It's alive!

Unexpectedly deep in a glacier and unprepared for the adventure, Douglas noticed something he hadn't noticed before: It's noisy in there and a little spooky. "There's lots of creepy noises," he said. "Those weird popping noises are pretty unsettling."

All that ice is moving, like a living, breathing monster.

Douglas found himself thinking about the snowmachine and ice block above him, and what would happen if there was a significant earthquake, given that the glacier is close to the Denali Fault, which rocked the whole continent in 2002. He pushed such thoughts out of his head by doing what scientists do: He observed and analyzed. "I'm very analytical," he confessed.

He studied his new surroundings. The crevasse was three or four feet wide. The area where it had broken loose at the top was shaped like a canoe. He was on a snow ledge farther down. He could see blue sky above. Oddly enough, the GPS he was carrying still worked.

"I had four or five bars," he said. "I checked sunrise and sunset (times)."

His co-workers had left around 4 p.m. to make the cell phone call for help. He figured if he didn't hear something by 9 p.m., he'd be spending the night.

"I thought about my wife and daughter, but really I was happy I was OK," he said. "It probably helped that I've been in crevasses. I knew, 'Don't even try to climb out. You might get up 15 feet and fall. This is really serious, but you're OK. You're warm.'

"I've spent the night on bivvy's (bivouacs) on the side of mountains," he said. He knew what to do. He kicked out a flat spot where he could take a nap if he got tired. He took some photos of the inside of the crevasse, but still hasn't looked at them.

"I did jumping jacks (to stay warm). I kind of meditated a bit. I tried to stay calm."

Around 6 or 7 p.m., he said, a white helicopter flew over. "It wasn't that loud," he said. "I thought maybe it was an A-Star or a Bell Ranger. What's weird is that no one seems to know who that was."

No mistaking sound of Pavehawk

The helicopter moved off. Douglas wondered what the heck was going on. But about an hour later he heard the thundering Pavehawk and knew this was help for sure. The PJs threw him the rope not long after and he started climbing up.

"I got my way up to the ledge where the snowmachine was," he said, and grabbed the snow samples. "I always tell people, 'Don't die for samples,'" but given that these were in reach, he grabbed them. Then he resumed climbing. It got tiring. One of the PJs yelled down, "Hey, we can pull you up if you want."

Go for it, Douglas replied.

By then, he was embarrassed enough by everything that had happened that there was sense playing the tough guy. "I obviously feel bad that not only was there a rescue, but that some of the people I work with were worried. My wife, she obviously wasn't too pleased.

"It was all my fault," Douglas said. "It's not going to happen again. I would hope that other people learn from this," too.

Snowmachining on Alaska glaciers is extremely dangerous even though some, like Douglas, do get lucky and survive terrifying crevasse falls. His injuries? He bruised his shin on the ascent out of the crevasse. How, he doesn't know. He bumped it on something. He describes the bruise as the sort you'd get banging into the tailgate on a pickup truck.

He's amazed he's so unscathed. "The amount of lucky I am...," Douglas said, letting the sentence tail off.

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com