a Gulf of Alaska storm, and he was worried about what sort of weather might be spilling over the Chugach and Wrangell Mountains to the north.
Still, by 1 a.m. he had his HH-60 Pavehawk rescue helicopter airborne. An HC-130 Hercules was on the way, too, to fly top cover and refuel the helicopter three times over the rescue zone. Within minutes of the Rescue Coordination Center at Elmendorf Air Force Base approving the park service's request for a helicopter, rescuers from Kulis were on their way toward Slana.
"We were moving as fast as we can," Neeck said.
As the helicopter thundered northeast, Rick Collins and Neeck sat down at a computerized map to pinpoint Jake's position. Park staffers got some food for Collins, who hadn't eaten in a day.
By 2:40 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 20, the helicopter had landed just a few miles from the Slana ranger station.
"We got Rick Collins on there," Neeck said. "This guy hadn't slept in a long time. He was exhausted. (But) while we've been waiting for the helicopters, we've discussed this" and come within yards of identifying Jake's position west of Sheep Lake.
Neeck gave Watson the coordinates, and the helicopter took off with Rick aboard to provide further guidance.
Over the Wrangells, the winds were rocking. In the helicopter, Rick remembers, the pilots, copilot and PJs reminded each other not to take any risks -- to make sure that if anybody erred, it would be on the side of safety. There were discussions of a high-profile crash of a Pavehawk knocked from the sky by a downdraft on Mount Hood in 2002 as television cameras rolled.
Conditions here were frighteningly similar. Over the mountains near where Jake waited, Watson observed, "we could not hold the hover. We'd start sinking." But that wasn't the only difficulty.
After the summer of Alaska daylight, everyone was acutely aware of the difficulty of moving into the strange, green world of night vision goggles, where colors disappear and depth perception becomes problematic.
"It was my second NVG flight" of the year, Reddington said.
"It was my first time," said Watson.
Rescuers found Sheep Lake quickly, Watson said, but getting to Jake in the mountains nearby was proving more difficult.
Staring through night vision goggles for the first time, Rick Collins "was having a hard time explaining what he's seeing," Watson said. "The wind was blowing 35 to 40 and just pounding us."
As the helicopter bounced around, Watson's flight engineer tried to figure out how to help Collins with the navigation and stumbled on the idea of using a laser point to paint the terrain below with just enough light to improve the view through the goggles.
"This turned out to be really helpful," Watson said.
He had to maneuver the helicopter into several passes before Rick was confident they where he'd left Jake. With the weather worsening by the minute, they wanted to grab Jake and get out of there. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option.
As Reddington later wrote in recommending a commendation for Rosentreter, landing or hoisting "was going to be impossible due to the altitude of the terrain and the steepness of the cliffs. Senior Airman Rosentreter and his partner were dropped off in the valley approximately a mile and a half below the survivor."
Rosentreter was a Kentucky-based PJ fresh out of training. Partner Reddington was a 41-year-old veteran with lots of experience in these mountains. He annually hunted moose from a camp in the forest only about 30 miles away.
Watson dropped the two of them and Collins nearly 2,000 feet below Jake, then pulled the Pavehawk out. He needed fuel from the HC-130 circling above and had decided to head for the Gulkana airstrip to pick up a couple more PJs to aid in the rescue.
From the air, he said, it looked like it was going to take Reddington and Rosentreter quite a while to reach Jake.
Reddington led the way into an alder thicket.
"We had to go slow because Rick was with us," he said. The footing was bad, the alders thick and clinging. Above them, the HC-130 dropped a couple flares to provide some light and guidance.
The men fought their way upward for more than an hour. Reddington grew increasingly worried about bears.
"Then I heard some heavy breathing," he said.
The hair on his back stood up. He thought for a moment he'd run smack into a bear, but then he realized the sound was that of Jake gasping against the underside of the tarp.
"The (tarp) pulsing intensified the noise," Reddington said.
Jake was obviously still alive, but just barely. His body temperature had dropped dangerously low -- somewhere below 88 degrees -- in the cold. The PJs wanted to hoist him straight into the helicopter, but the winds made that impossible. They decided the only option they had was to carry Jake in a pole-less litter to an area the pilots thought safe.
"Just nasty boulders and slippery," Reddington said of the terrain.
As the sun rose, the quarter-mile descent to a suitable hoisting site took nearly two hours.
By then, Watson was back on the scene and talking to Reddington by radio.
"(Reddington) was way ahead of schedule," Watson added. "He said, 'We're ready to hoist.' That spot didn't look very good to us," but the crew trusted Reddington's judgment.
Watson eased the Pavehawk up along some cliffs about 500 feet below where Jake had been found. It was tight, he said, but he could get in there.
"(Reddington) made a good call," he said.
One by one, the Collinses and the PJs were pulled back into a hovering helicopter.
"I'm pretty fond of helicopters right now," Rick said later, adding that he would never be able to say enough good things about the rescuers from Kulis.
"If there's any heroes in this, it's them," he said.
"Those guys are the real heroes," added Neeck, though he is likewise astounded by what Rick Collins did.
"The father's story is incredible," Neeck said. "He covered a lot of country. Oh, man, was he ever back in there, and it's a tough trail."
Once aboard the helicopter, Watson added, "He was just like a crew member."
Watson couldn't remember any other civilian involved in a rescue -- particularly the rescue of a family member -- maintaining composure so well.
The Collins family considers it something of a miracle that Jake survived. Even though the PJs started rewarming his body on the helicopter and continued that as he was transferred to the HC-130 at Gulkana for the flight to the Providence Medical Center, the young hunter's core temperature was still 88 degrees when he arrived in Anchorage.
They got him there just in time. The weather shut down the Gulkana airstrip as the HC-130 was leaving. The Pavehawk ended up parked there.
"I never got home," Watson said.
As he sat on the runway at Gulkana, doctors were working on Jake. For weeks it remained uncertain whether Jake would emerge from the coma into which he had slipped. Rick was back at work on the North Slope when Jake finally opened his eyes and talked to a doctor.
The doctor asked him if he could say "hello."
He said, "Hello."
He was asked to say "mom."
"Mom."
It was Thursday, Sept. 7 -- 20 days since Jake had been knocked unconscious in the fall. Antoinette called Rick with the news.
Ever since that day, Jake's recovery has continued slowly but steadily. He remains at Providence, but he is now up and moving, learning to walk again. He has difficulty responding to questions but clearly understands them. He is doing well in word-association games.
Doctors aren't sure about how long or how far his recovery will continue, but there are plenty of reasons to hope he will be able to return to his job as an assistant basketball coach at Wasilla High School, where students are busy helping to raise funds to cover the cost of his rehabilitation.
"It's an amazing story," said Neeck.
An amazing story written in a father's unbridled love for a son.
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Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
